Attendees at last week’s Message Oriented Middleware Association were apparently most disgruntled when IBM Corp’s business manager for the MQ Series, Colin Osborne used the occasion to tell the assembled gathering IBM would not tolerate a certain advertisement from rival Momentum Software Inc. Osborne apparently said IBM had its lawyers crawling all over the ad, which features a large dog trying to jump through a hoop and not succeeding, and a smaller dog jumping through with ease, accompanied by the words Bigger is not always better. The advert compares Momentum’s XIPC product to IBM’s MQ series products. Osborne said IBM would be pursuing action against the Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey company. However, Osborne dismisses the claims and said he was just having a friendly word in the ear of Momentum. Osborne said IBM knows Momentum well and told Computergram, I laughed at their ad. However, MOMA members were said to be furious that Osborne used the meeting to express his feelings and concluded that all Osborne had succeeded in doing was drawing attention to something that would have probably otherwise gone undetected.
