Jabber, Inc. is a commercial vendor of instant messaging and presence solutions for businesses. It has been a player for many years, and its key go-to-market emphasis is the importance of open and extensible products and solutions for enterprises, government agencies, and OEMs. However, there is a twist in Jabber's product portfolio that sets it apart from other vendors that only offer "instant messaging plain": its core offering uses an awareness of someone's (or something's) presence to send XML documents in real-time. Thus the applications of Jabber's technology are not limited to IM, but extend to enabling real-time content exchange between applications, systems and services. Note that I've used "Jabber, Inc." in this update to differentiate Jabber, Inc. the commercial software vendor from the open source Jabber community.
Jabber, Inc. 's offerings include:
- Jabber Messenger and WebClient ... Instant messaging clients for the Windows desktop (no Mac support from Jabber, Inc. itself, but various open source alternatives are available), along with a cross-platform Web client.
- Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber XCP) ... the server component of its real-time presence-aware XML routing platform.
- Wireless Access Clients and Gateways ... to enable users on virtually any mobile device to stay connected to real-time business processes and communication channels.
During a briefing with Paul Guerin (Senior VP of Sales and Marketing) and Laura Lear (Director of Marketing) on Wednesday, I received the following update on Jabber's technology focus and business successes:
Technology Focus
Jabber, Inc. continues to invest in making its product more open and extensible. Its recent addition of native support for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) will be followed by support for federation between a Jabber XCP server and as yet undisclosed public Instant Messaging networks. Like Microsoft's recent addition of tariff-based gateway support for AIM, Yahoo and MSN, Jabber, Inc. plans to offer tariff-based interoperability for its customers. In both cases, the tariffs originate from the public networks; this is their way of monetizing a subscriber base without using advertising.
Secondly, Jabber, Inc. will introduce a "drop-dead easy" instant messaging appliance in 2Q2005, to simplify the deployment process and satisfy the requirements of small-to-mid sized businesses and goverment agencies and supply chain ecosystems.
Business Success
Jabber, Inc. focuses on three key markets:
- Financial services organizations (where compliance with government and industry regulations on electronic communications is vital);
- Agencies within the Federal Government (where creating a cross-agency real-time presence-aware messaging and communication capability is important); and
- OEMs and technology providers who want to embed presence into their core applications.
Jabber, Inc. works a lot with IMlogic in financial services market, and Groove Networks in federal government.
Top-line revenues are in the $8-$10 million range, and it claims 150 customers.
Bottom Line
Every organization considering its enterprise IM strategy needs to think seriously about what Jabber, Inc. brings to the table. In particular, organizations that don't want to buy their entire technology stack from the Microsoft's and IBM's of the world should consider Jabber, Inc.'s real-time presence-based products, services and solutions.
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