Commoditize Messaging...Again?

And how exactly is that space any different from instant messaging? Wouldn't it be nice to command a fully integrated company from your IM client?

Look at the list of companies signed up to AMQP, do you really think they missed something like Jabber?

Well to be honest they probably did because it's about as relevant as Morse code in this situation. We (I was at JPMC at the time) use Jabber, it's well respected and solves many problems well but the first time we heard anyone mention it relating to AMQP was when some nut asked about it on slashdot. He/she was of course shot down at the time but it did make us laugh.

Jabber would work nicely over AMQP but they play in totally different spaces, they are not the same thing. You need to learn a little more about networking, messaging and integration and their practical uses in real enterprise situations.

AMQP was started by the financial services industry but it is by no means limited to that vertical. Take it from me (and I know) that many of the world's largest industries are starting to seriously look into AMQP, they include petrochemical, health care, insurance and telco to name just a few.

AMQP is designed to commoditise the messaging industry not take out Tibco RV and MQ series. MSMQ by the way is not really used in enterprise because Microsoft never understood the concept of "Enterprise". One of the effects of market commoditisation may be that these market dinosaurs lose a large chunk of their core business, this has already been achieved and is therefore a success already.

MQ is used to transfer messages reliably, as an example SWIFT use MQ to deliver the world's banking settlements, they guarantee the value of the message, i.e. if you transfer $1 billion they will pay you back the interest if they lose it (well over $120k per day). If they were to lose the message totally they will pay back the full $1 billion, needless to say they have never lost a message, a job for Jabber? I think not.

On the other end of the scale we have build automated arbitrage trading systems dealing around the 500 nano-second difference between two market data feeds, these operate on trades arriving at over 20,000 a second. The 500 nano seconds advantage gets the deal, AMQ implimentations can deliver this advantage over RV, speed gives one bank using AMQP an advantage over banks that don't use it. Talerian's Smart-sockets did the same a few years ago, Tibco bought them, this time Tibco can't buy AMQP.

-John-

AMQP and XMPP; not competitors, I think they are, may Im wrong. MQ is used to transfer messages reliably, as an example SWIFT use MQ to deliver the world's banking settlements, they guarantee the value of the message, i.e. if you transfer $1 billion they will pay you back the interest if they lose it. VERY HUGE amount of money.

... everything looks like a nail.

There are many things that the Jabber community should be doing. Going after Tibco and the like is not one of these things.

> And how exactly is that space any different from instant messaging?

Reliable delivery is the most obvious difference. Note the use of "queuing" in the title.

> Wouldn't it be nice to command a fully integrated company from your IM client?

I'd prefer to use a web browser.

IM and enterprise transaction messaging go after different spaces.

IM is all about presence, connectivity, innovative media. Enterprise messaging is about transactions, stability, reliabilty, determinism and some unusual topology requirements.
They're not the same. You would hate if I wanted XA support in XMPP :-)

As the chap behind AMQP (not Mr Davies, but first to leak always gets the credit, good for him :-), I can tell you this protocol has been under development for a long time. I looked everywhere for something that did this before being driven to do AMQP. That includes looking at XMPP, which is a lovely protocol, we use it here. But XMPP doesn't really want to do what AMQP does -- they are different with different underlying drivers as "Fearless soul" points out.

Also, note that AMQP is driven by both *users* and vendors and it is a genuinely open specification which all are free to implement (the license just looks complex).

Free software implementations of AMQP will be appearing soon. Look out for it and let us know what you think.

FYI: The "Advanced" part of AMQP is the exchange/binding/queue model, which few others have done so cleanly (but there are some passing similarities to SMTP). Other than that, it is meant to look simple.

AMQP and XMPP address different audiences, I hope the XMPP community do not see us as treading on their turf; that's not where we're going at all.

Kind regards
John O'Hara
JPMorgan