A few weeks ago, I was on the hunt for a corporate instant messaging server. I was sure I wanted to find something in the open source realm and hoped to find a Windows-based solution.

After stumbling upon Wildfire, an open source Jabber server, I knew I had found my winner. The out-of-the-box feature list is extensive, but not too cluttered. The server is lightning fast, secure, lightweight and extensible. And it has excellent administration in a very tidy web interface.

Now on to the implementation: There was a short and very simple installation procedure and the server was online and ready for client connections. Oh, right–the client. I liked the idea of going Jabber (XMPP) because I knew I could hook my Trillian Pro right to it and rock. But I’m not about to spend $25/client for an office-wide deployment of Trillian Pro. Luckily, the Wildfire developers already had my number. Spark is a Jabber client built by Jive Software, the makers of Wildfire. Spark is a zero-cost solution for the client side and works flawlessly with Wildfire (as it should.)

There were a couple of Mac users in-house who didn’t want to give up their Adium habit and I complied. But more importantly, the Wildfire server complied and works pretty well with Adium. Not perfect, but well enough to be usable. Trillian Pro also works very well with the system, but I liked Spark so much, I kept it installed on my own box and use it to connect to the local IM while Trillian continues to manage my outside IM connections.

Having a nicely-featured corporate IM system has been very helpful for our office productivity–at least, the reports I’ve received have noted such. As far as our LAN goes, we aren’t doing much in the area of file storage/backup/retrieval/exchange right now (moving that direction though), so it’s nice to be able to zip files back and forth easily. In fact, the IM system has become a rudimentary project management portal.

So if you are a network administrator, or a web developer who gets sucked into network administration by default (like me), I would encourage taking a look at Jive Software, the Wildfire server and Spark client. Every second of my time with them has been well spent.

Jive Software | Wildfire Server | Spark Client | Jive Community | Downloads

Technorati Tags: jive software, jabber, IM, server, widlfire, spark, networking