Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Hightech coloradobiz

INITIAL LIGHTBULB: Instant messaging--real-time, chat-style communication over the Internet--started catching on with Generations X and Y in the late 1990s, when the primary software options were incompatible clients from AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo.

To free the code from these corporate clutches, software engineer Jeremie Miller launched an open-source movement called Jabber (not unlike that of the Linux operating system or the Sendmail e-mail platform) from Cascade, Iowa in 1998. Then in his early twenties, Miller catalyzed a community that developed a free, XML-based alternative to the big boys' software. The open-source Jabber is now installed on more than 150,000 servers worldwide.

In mid-1999, Perry Evans, then CEO of Denver-based Webb Interactive Services, Inc. and co-founder of MapQuest, took note of Miller's work and arranged a meeting. Evans saw potential for a commercial version of Miller's protocol, and Jabber Inc. officially incorporated as a Webb subsidiary in 2000. While he's not on staff, Miller continues to guide the Jabber open-source movement from his home base in Iowa, with a stipend from Jabber the company.

IN A NUTSHELL: Corporate America has recently realized what teenagers have known for the past half-decade, said Rob Balgley, Jabber's president and CEO. "The value of instant messaging is its ability to offer presence and availability," he said. "That's what's made it so wildly popular." In comparison with e-mail, which tends to get lost in an overloaded inbox, an instant message is immediate and the communication tends to resolve itself on the spot. "It's much more suitable to the way we actually talk," Balgley said.

Many companies are finding that employees are already using one of the consumer instant messaging tools at work, which Balgley labeled as problematic. "It's not productive, it's not in line with corporate culture, and it's not supported by an IT staff," he said. Jabber eliminates this problem, with "customizable, extensible and scalable" enterprise instant messaging products that run behind a firewall.

Because the software is easy to customize, Jabber's customers "can take the essence of instant messaging ... and extend it to other systems, like a customer relationship management application or a supply chain application or a knowledge management engine," Balgley explained. "By doing that, you're giving those other applications a dynamic quality." For example, a...