Yup, MindAlign was born out of an internal product in UBS called 'Interchange'.

Interchange was a java client, that fundamentally spoke standard IRC to IRC servers, but also used extra external databases to auto-connect users to channels and secure sensitive channels. The client also forced real names (via Active Directory), and was hardcoded to only connect to the UBS IRC servers.

The IRC servers themselves were altered to only allow Interchange clients to connect[1] and to only allow approved bots in channels most of which did full chat logging for compliance purposes.

Interchange was so slow it was nicknamed 'Interchug'.

The IRC server network spanned the UBS WAN network globally, and all staff were encouraged to use it. For the era, no other large banking corporate had anything similar running (officially).

Source: I worked in UBS IT during this period.

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[1] Although the more enterprising of us just HEX edited mIRC to report the Interchange client name.

I think Interchange was not originally Java but a NeXTStep application. I am also ex UBS. I don't remember it being slow though.= but then again I might not have used the Java version just NeXTStep and the mIRC hack.

Did you and I ever cross paths ? Wondering now if I know you ;)

Well that was just a nice GUI on top of IRC, and probably some work on the server.