I was briefed this week by Joe Hildebrand of Jabber on the company's recent announcement about a teaming relationship with EBS. I usually don't report on teaming announcements, which can be mere marketing fluff. However, this announcement represents a watershed on several levels.

First of all, this is the first time Jabber has been able to tell the story about how its XCP technology is being used as the core real-time messaging infrastructure for a financial services real-time application. There have been a number of other applications along these lines, but the companies involved have decided not to announce the Jabber technology role, for competitive or other reasons.

Second of all, this is a great example of the application of XCP in a really big space. EBS is responsible for 70% of the world's foreign exchange trades, and the application developed will be making extensive use of Xdata forms within the XCP technology.

EBS had a real challenge in transitioning: zero downtime was required. Because of the XCP architecture -- they integrated the proprietary protocol of the existing FX trading client into the XCP server -- the company was able to accomplish the transition without a hitch. Over time, a gradual tansition to a new Jabber client can be accomplished, without any downtime.

So, this EBS relationship is not just an empty marketing announcement, but an indicator of the maturity of Jabber technology, and a real good example of where real-time collaboration in the financial services arena is headed.