We use echowaves communication tool in our company. It's installed on internal server and traffic never leaves the company's network. I see it as a great advantage. The tool can be freely used for business related discussions as well as for status updates, etc.

It's opensource, we don't pay a dime for it!

- Alex

Here comes another interesting product - a chat-like application. But not traditional instant messaging.

IM is mostly for one-on-one chats, but it's not optimized for group chats of three or more people. Further, IM is network dependent; so, if you are on AIM, and your client is on MSN, you can't communicate.

Echowaves, on the other hand, is all about simple and quick network-agnostic group (that is, business) chats. It's a self-contained, protected web-based chatroom that allows groups of people to chat and easily share files together.

No IM software is required, just a web browser.

Corporate environments may enjoy an internal installation, so content never leaves their network and remains inside.