Here's an Interview of MS's IM guy by Eric Allman. Looks like MS is sticking with SIMPLE. I have done a little work with SIMPLE and SIP, and I have to say that SIMPLE pales in comparison to XMPP/Jabber. I use jabber on a daily basis. Nothing quite beats a secure realtime pipe with your team. Now if only I could get everyone to use it ;-)

Unrelated: I took a photo of sunrise this morning. It's not very good, but there you go...