After a surprisingly quiet launch last year, IBM Corp is stepping up the marketing push behind its MQSeries commercial messaging resource manager, a product it has developed in conjunction with New York-based Apertus Technologies Inc, which recently acquired the former Nynex Corp company Systems Strategies Inc. The new systems are HP-UX, Santa Cruz Unix, SunOS, UnixWare and AT&T Global, and should be ready to ship in July. MQSeries, described by IBM as the thinking man’s TCP/IP, is one of a new breed of middleware products known as transactional messaging systems: based around a messaging and queuing function, these look after inter-application communications, ensuring that messages are placed in a queue and sent on with assured delivery to the target system. The queuing approach leads to a number of advantages, says IBM, shielding the applications programs from network complexity using a single applications programming interface, enabling a standard message format to be used for both on-line and batch messages and enabling the system to trickle feed data out onto a distributed system. Version 1 of the product is based on Systems Strategies’ Easybridge Transact product line, but using IBM’s formats and protocols. That version is now out under MVS/ESA, OS/400, VSE/ESA, DEC VMS, MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows, AIX/6000, Guardian and Stratus Computer Inc FTX environments. The new Unix versions will also be Version 1. Version 2, which has been developed by IBM’s Hursley Laboratories near Winchester in the UK, is already on beta test for MVS/ESA and for OS/400.
Save huge sums
IBM says the product has the potential to save huge sums of money currently spent keeping middleware layers up to date and running, and has had interest from companies in a wide range of market sectors. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has already said it will standardise on the product by the end of 1994. Independent software vendors, including Candle Corp and Early Cloud & Co are also building software to work with MQSeries. Competitors include Pipes from Peerlogic Inc, Covia, based on Galileo’s Apollo airline reservation system, Digital Equipment Corp’s Message Queuing systems and Novell Inc’s Tuxedo/Q. There is also some overlap with IBM’s own CICS system, although IBM classes CICS as an application server and manager of resource managers. But IBM says it is working with its competitors in the Message-Oriented Middleware Association (members Apertus, Covia, DEC, IBM, Momentum and Peerlogic) on standards and with Novell submitted proposals for X/Open Co’s planned Common Messaging Interface standard.
