Technical detail
In December 1993, the Hursley Development Laboratories released a product called Message Queue Manager for MVS/ESA which joined a small family of existing products all of which were part of the new IBM MQSeries family.
Today MQSeries is known as WebSphere MQ - or more familiarly as "MQ" and is the industry-leading provider of message-oriented middleware. It is a key component in IBM's SOA strategy providing the universal messaging backbone across almost 80 different platform configurations, a wide range of programming languages and interfaces and is used by more than 10,000 customers across numerous industries. In 2004 it became the first Software-only product to win the prestigious MacRobert Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The WebSphere MQ story is a wonderful example of collaboration between IBM Research, Development and Industry specialists as well as our customers to shape a product and a technology to achieve major success in the marketplace and this article will trace its beginnings and its evolution into not only a world-class cross-platform product but one which also exploits individual platform features to customer benefit.
Join the party!
We will be celebrating the 15th birthday of WebSphere MQ through the year. The festivities started at the IMPACT 2008 conference in Las Vegas, so get the highlights and register for the upcoming events:
WebSphere MQ in action
Learn more about MQ on MQ TV www.ibm.com/webspheremq/tv
