Openfire as a backend to a real time web app

I’m doing research on the framework to use for a project at work. Openfire, seems to provide one of the best solutions i’ve come on so far, but I would like feedbakc from others that have tried to solve similar problems.

Here are the requirements I’m looking at:

track users preferances on what they like to see, and send that data in xml format to Tipco GI. (an ajax framework)

Save and load preferances through the browser (maybe save information as a buddy list if needed) (all xml data structures)

manage web app user accounts.

send realtime messages to the web app (xml messages)

enable communication within the company through the new web portal.

This app is going to have our internal monitoring and application testing framework built on it, with a web frontend that is going to allow interactive tests preformed on many parts of our infrasturcture, and logging.

The backed of the test framework is written in perl.

Is openfire at a point where it is able to handle a project like this, and had anyone else been involved in a similar project, and if you didn’t use openfire, why and what did you use.

Thanks for any information.

Nathanael