Qpid is an Apache Incubator project originally created by Red Hat as an implementation of the Advance Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), which is designed to enable interoperability for messaging middleware.

AMQP was originally the brainchild of JPMorgan Chase, which created the working group for its development in June 2006 with Red Hat as well as Credit Suisse, Iona, and Cisco Systems.

According to Stevens, the project is designed to solve the issues related to proprietary message protocol system not integrating and will enable users to build messaging-based applications without getting tied into proprietary protocols.

As well as working on the AMQP specification, Red Hat has been working on an implementation of that specification, first on its own, and then through the Qpid project, which was created at Apache in the interests of proving that it is vendor-neutral, according to Stevens.

He said a decision had not been made about how Red Hat would package the Qpid technology, although he did say it would involve bundling clustering, high-availability, and queue-broker functionality for added value.

While messaging would normally be considered the remit of Red Hat’s JBoss Java middleware division, Stevens said the Qpid implementation would be targeted at customers wanting a language-agnostic infrastructure for messaging.

He said the Qpid implementation is one of three main initiatives Red Hat has been working on following the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, alongside virtualization management and Windows interoperability. One the virtualization management side, the company is looking to build momentum behind the Libvirt project it set up last year to create a virtualization API layer that can be exploited by application and management vendors.

We are the only [vendor] that’s developed a common management platform on top of disparate virtualization engines, said Stevens, noting that the large number of virtualization options potentially increases the complexity for software vendors and administrators.

As well as specialists such as VMware, SWsoft, and XenSource, virtualization technologies are also offered by Sun, IBM, and Microsoft, while new technologies such as KVM, User Mode Linux, and Iguest are maturing rapidly.

KVM is getting a lot of attention inside Linux, said Stevens, giving one example. KVM’s one of those things where people are well aware of that is already in the Linux kernel, that has no management model.

Libvirt is designed to provide an architectural layer between the various virtualization technologies and the applications, and is being adopted not only by Red Hat, but also Novell, Debian, and OpenSolaris, according to Stevens.

He also said there is growing interest from independent software vendors in reducing the amount of work required to support multiple virtualization technologies. We’re seeing them move from developing to a hypervisor to developing to this because it gives them a wider base, he said.

As previously reported, Red Hat has also been working on interoperability with Microsoft’s Windows, particularly in the area of running Windows as a virtualized operating system on Linux. Since the GA release [of RHEL 5] we’ve done a lot of integration work with the expectation that before the end of the year we’ll deliver Windows interoperability on top of RHEL, he said.