Anyway, Wildfire 3.1 features wall-crumbling public gateway support and is still supposed to have the security, archiving and management features needed by the enterprise.

Public gateways come via application plug-ins, which the company describes as an administrative benefit over most XMPP (Jabber) systems that require configuring each external component independently. The plug-in model gives the gateways access to the server, which in turn dynamically changes users' rosters, say.

The way Jive is playing this thing Wildfire Open Source 3.1 with public gateways is free; Wildfire Enterprise 3.1, a plug-in that delivers business-critical features to the core open source product, also archives the messages and is priced by user seats.

Pricing is supposed to be $495 for the server and $12 per seat starting November 1.

Jive is rolling out an updated 2.0 version of its Spark enterprise IM client, preening that Jive is unique in offering both an open source IM server and client. Spark 2.0 is covered by the LGPL. It includes internationalization, bookmarks and Quick Links support, message notification preferences, broadcasting, conference rooms, and fast file transfer including the ability to capture and send areas of a screen.

The company has enhanced Fastpath, the part of the Wildfire plug-in that delivers CRM capabilities by routing and queuing customer chats based on language and support level, with a new client interface, simplified routing rules and reportedly easier admin configuration.

For its next trick Jive intends to branch into VoIP via Jingle, the Jabber/XMPP protocol extension designed by Google and the Jabber Software Foundation.