[potatolicious]

HipChat is more than an IRC server - it's a fully searchable web-based chat archival system, as well as a file transmission and sharing app backed by S3. It's also fully mobile-compatible and will do proper message routing to multiple devices owned by the same user, as well as temporary message caching/retry if your device is unreachable when a message is sent. etc etc. The list goes on.

None of it impossible to replicate in-house, but I dare a non-technical person to replicate HipChat's stack.

[rmangi]

Isn't the main purpose of HipChat to interface with Jira and the rest of the Atlassian stack? That's the real win.

[easytiger]

at that point you might as well get google apps for business.

[potatolicious]

Google doesn't exactly have an "IRC on crack" product though? Also, I find GTalk's routing to be spotty when it comes to multiple devices - it's quite common for me to receive messages from coworkers at night and have them route to my work machine instead of one that's active on the GTalk account at home.

Nowadays we use GroupMe for things that must be read in a timely manner. It'd be nice if we could use GTalk for it (this is a Google Apps GTalk account, not a public one).

[Legion]

Google Wave was supposed to be that "IRC on crack" product.