To encourage the development and adoption of asynchronous messaging technologies, IBM Corp, Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and other partners in the BQM Business Quality Messaging group have drawn up a set of guidelines they hope users will specify in procurement processes and ISVs will incorporate into application designs (CI No 3,176). The companies insist they are not promoting technical specifications but a set of general business guidelines for implementing application-to-application and other messaging services that will help insure that different messaging products on multiple operating systems can work together. Guaranteed delivery, once and once only delivery and how messaging over TCP/IP is handled are amongst the guidelines that will be made public next month. While IBM’s cut-down MQSeries product – MQWare – will go head to head with Microsoft’s Falcon Message Queue Server in the market, the two are keen to establish their messaging formats as de facto industry standards while competing on implementation. They’d like to see the guidelines adopted by all kinds of vendors for who they think messaging will be appropriate, from fax and router vendors to human resource software houses.
