Messaging & Collaboration IM Interoperability: It's the Business Model, Stupid. Stowe Boyd makes the argument that companies don't care about the fact that XMPP is an open protocol. Companies should care, but they're stupid, and so they don't.

The same is true for Linux. Companies aren't using Linux because its open source. Companies are using it because Oracle, IBM, etc are putting their applications on Linux, it's cheaper than Microsoft's alternative, and they don't like Microsoft. If you think they're doing it for any other reason you've got to be kidding yourself.

However, XMPP's openess does give it an edge over it's competitors. It's easy to build services on top of XMPP. XMPP enabled applications will be the reason for XMPP winning over proprietary protocols. XMPP being an open protocol isn't good enough for companies to use XMPP, but rather building applications on top of an open protocol will be cheaper. That's the kind of logic any MBA hotshot can understand.

The trick is to make building XMPP enabled applications as sexy as using Linux or building web-based applications. There are things on the horizon so just give it time.