Major players

Over 7264 XMPP servers are indexed by IMtrends. The most deployed server is ejabberd, with 36.4 % of market share. Comes next, Google's XMPP server, including Google Talk and Google Apps, with 14.4 % of market share. Then Openfire (13.5 %), jabberd14 (13.1 %), jabberd2 (6.6 %), and Prosody (3.0 %). All other servers are below 0.3 % of market share.

XMPP server market share:

Click to zoom.

Let's zoom on the major players, by adding Prosody, watch their evolution over 3 years.

Evolution of XMPP servers from 2008-5-18 to 2011-9-19:

Click to zoom.

This needs some explanations:

• The global tendency is that the number of servers slowly go down: it may be explained by the fact that services are concentrating (bigger and more famous servers, supporting more users), a sign of maturation?
• Only Google Apps is growing, with Prosody, which is taking off
• Although both servers are not actively developed anymore (only maintained), Openfire surpasses jabberd/jabberd14 for the first year
• jabberd 2 stays below jabberd/jabberd14
• chat.facebook.com and xmpp.messenger.live.com are counted as one server each

Other players

Below 1 %, you have:

• wpjabber
• XCP
• tigase
• djabberd
• Isode M-Link
• psyc
• SoapBox

Here are their evolution over time:

Click to zoom.

Here:

• wpjabber has been divided by 4, since it has completely stopped
• XCP has grown, but is slowing down: maybe a sign of the purchase by Cisco, and its integration in WebEx Connect, not existing anymore as an independent product
• djabberd, which was originally developed for LiveJournal (using ejabberd now), is not actively maintained anymore

Numbers...

Beware that these numbers are only server deployments:

• It is not exhaustive: if you support a server, please add the deployments to the database by simply query its domain on imtrends.com
• You could have completely different numbers if you consider other facets of XMPP servers, like observing the code repositories, or ticket trackers.

The major changes are:

• HTTP service

• Fix ejabberd_http:get_line
• Don’t use binary:match to extract lines from binaries
• Parse and encode https header names like native http parser does
• Parse correctly https request split into multiple packets
• Properly handle HEAD request in mod_http_bind (EJAB-1538)
• New option default_host for handling requests with ambiguous Host (EJAB-1261)

• ODBC

• New ODBC support for mod_announce
• New ODBC support for mod_blocking
• New ODBC support for mod_irc
• New ODBC support for mod_muc
• New ODBC support for mod_shared_roster
• New ODBC support for mod_vcard_xupdate
• Add ODBC exporting function for privacy table
• Work also with some unicode strings in PgSQL (EJAB-1490)
• Replace a single quote with double quotes in an ODBC escape

• SSL

• Make sure that res is initialized in all cases
• Parse correctly https request split into multiple packets (EJAB-1537)
• Added missed tls:recv_data/2
• Don’t ignore Length parameter in tls:recv
• Avoid quadratic behavior in reading SSL data
• Dix http_bind webserver TLS fail on Chrome (EJAB-1530)

• Miscellanea

• Assume we have only one CPU when an auto-detection fails (EJAB-1516)
• Auth: Relax digest-uri handling (EJAB-1529)
• Caps: Cache caps timestamp before the IQ-request is done
• IRC: Use of MUC password
• Private: misc errors cases fixes
• Pubsub: return user affiliation for a specified node (EJAB-1294)
• Shared Roster: Foreign items were not pushed (EJAB-1509)
• Shared Roster LDAP: user substitution in ldap_rfilter (EJAB-1555)
• Windows: Fix makefile rules for building DLLs

Check the Release Notes for a more complete list of changes:
http://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/release_notes/release_note_ejabberd_2.1.11

If you upgrade from ejabberd 2.0.5 or older, read carefully the release notes of ejabberd 2.1.0 too, because there were several changes in the installation path and the configuration options.

The list of solved tickets since previous version is available on ProcessOne bug tracker:
http://redir.process-one.net/ejabberd-2.1.11

ejabberd 2.1.11 is available as source code package and binary installers for Linux 32 bits, 64 bits, Mac OS X Intel, and Windows:
http://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/downloads

P1PP in short

P1PP is mainly an open federated platform for "PubSub, the good parts", or "PubSub made easy". For now, it is mainly designed for developers:

• pubsub.p1pp.net: an open federated XMPP PubSub service
• p1pp command line: to manage your nodes and items in a console
• p1pp Javascript library: to integrate P1PP live pushes in your website, as authentified or anonymous users

For developers and XMPP geeks:

• Read our quickstart guide, for direct interaction in your favorite XMPP client's XML console
• Here is more exhaustive documentation containing all cases of stanzas

Webinar slides

Please comment!

We are waiting for your comments. So feel free to express your needs!

Stay tuned as we have more.

• Study assesses a selection of 9 IM & Presence offerings
• ProcessOne believes study demonstrates the IM market maturity and industry leadership
• Categories include internal collaboration, external collaboration, business process support and customer support

ProcessOne was recently evaluated in the enterprise IM and Presence category in an independent analysis, published on January 10, 2012, by leading industry analyst firm Gartner. This study complements other studies by Gartner such as the MarketScope for Enterprise IM and Presence published on July, 5, 2011.

As more enterprises use real-time messaging to ease collaboration internally and externally between employees and customer relationship, business processes are requiring more flexibility and real-time interaction, especially while employees, applications and connected things are fully mixed together.

A business environment, where all employees are connected through various devices, especially smartphones, is challenging for enterprises. Push notification tends to become extremely important as it enables processes to synchronize with employees again and promote real-time discussion and decision. This is why companies need seamless real-time chat and push interaction and it's great to see the top analyst firm rate and define ProcessOne in this way.

First and foremost, thank you everyone, customers, partners for your trust and support during the past years. We would like to assure you that it has been well placed.

Look at what we have accomplished together so far, in your behalf:

• We have built the most renowed XMPP server, powering a huge subset of XMPP federated infrastructures. Communication means federation.
• We have been developing our own improvements to XMPP in the form of mobile and reliability related extensions. Mobile is your key demand.
• We are hosting large XMPP deployments with exceptional scalability and uptime. Open source is shifting to managed and cloud services

We are now building a much more ambitious platform, the ProcessOne Push Platform, which intends to provide a self service, large scale, over-the-web notification platform. The platform is powering one of our new projects, that would change the experience people consume news, Upik, thanks to realtime personalized distribution. Especially in 2012 with the Olympics, the elections,...

If you want to learn more about ProcessOne Push Platform, you can join the live tutorial we will demonstrate on the 9th February (Webinar registration link).

2011 was the year of the emergence of group messaging, like TextOne, our prediction in 2012 is the year of push, as an ubiquitous realtime notification stream, coming at you, on your smartphone, computer...

2012 is going to be pretty exciting for us and we wish to build even more exciting new projects with you all.

We wish you all a happy new year, a great 2012!

Credits: Gare de Strasbourg, by Alexandre Prévot, under CC by-sa 2.0

This release includes a few bugfixes and improvements. This is just a short list of them:

* Erlang/OTP compatibility
- Support Erlang/OTP R15B regexp and drivers (EJAB-1521)
- Fix modules update in R14B04 and higher
- Fix modules update of stripped beams (EJAB-1520)

* XMPP Core
- Fix presence problem in C2S after first unavailable (EJAB-1466)
- Fix bug on S2S shaper when TLS is used
- Prevent overload of incoming S2S connections

* XEPs
- BOSH: Get rid of useless mnesia transaction (EJAB-1502)
- MUC: Don’t reveal invitee resource when room informs invitor
- Privacy: Activate “Blocked Contacts” to current c2s connection (EJAB-1519)
- Privacy: Always allow packets from user’s server and bare jid (EJAB-1441)
- Pubsub: Add hooks for node creation/deletion (EJAB-1470)
- Shared Rosters: support groupname@vhost in Displayed Groups (EJAB-506)
- Vcard: Fix error when lowercasing some search results (EJAB-1490)

Check the Release Notes for a more complete list of changes: Release Notes for ejabberd 2.1.10

If you upgrade from ejabberd 2.0.5 or older, read carefully the release notes of ejabberd 2.1.0 too, because there were several changes in the installation path and the configuration options.

The list of solved tickets since the previous version is available on ProcessOne bug tracker: http://redir.process-one.net/ejabberd-2.1.10

ejabberd 2.1.10 is available as source code package and binary installers for Linux 32 bits, 64 bits, Mac OS X Intel, and Windows: http://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/downloads

exmpp 0.9.9

exmpp home page: http://support.process-one.net/doc/display/EXMPP/ or easier to remember: http://exmpp.org/

Download exmpp 0.9.9 source code package from: http://download.process-one.net/exmpp/

You can also check the ProcessOne Labs page: http://www.process-one.net/en/labs/

Right after we powered on our smartphone, we are immediately connected. We are calling that, to be instant-on. From waking up, taking a bus, waiting in line, eating for lunch, having a meeting and going to sleep. We are always at a fingertip of a breaking news, an important email, an amazing post or even an incredible tweet. And we do not want to miss them. But we just want to be alerted personally in a simple manner so we can interact right after, by sharing, calling, posting, tweeting, whatever it is but reacting fast.

With that in mind, we've created a new personalized push inbox for your iPhone and iPod Touch. We've understood that people want today is real time news. That's why we've combined personalization with smartphone and identity with push capability into one single inbox so we can solve the paradigm of living news in real time.

Upik.it (You pick it)	= Personalized (source selection)
	+ Push (Instant On)
	+ Inboxes (Aggregated easy-to-read views)
	+ Identified (You only)
	+ Multi-device (Your 360° mobile environment)

So to summarize, it's all about your news coming at you, using the notification capabilities of your iPhone or iPod Touch.

We've designed Upik to be easy to use, fast and remarkably efficient for everyone who is testing it for the very first time. There is still a lot to do to improve the overall experience. But bear in mind that we are fully committed to shaping a new smart content delivery to help you reduce your information overload.

1. Easy to use
2. Fast
3. Efficient

Easy to use

We've added an inbox and a catalog so you can perform actions on your notifications

• Get alerted to all your notifications with push capabilities
• Scroll down your notifications just by sliding in your inbox
• Add sources using the Upik catalog to stay in contact with all the sources you love
• Custom your experience adding sounds per source or setup silent hours

Get alerted to new notifications

Scroll down your inbox

Fast

We've understood that you want real time news coming on your iPhone, with no effort and no need to browse the web. That's why we've included time-saving features

• View instantly your notification in a cleaner layout than the web, including photos, videos...
• Mute alerts but receive notifications in your inbox
• Stay in touch with all your social networks and email and display them like a notification

Instant-viewed notification

All your sources in a split view

Efficient

We've designed Upik app to help you organize your notification flow so you just use your inbox like a "rubik's cube" and never miss key notifications

• Navigate and read your sources with different views
• Focus on your important notifications by clicking on the "blue ribbon" to read them later
• Extend the source catalog by adding your custom sources by searching and/or entering the exact feed URL
• Many more smart features are coming soon, stay tuned...

Sorted view by source

Read your notification later

We hope the Upik app makes you feel the notification differently and joins the brave new world of push content distribution. It is available in the AppStore today and works on all devices running iOS4.3+.
We are still in private beta so ask for an invitation on Upik.it launch site: http://launch.upik.it/.

For more information, check out our support center or contact us at Upik@process-one.net
Enjoy yourselves and give us your feedbacks on social networks.

   

Upik is powered by ProcessOne Push Platform.

The Upik team

USA Today is really aware of the increasing importance of realtime for press. They decided to distribute iPad and iPhone to journalist as a way speed news generation and gathering process.

At ProcessOne, we have been building since months the needed tools and infrastructure to empower the move to realtime newswire, from news production to news consumption.

The infrastructure is powered by ProcessOne Push Platform (P1PP) and the end user facing tools is called Upik, currently in private beta. Do not hesitate to contact us (upik at process-one.net) if you want to join the beta.

We are thus very happy to see this good move in the press and are already in good position to make the news realtime.

Leak shows Gannett stockpiling thousands of iPhones, iPads for journalists

http://www.appleinsider.com

The name "OneBar" may sound weird, but it is not without humour that we chose this:

• "one": it follows the rule that says that any ProcessOne product sould have a "One" string in the name (OneTeam, TextOne, etc.)
• "bar": stands for the little bar that stays on the bottom of your web browser for all your controls and notifications

XMPP web chat client

That said, OneBar is a simple chat client. It lets you chat with your co-workers, friends and family, and show their presences. It sits in a web browser, so it is a web chat client. And finally, it is based on the XMPP protocol. So simply put, OneBar is an XMPP web chat client.

Embeddable in your websites

OneBar is thought to be embedded within an intranet portal like your corporate webmail, wiki or issue tracker. Why? Because you must login into your domain (serviced by hosted.IM) to start using it, so only authorized users will find it useful. Thus all your users will have a chat client running as soon as they have their browser launched, when visiting your website.

This is very handy since OneBar is really simple to use. Furthermore it does not need any installation or maintenance on your side.

You will find instructions on how to embed OneBar into your websites clicking on the "OneBar" item under the folding menu of "Plans & Features" tab. The screen below shows how to locate the page with intructions and the simple javascript snippet to embed on your site:

OneBar info page on hosted.IM

OneBar in action

Below is a set of screenshots demonstrating how OneBar should look once embedded into your website template. In the following examples we show OneBar working on the Process One Blog:

Login dialog

OneBar minimized with two conversations in background

The roster of OneBar and a one-to-one chat in progress

BOSH, Websockets and session binding

OneBar makes use of Websocket technology when it is available on the browser. Although not widely supported, Websocket is a more reliable and fast protocol for applications like OneBar. Otherwise, it uses BOSH protocol, the standard way to link XMPP components via HTTP. If you follow a link within your page while OneBar is open, it will try to restore the previous state (open pending conversations, show message history, your roster, etc), thus allowing to navigate or refresh the site while keeping your chat session.

Prices

OneBar is simply free for all paid domains.

Feedback is welcome!

OneBar is available as a beta software. We welcome your feedback and suggestions to improve it further, aiming to provide an easy alternative for your company. You can leave your feedback on the hosted.IM Forum or just use our support widget on the hosted.IM main site.

Key aspects we want improve:

• Browser compatibility between most popular operating systems
• Page isolation: once embedded, OneBar should be thought as a new extension of your page, so isolation from your javascript libraries and style sheets is an important feature to support
• Feature set: currently we support a minimal subset of the XMPP standard, but we want to make it evolve with time

Enjoy OneBar

We hope you will like OneBar a lot. It really simplifies use and administration (since no fat client deployment is required), and it can become really ubiquitous in your company.

hosted.IM offers you now the possibility to connect your own component to your hosted XMPP server. You can then run your own component in your server, while still having your XMPP server hosted and managed on hosted.IM. Communication between your external component and hosted.IM is encrypted to guarantee privacy of your information.

XEP-0114: Jabber Component Protocol

Jabber Component Protocol (also know as XEP-0114, the specification reference) is a protocol that will enable different server-side components to connect to the Jabber server. These components are known as external components, since they are not running on the same code/VM than the XMPP server. For communication with the server, these components use this protocol, which is different from client-to-server (C2S) and server-to-server (S2S).

In the image below we see how mydomain.com administrator enables External Services support and then configures it to assign the JID mycomponent.mydomain.com:

Step 1: enable feature

Step 2: select External Services

Step 2: configure your External Service

External components have a unique JID within the XMPP/Jabber network. In the above example, it was identified as mycomponent.mydomain.com.

A secret key or password is required by the standard to authenticate your component when it "attaches" (connects) to hosted.IM

Available services

hosted.IM already offers services such as:

• Transports/gateways to proprietary IM: AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo
• Twitter transport: for microblogging integration in IM
• XMPP transport: if you want to agregate your contacts lists in one account
• MUC: multi-user chat
• Broadcast: to send a corporate message to all your users

Leverage real-time

Of course, you could run your own corporate services, by providing your own component to your users. For example, a company could push strategic information directly to selected users at an acceptable pace. This could improve and fluidify your company a lot!

Prices

Component protocol feature is available for your domain for free on the paid plans: Team 10, Office 25, Office 50, Organisation 75, Organisation 100, Company 200, Company 250, Enterprise 350 and Enterprise 500.

Where the problem lies

Although this problem was already documented on our FAQ [1], this time it was different. Even if you disable XMPP and remove your domain from Google Apps [2], you will experience problems to add Gmail users or see their presences once your domain was hosted on a different server. hosted.IM is one of the possible cases, but it will also happen if you choose to run your own XMPP server [3].

Apparently, Google's effort on infrastructure optimization lead to this issue. It seems they use an internal routing mechanism for domains hosted within their cloud and former domains are not cleaned out completely once removed.

We hope Google will find a successful solution to this problem. In the meantime you can report this problem on Google forum [4].

[1]: Frequently Asked Questions
[2]: Google+ for Google Apps Is Not XMPP/Jabber Friendly
[3]: Google Apps XMPP Chat Bug
[4]: Can't uninstall GTalk

Based on this experience, we have announced the launch in december of an XMPP-based Push Solution: P1PP, which stands for ProcessOne Push Platform.

Here are the slides of this presentation:

In technical terms, P1 Push Platform is composed of several components:

• An XMPP PubSub infrastructure, proposed as a service (Platform as a Service, or Paas).
• This platform is accessible through XMPP server-to-server (s2s) connections, where people can manage there nodes and broadcast messages to subscribers.
• The platform is accessible through anonymous client-to-server (c2s) connections for web based realtime delivery platform.
• The platform is completed with XMPP PubSub simplified documentation, for easier understanding of the protocol. This summarizes our vision and experience as "PubSub, the Good Parts".
• The platform is proposed with a Javascript client library to easily build realtime enhanced web pages (based on XMPP anonymous authentications). The client allow easy login, subscription to PubSub nodes and easy processing of PubSub messages.

For more reading on the topic of XMPP push, I recommand reading:

• Informations on BBC Pushfeeds deployment: LiveText-via-IP upgrade and other synchronously delivered content.
  You can also read more technical Under the Hood of the Radio 1 Homepage: the technical low-down
• You can check Nokia presentation at SeaBeyond on their XMPP Push platform: Sea Beyond 2011 Talk 7: Jukka Alakontiola on Nokia Push Notifications

If you need to get more precise information on the launch of the platform and have a large scale project that could use it, please, do not hesitate to contact us.

Several companies already have an intranet authentication backend, like LDAP, Active Directory or an Ad-Hoc database. On the other hand our experience with large sized companies is that is not a good idea to expose LDAP or Active Directory to the internet.

To overcome this problematic scenario we have added a new authentication method, which consists on delegating the authentication to an external REST API, acting as a façade to your own intranet database.

The behaviour expected by hosted.IM is fairly straightforward. Your API must answer a GET query with details about the user that is trying to authenticate to your IM domain with 'true' or 'false' depending on whether the user is authorized or not.

In the image below we see how mydomain.com administrator sets https://mydomain.com/auth as the REST URL and clicks on the highlighted Verify your service link to ensure hosted.IM is able to contact it:

The next step would be to click on the 'Switch' button and that's all!. Now hosted.IM will authenticate users against your company data source.

Below is the specification of the authorization API:

URL	Configured on hosted.IM user administration form. Could be HTTPS (recommended) or HTTP
Method	GET
Parameters	username	Username part of the user ID to be validated
	password	Password sent by the user to be validated
	domain	Domain part of the user ID to be validated
	secret	Arbitrary string defined on hosted.IM user administration form
Expected reply	Code	200 OK
	Content-type	application/json
	Body	true if authorized; otherwise false
Error	Code	Any HTTP code, according to the error type. It will deny user access.

This release also includes other improvements suggested by our users. It contains also bug fixes.

As we continue improving daily our service, we will greatly welcome your feedback. There is already much more to come soon. Thank you!

Links:

• http://hosted.im
• hosted.IM support forum
• Twitter: @hosted_im