I’m looking into hosting one of these for the first time. From my limited research, XMPP seems to win in every way, which makes me think I must be missing something. Matrix is almost always mentioned as the de-facto standard, but I rarely saw arguments why it is better than XMPP?
Xmpp seems way easier to host, requiring less resources, has many more options for clients, and is simpler and thus easier to manage and reason about when something goes wrong.
So what’s the deal?
Wut
If nothing else, there is space for a competitor to MS teams in the corporate space.
Everyone else is ending up on teams, but no one actually likes it.
Everyone ends up on MS Teams because they bundle it with Office365, so execs have the choice of “free” or another $12/mo/user for Slack. It immediately makes it a case of “justify how Slack is so much better we spend thousands on it when Microsoft gives us Teams for free”. Those execs don’t use chat software in the first place.
That’s why the EU forced them to unbundle Teams.
No, not always. I know of a very major firm that uses google suite for everything but chat and video calls. They use MS Teams because its just that much better than google’s alternative. From the chats Ive had, the issue with Slack there is that someone high up in their IT stack hates it.
Teams is relative.
At a previous job (Microsoft shop but in the public sector so 10 years behind), the standard messenger when I started was Skype for Business.
In case you’ve never used Skype for Business, it’s “Skype” in branding only and actually has nothing to do with the Skype software that Microsoft purchased and is more like MSN Messenger.
Compared to that, Teams is a huge step up.
Also, at a Microsoft shop, you have to use what Microsoft provides even though it’s usually balls.
It’s 90% of the reason I now refuse to work anywhere that’s bought into the Microsoft ecosystem. It’s just so… mediocre