MSMQ is quite similar to MQWare in terms of its application programming interface (API) and functionality. MSMQ's biggest limitation is that it's limited to Windows NT and Windows95. However, it will be bundled with NT Server 4.0 (like Microsoft Transaction Server), making it essentially free. Because MSMQ will be built into NT, IBM must eventually offer multiplatform support for MQWare to remain competitive.

A Standard BQM A PI? Although a common API would unquestionably accelerate the adoption of BQM among ISVs, IBM and Microsoft are equally unlikely to offer one. However, software vendors Candle and Level 8 Systems both will offer some form of common API.

Candle's Roma will offer an API that directly drives both MSMQ and MQWare queue managers. Level 8's Falcon MQ (yes, Microsoft allowed Level 8 to use the name) provides both a port of the MSMQ API to Unix platforms and a gateway between MQWare and MSMQ.

Putting BQM to Work BQM will drive convergence of e-mail messaging (for Exchange, Notes Mail and SMTP, for example) and transactional messaging. Although these two worlds of messaging have existed in isolation from one another, they are becoming increasingly similar. E-mail messaging systems are evolving from a user-to-user communication model to an applicat ion-to-user and a user-to-application communication model--complementing BQM's application-to-application model.

For example, HP's internal e-mail bac kbone handles 1.5 million messages per day, 30 percent of which are generated by applications for delivery to people. An initial step toward convergence is IBM's Messaging API (MAPI) interface to MQWare. This allows MAPI-enabled applications to exchange messages over MQWare's reliable messaging transport. MSMQ will offer a MAPI interface as well.

BQM also will provide reliable infrastructure for directory services such as the emerging LDAP standard. Messaging/groupware-centric vendors, such as Mesa Group, Red Box and Isocor have announced products that use MQWare to exchange messaging groupware information among different systems.

By the year 2000, the corporate messaging backbone, based on business-quality messaging, will carry all these types of traffic moving at different priority levels.

Consolidating MOM's Market With its emphasis on cheap, ubiquitous, reliable and common messaging, business-quality messaging will drive consolidation of the MOM market. MQWare and MSMQ will force the smaller MOM players out of the market or into new niches.

For example, software vendor PeerLogic should focus on the naming/directory services market, given its expertise with dynamic, distributed naming services. And Tibco is targeting the publish/subscribe middleware market, given its expertise in IP Multicast and subject-based addressing. Other players in the MOM space (including Momentum and Talarian) will be prime takeover targets once MSMQ and MQWare have picked up steam by the second half of 1998. BEA Systems' BEA Message Queue (formerly Digital Equipment's DEC MessageQ) may have enough momentum to emerge as a third BQM contender.

Like FedEx in 1973, BQM signals the beginning of a new kind of message delivery infrastructure: reliable, inexpensive, ubiquitous, simple and better than overnight. Users should expect business-quality messaging to become as centr al to their application infrastructures as ODBC, TCP/IP, MAPI and, yes, FedEx, by the year 2000. Watch out FedEx, your new competition may be softw are and the Internet.

Nick Gall is a program director with the META Group's Open Computing & Server Strategies service. He can be reached at nick.gall@metagroup.com.