With the whole world seemingly mad for messaging, IBM Corp is set to drive its market-leading but very high-end MQSeries asynchronous message queuing technology down into intranets and small networks, hears this week’s Unigram.X. And if it is able to tread over the ground that Microsoft Corp will be trying to populate with its Windows NT-based Falcon messaging technology at the same time, then presumably it won’t lose any sleep. IBM has created a low-cost, shrink-wrap version of MQSeries called MQWare which is likely to cost from $100 per user. It says MQWare, which uses a cut-down MQSeries core, will bring reliability to even small-scale networked applications. In addition, Big Blue has co- opted Intel Corp and other unidentified vendors to help create some application programming interfaces for what it is calling BQM, for business quality messaging, to further its aims. It’s also establishing an independent software vendor laboratory, and getting a library of applications together. The interfaces are expected to be pulled together through a BQM interest group which will meet at the Electronic Messaging Association conference on April 7, in Philadelphia. Third party MQSeries partners are already lining-up to get a piece of the MQWare action, describing the price point as extremely attractive. It’s not yet clear if this is a pure marketing play or if there is actually new technology associated with the MQWare effort. BQM companies will have a booth at the EMA show where they will be showing messaging technologies which use the application programming interfaces. MQWare will be positioned as a reference implementation.
