Highlights from the Jabber on Wall Street event today:

Navin Rajapakse, Vice President, Global Architecture and Engineering, Lehman Brothers

Lehman made the decision to adopt Jabber two years ago. We had Mindalign (Parlano), as well as several homegrown IM solutions. We had various non-communicating islands of IM.

We also wanted to be able to communicate remotely, with people working outside the building. So they opened up to AOL and Yahoo. Soon, we grew concerned about that, and wanted more control, but still needed to talk with the public networks.

The requirements led to a bake off between IBM/Lotus Sametime and Jabber. The customization of Jabber's client was significantly easier. On the server side, we evaluated the flexibility of Jabber, and adopted various open source modules.

And in the final analysis, the Jabber solution was more cost effective.

TIBCO is the company's enterprise application integration framework, and Jabber seemed relatively easy to integrate there.

We had a need to develop self-service 'bots, and Jabber offered an easy way to do that.

And we had to meet various SEC requirements on privacy, security, and auditability.

[presents tiered architecture: notes that today, Lehman is not taking advantage of server-to-server capability]

We have integrated a generalized notion of presence that can be included into other applications, and we have presence enabled our directory.

Used an early version of the Jabber web client, but the Win32 client was more critical to Lehman's use.

While the 1:1 chat was solid, there were various features needed for roll-out of group chat, which Jabber rolled out in a few months time.

Now, in use at 80%-90% of the company.

We have SEC compliant escrowing and retrieval of all IM messages as needed.

We have eliminated other IM solutions, and have integrated 20 or 30 applications taht are using Jabber as an alert mechanism.

We have integrated with LehmanLive, directory, security and reporting services.

2,000-9,500 concurrent users. All over the globe, and even during the weekend, so we need to be up 24X7.

3-3.5 M messages per week, which includes IM and chat.

Launched early part of last year: it is considered a tier 1, mission critical application, like email.

Different groups have different modes. Like the equities guys who use a chat room to swap deal information.

On the equities side, we have set up chat rooms, like foreign exchange.

We have extended the client and chat in several ways. For example, we integrated voice, so you can right click on a buddy, and it will dial.

We decided to pick a protocol, XMPP, and go with it, even though the market has not settled that protocol war.

Issues with compliance with AOL and various consortium based IM clients were problematic. We decided to go with an 80/20 rule, and use Jabber, and let the other issues fall to the side for now.

Most important, we ensured SEC compliance.

Question: How much monthly maintenance? Have you considered a hosted solution?

A: We don't have a dedicated team, we have an operations staff that handle it. Its nearly a zero maintenance, except for upgrades.

Question: How builds the applications that integrate with Jabber?

A: We built a TIBCO bridge, so our application developers are experienced in building to that.

Question: How do make sure the apps don't crush the Jabber system?

A: We have a Karma system that tracks message rates, and quickly resolve any issues.

Jeremy Condie, SVP, Thomson Financial

Whay are we here, at a conference about Jabber?

I am a senior VP for Thomson Financial, and I am architect for our collaboration and communication systems.

What is Thomson Financial? We are one of the three largest financial information services, we are the largest provider of information to banks, for eample. We are better known for our brands, which are now being united into a single framework: Thomson ONE.

Collaboration is central to our business. We are moving beyond providing information. If you are a banker, a trader, an analyste, we are going to help you collaborate better.

Our strategy is based on helping our clients to gain mindshare, so that they will get the phone call at 2am from a customer.

We are focused on inproving user's workflow, and of course, that means we have to integrate with what they have on their desktop.

We are not building a proprietary IM system, we are incorporating a successful and proven instant messaging infrastructure from an innovator. That means we are leveraging ROI, minimize user disruption, and rapidly get productivity for our clients.

Being informed is not enough; until you impart that content to a client, it doesn't benefit you. How can you make sure that you are up with the moment on ionformation that is critical for clients. Is that already priced into the market?

Thomson has bought nearly every information company out there. We have an infinite degree of content. When we created Thomson ONE, we didn't make a single solution. You can configure your desktop with what you want, and all the components plug-and-play, and communicate with each other. We have integrated Jabber int he same way.

For example, if I am tracking some datum about Qualcomm, I could bring up various research and real time feeds about Qualcomm. So I can know before my client asks. And you can confirm in real time using Jabber.

Where's the edge in financial services? You need to gain an edge through a deeper insight rather than faster typing speed.

What about extending the IM environment to your customers? You can filter the information as needed, but you could present an IM window on the client's desktop where you could be sharing certain information. Whether its a banker, or an analyst, or a bond trader.

This is pushing the boundaries a bit, but this is where we see it heading.

David Fowler, VP Marketing and Alliances, IMlogic

No one uses email without spam filters; the same sort of management has to be applied to IM.

Companies have to get past the denial stage of IM; you can't seriously contemplate turning it off. A recent study showed that bond traders that use IM make 500K more per year than those that don't.

Today, use of public IM is still the majority in the market. But we see a trend in the market toward enterprise solutions, like Jabber. But we will see them running side by side for a long time to come.

First problem when we go into an organization, they don't don't really know what's going on. They don't which IM systems are used, who is doing file transfers, and what identities are being used.

Second, IM tools tunnel through your firewall, and there are a number of security problems: viruses, for example.

Third, there are legal risks. A large amount of sexual content is streaming aorund; and just the institution of archiving will curtail that, as well as keeping track of commitments in deals, for example.

Last, we need to avoid IT headaches -- like integrating with LDAP.

How do we manage IM? We act as the proxy, running side by side with your enterprise IM system, and control the interface with the public networks. We can map identities, and control the various features: if you want to disallow file transfers, for example, we can do that.

And obviously, we support compliance: archival, retention, discovery, supervisory, surveillance, and entitlement requirements.

How does this all fit together? It is likely that you are using a public IM system today, and considering moving to an enterprise IM system, like Jabber. We recommend that you take a long look at Jabber, and think about putting

Q: How do you integrae with existing archive solutions?

A: We have relationships with Legato, KBS, and other archive solutions.

Q: Is there a certain size company that would best fit this solution?

A: We have groups as small as 10, and up to thousands. Small comapnies sometime try to sneak by, but the cost is so small it is not worth the risk.

Paul Guerin, SVP Sales and Marketing, Jabber

We see the financial services industry as a hotbed of collaboration and communication. We see the power of presence as the keystone of the next generation of applications, and the business processes that are core to the industry.

I want to thank you all for coming, and we hope you will come to other events in this seminar series, as well as our webinar series.