Microsoft buying Parlano

Persistent, or group, chat is suddenly hot now, with IBM adding persistent chat capabilities to Sametime as part of the roadmap it announced at Voicecon, and now Microsoft announcing its acquisition of Parlano.  Other players in this space include Instant Technologies, Jabber, and Reuters Messaging (as a hosted service).

Persistent chat isn't all that well known outside the financial space, but it offers some pretty significant opportunities for enterprises to improve communications via always-on chat sessions that can be monitored individually, or via rules or bots that trigger users about relevant discussions.