IBM WebSphere MQ

IBM MQ is a family of network software products that IBM launched for the first time as an IBM product in December 1993. It was originally called MQSeries, and was renamed WebSphere MQ in 2002 to join the suite of WebSphere products. In April 2014, it was renamed IBM MQ.

IBM MQ, (often referred to as "MQ"), is IBM's Messaging solution for Enterprise and IBM's Message Oriented Middleware offering. It allows independent and potentially non-concurrent applications on a distributed system to securely communicate with each other. MQ is available on a large number of platforms (both IBM and non-IBM), including z/OS (mainframe), OS/400 (IBM System i or AS/400), Transaction Processing Facility, UNIX (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris), HP NonStop, OpenVMS, Linux, OS 2200, and Microsoft Windows.

IBM MQ was the most popular system for messaging across multiple platforms in 2000, including Windows, Linux, OS/2, IBM mainframe and midrange, and Unix.

The core components of MQ are:

Programs integrated with IBM MQ use a consistent application program interface (API) across all platforms.

IBM MQ is a key component in IBM's service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy, providing the universal messaging backbone across 80 different platforms. The growing importance of SOA and the growth of Web Services and other connectivity mechanisms are clearly important developments. Because of the loosely coupled nature of the message queuing model, a large number of existing MQ customers feel that they are already adopting SOA principles. The M.Q Service definition support pack MA93 allows MQ applications to be catalogued as software assets that can be reused and composed as Web Services.

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