Ooops, that should have read Open Standards Messaging Software, but we fell asleep before we got to the end! Why? Because it sounds soooo boring.

In a press release today, Microsoft has announced its decision to join the Advanced Message Queue Protocol (AMQP) Working Group. Oh, sorry we drifted off again. Yes, this must extremely boring.

But actually it’s very important.

The group is trying to develop an open industry standard for ubiquitous messaging. Currently there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different messaging standards around. Most integration projects require some kind of interface between systems that handle messaging. Millions of dollars are spent every year just re-building the interfaces between this system to that. It’s all wasted money. Money that should be spent on innovation and real value to the customer, but is instead spent on ‘plumbing’.

The key is interoperability. That’s the goal. Imagine having a set of providers in your toolset that allowed simple connection between each and every system you need to message between. [As an aside, on the orchestration side of the coin this is something that BizTalk has been attempting to provide for years now.]

Microsoft joins the likes of Cisco, Novell, Red Hat, and a bunch of financial institutions in this goal.

Sure, it sounds boring, but this is something to be applauded.