The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an IETF standard
that provides a complete cross protocol messaging solution.  The problem
with current IM solutions is that they are all proprietary and cannot
talk to each other.  XMPP seeks to get rid of those barriers.

Net::XMPP is a collection of Perl modules that provide a Perl Developer
access to the XMPP protocol.  Using OOP modules we provide a clean
interface to writing anything from a full client to a simple protocol
tester.

WWW: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Net-XMPP/