A bouncer? Usually pretty straightforward to install, and quite mature in features.
I've got no issues running my own ZNC bouncer, but when you're choosing a product that an entire organization will use (including people who have no idea what "ZNC" means other than 3 letters), IRC is lacking a lot of features that get mentioned in every HN chat solution thread.
Yes we had a IRC server for a while and no one was using it, so we always had to use emails for important communications.
You just got to try it to feel it. Some features on paper don't match with the experience of a product.
If you're worried about using it for large community projects (e.g OSS), then maybe IRC is still the better child for that particular audience, although there's already a couple of communities who have successfully moved to Slack entirely (Gopher comes to mind).
