Instant Messaging Planet today broke the news that Oracle has licensed Jabber Inc. technology for integration into the Collaboration suite product. Apparently, Chris Saunders, the article's author, dug this information from Webb Interactive's quarterly SEC filings, or 10-Q, where $4.5M of licensing receipts were reported. Webb Interactive owns a 43% stake in Jabber, Inc.

Neither Jabber Inc. nor Oracle have made formal press releases, but I will dig around to find out what's going on.

Clearly, this is a big opportunity for Jabber Inc., which is one of the few pure-play instant messaging vendors to gain significan share-of-mind. Oracle's inclusion of Jabber XCP in the Collaboration Suite -- along with Oracle's highly aggressive marketing plans -- could lead to explosive growth for Jabber, and perhaps market acceptance for the technology and the protocol.

In August, I interviewed Sunir Kapoor and Steve Levine ("Oracle's Angle"), VP of Engineering and VP of Marketing for Collaboration Suite, respectively, and I was struck with the company's vision for real-time enabling the enterprise. Something that I did not mention in the article, but which struck me at the time, was the level of interest Oracle seemed to have about XMPP, the Jabber protocol. A clue, and one that I did not turn over at the time.

As a sidenote -- email directed to several Oracle marketing folks bounced, including an email to Steve Levine. I have it on good authority that Levine has left the company.