Better multi-device support is huge. And history existing when you come back from not being connected.

There are IRC solutions to this but IIRC it's something silly like a client that stays connected 24/7 to manage your user, then another client that connects to that client for your actual interface.

Yes, Quassel and IRCCloud are exactly such solutions.

But that always has to happen in such distributed systems, Matrix has the same – your home node actually connects to the Matrix network, and you connect to that.

Even on XMPP you end up running an XMPP server somewhere which connects via federation to the actual network, and your clients just connect to that server.

> Not having to manage a server

Seems odd you would want to have you're internal company discussions hosted on a server outside your control. It's especially relevant to companies outside the USA who might not want to have their data under US law.

I wouldn't recommend IRC for office communication. XMPP is probably the better tool.

> Seems odd you would want to have you're internal company discussions hosted on a server outside your control

Our legal department wouldn't let us use Slack, for exactly this reason

Most companies operate on systems outside of their control. Windows, MacOS, mobile platforms, etc. Why limit it to discussions if that's a concern? If my company makes iOS applications, having to use MacOS and having to live with the possibility that everything that I type is being sent back to some server somewhere that way is just as bad, right?