This equally applies to Confluence, when it comes to locating presence.

It would be very useful for the instant messenger connector (based on jabber/jive) to be plugable.

For example, We use Microsoft OCS internally, and there are of course many others (yahoo, google, msn ...)

I am not suggesting that Atlassian builds all these connectors, but instead define API points for integrating these connectors into bamboo and confluence, or infact any of your products.

Core functionality required:
1. Chat in and out (for bamboo, and jira)
2. Presence (for confluence)

Surely this API should be the same for each of your products, so integrators can build once, and deploy for all.

As of now, it is possible (but hard), to replace the XMPP connector for bamboo. This should all be abstracted to the plugin framework.