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Instant messaging with Jabber: an open standard protocol for IM. (XML & IM).

Article Excerpt
Of all of the possible technologies to arise out of the first consumer Internet revolution, instant messaging (IM) is a bit of an enigma. Its incredible popularity challenges that of the Internet's first "killer app," e-mail, yet it does so mostly by offering the features of e-mail in a slightly different package.

At the core of any IM system lies the capacity to rapidly send a message from one client to another. The second most important feature in an IM system is the capacity to recognize when certain users of the system have become available. When these two features are put together, it becomes possible to send messages rapidly to a target and be reasonably certain that the target is available to receive them. In contrast, with e-mail there is no guarantee of when, if ever, the target will choose to receive a message. Providing many of the desirable features of wireless paging and e-mail, IM would seem a silver bullet in an enterprise's messaging infrastructure.

Three important hurdles have impeded the progress of enterprise IM: lack of standards, security, and the ability to readily integrate enterprise applications into an IM framework.

Knocking Down the Hurdles

As has often been the case with computing infrastructure over the last decade, the development community has come together to generate an open standard protocol for IM. The name of that protocol, appropriately enough, is Jabber. A nearly complete change from the proprietary IM protocols of companies like ICQ, AOL, and Yahoo, Jabber's unique design strategy is well designed for use in the enterprise world. Here are the reasons:...

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