Leading Organizations Join Forces to Develop New Messaging Protocol as the AMQP Working Group; Advanced Message Queuing Protocol Specification to Define Open, Platform-Agnostic, Interoperable Messaging Infrastructure.

LONDON -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Cisco Systems, Envoy Technologies, Inc., iMatix Corporation, IONA(R) Technologies, Red Hat, Inc., TWIST Process Innovations, and 29West, today announced the formation of the AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) Working Group and an effort by its members to create a new specification for defining and developing messaging infrastructure that is technology agnostic, standards-based, open and interoperable. The resulting specification will be an open standard and is intended to enable the development of highly stable, efficient, powerful and flexible messaging-dependent applications.

The development of the AMQP specification is being driven by real-world, end-user demand for messaging infrastructure that is capable of integrating across various platforms, languages and protocols. AMQP is designed to be an effective means to create interoperability and unification of the messaging function because it is not reliant on specific implementations geared to individual platforms. The AMQP specification is also designed to interoperate with many of the current messaging and Web services specifications, including JMS, SOAP, WS-Security, WS-Transactions, and many others, making AMQP an ideal messaging layer for use in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Further, AMQP is unique in that it provides an interoperable wire-level protocol, making it complementary to messaging application programming interfaces (APIs) such as JMS and useful in next-generation network infrastructure.

The AMQP is a binary level protocol that is divided into two layers and designed with a flexible, plug-in architecture. Both the functional layer and the transport layer can be easily evolved to enable AMQP to respond to changing technology requirements. The current AMQP specification is at version 0.8 in anticipation that input from others will drive the protocol to its full potential; the Working Group welcomes contributions from interested parties. The AMQP specification is expected to reach version 1.0 within 18 months, at which time the Working Group will submit it to a standards body. There are currently multiple implementations of AMQP version 0.8 in production that are fully interoperable. To view the AMQP Specification materials please visit one of these member pages:

http://www.envoytech.org/spec/amqp/

http://www.iona.com/opensource/amqp/

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/specifications/amqp/

http://www.twiststandards.org/tiki-index.php?page=AMQ 

http://www.imatix.com/amqp

John O'Hara, vice president and Distinguished Engineer at JPMorgan said, "We look forward to the emergence of a standards-driven market in enterprise middleware, enabled by AMQP. AMQP solves the 'missing middleware standard' problem. By deploying AMQP-based solutions we will realize operational efficiencies, enable scalable and reliable Service Oriented Architectures and have access to an open transport for other important business protocols such as FpML. JPMorgan is committed to AMQP in the same way we are committed to FpML and related market-enabling technologies."

"Cisco's participation in the AMQP represents our desire to help customers continue to drive interoperability and unification of the messaging function. This helps eliminate the industry's reliance on closed implementations geared toward individual vendor platforms," says Cliff Meltzer, senior vice president of Cisco network management technology group.

"Messaging is an essential component of SOA infrastructure, and customers need the ability to deploy truly open and interoperable messaging systems in order to eliminate vendor lock-in, reduce cost, and improve flexibility," explained Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA. "Our participation in the AMQP Working Group is consistent with IONA's focus on standards-based, performance-demanding, distributed computing technology."

"By standardizing key messaging semantics, we believe AMQP will be a key enabler in the development and implementation of truly intelligent application networks," said Harold Piskiel, CTO, Envoy Technologies. "Our involvement in the AMQP collaborative effort is part of Envoy's intelligent application monitoring and control initiatives."

"Standards are the basis for prosperity," says Pieter Hintjens, CEO of iMatix Corporation, "and the AMQP specification is the birth of a new standard for cheap and effective interoperability. By designing and publishing this new specification, the AMQP Working Group has taken a lead in closing the last great gap in the commodity IT landscape - a standard, cross-language, cross-platform, high-speed and asynchronous wire-level protocol for middleware."

"Red Hat is committed to offering customers freedom of choice and high value through open initiatives. We are excited about the AMQP specification because it is bringing together users and vendors in creating a market-driven, interoperable, and open messaging standard," said Brian Stevens, CTO, Red Hat. "In the same way that Red Hat has seen rapid innovation and leading initiatives created when systems become open, we believe that this AMQP collaboration will bring new business agility and scale to users."

"The efforts made in the development of an open messaging protocol, now launched under the name AMQP, are promising for all those who seek inter-organisational and intra-organisational automation. The efficient realization of treasury automation and straight-through commerce depends on connecting system applications that are based on a variety of technologies and middleware. An open messaging protocol enables applications to easily deliver their functionality in an integrated environment, and enables middleware to support such low-cost integration. We are pleased for TWIST to actively support the further development plus the application of the AMQP protocol by engaging multiple users that operate in the financial supply chain," said Tom Buschman, Chairman & CEO of TWIST.

About JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $1.3 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries. The firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers, small business and commercial banking, financial transaction processing, asset and wealth management, and private equity. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase serves millions of consumers in the United States and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its JPMorgan and Chase brands. Information about the firm is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

About Envoy Technologies

Envoy provides messaging and application connectivity solutions for key business initiatives that involve integration of business processes within and across enterprises. Every day our technology handles the connectivity needs of enterprise customers, powering the core business operations of hundreds of Global 2000 companies. Envoy is pioneering work on next generation rules-based event processing technology for SOA and intelligent application networks.

Envoy is headquartered in Iselin, NJ. For more information about Envoy Technologies, please visit our Web site at http://www.envoytech.com.

About IONA

For more than a decade, IONA(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA) has been a world leader in delivering high-performance integration solutions for Global 2000 IT environments. IONA pioneered standards-based integration with its CORBA-based Orbix(R) products. Artix(TM), IONA's extensible Enterprise Service Bus, enables existing enterprise systems to be integrated with an organization's common infrastructure components. IONA's sponsorship of the ObjectWeb Celtix open source ESB is a natural extension of the company's history of solving integration problems by leveraging open standards and distributed architectures.

IONA is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts and offices worldwide. For additional information about IONA, visit our Web site at http://www.iona.com.

About iMatix Corporation

Belgium-based iMatix Corporation develops open technology architectures and model-oriented programming (MOP) tools. Among its past products are the Xitami Web server, and the Libero code generator.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. The most trusted name in open source, CIOs and other senior-level IT executives have ranked Red Hat as the industry's most valued vendor for two consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with applications, management, and middleware solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). Red Hat is accelerating the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA) and enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low cost, secure open source platform. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com

About TWIST Process Innovations Ltd

The Transaction Workflow Innovation Standards Team (TWIST), led by an executive team drawn from across the industry, is a not-for-profit industry group of corporate treasurers, fund managers, banks, system suppliers, electronic trading platforms, market infrastructures and professional services firms. The primary aim of the TWIST organization is to connect the financial supply chain to the physical supply chain to release the enormous value locked up in disjointed paper-based processes. To achieve this, TWIST rationalizes financial industry standards by creating user-driven, non-proprietary and internally consistent XML-based standards for the financial supply chain. TWIST covers wholesale financial market transaction processing, order management, e-invoicing and payment processing, bank account opening and closing, billing of bank services, credit management, supply chain financing plus identity management and security. TWIST also participates in the management of the ISO 20022 standards for financial markets aiming to make this the umbrella for its comprehensive suite of standards.

About 29West

Founded in 2002 by a former Talarian executive, 29West team members have been at the forefront of high-speed, real-time data distribution and networking since the mid-1980s. They created the original architecture and led the implementation of the first Rich/Reuters TRIARCH digital trading floors. 29West engineers were also responsible for the first commercial implementations of Cisco's PGM reliable multicast protocol. From its first release in November 2004, 29West's Latency Busters Messaging has set a new standard in performance for financial market messaging. For more information, visit http://www.29west.com.

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