Microsoft embraces AMQP open middleware standard

The surprising word out of Redmond is that Microsoft is about to make a small but remarkable overture toward the open standards world. They are about to embrace a very interesting though relatively little known enterprise messaging standard known as the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, or AMQP for short.

What is AMQP, and why should anybody care whether Microsoft adopts it? Suffice it is to say that AMQP is to high-value, reliable business messaging what SMTP is to e-mail. The proprietary message oriented middleware (MOM) products on the market today like IBM’s MQ or Tibco’s Rendezvous fulfill the same function as AMQP. But they operate exclusively in single-vendor fashion and utterly fail to interoperate with each other.

More articles by Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research