"just running an IRC server" is... a lot. Or can be. Who is running it? Does it scale well? How is login synced with corporate logins? What about mobile devices?
It's not "better" than email, it's different. Real time. It has a million and one service integrations, which IRC doesn't.
Point is, it's really not all that crazy to just pay a third party to manage all this stuff for you. You might imagine the alternative is a perfect IRC server with 100% uptime, but I doubt that would be the reality. If you're saying a service like this is too important to be run by a third party then you're going to have to invest a lot internally to come up with an alternative that's more reliable.
It's not "better" than email, it's different. Real time. It has a million and one service integrations, which IRC doesn't.
Point is, it's really not all that crazy to just pay a third party to manage all this stuff for you. You might imagine the alternative is a perfect IRC server with 100% uptime, but I doubt that would be the reality. If you're saying a service like this is too important to be run by a third party then you're going to have to invest a lot internally to come up with an alternative that's more reliable.