The working group has developed Version 0.8 of the AMQP specification. Within 18 months, it hopes to generate a full 1.0 version, which it plans to publish under an open and royalty-free license. It will also present the specification at that time to a standards body.

IBM's WebSphere MQ held 81.3 percent of the messaging market in 2005, according to WinterGreen Research Inc. Other popular messaging formats include WebLogic Server JMS from BEA Systems Inc. and open-source technologies such as OpenJMS or MantaRay from Coridan Inc.

Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at Zapthink Inc., said that AMQP could prove a threat to existing messaging specifications if it can deliver on its promise of providing a cheaper, less complex and more heterogeneous alternative.

"From a mind-share perspective with regards to messaging and interop standards, for sure, I think AMQP will be seen as a potential alternative," Schmelzer said. "It isn't homogeneous for sure, and it doesn't compete on a product or technical level with JMS. But at some level, companies will be considering the platform-agnostic approach to AMQP as a contrast to other messaging formats."

But Kate Norsworthy, vice president of software standards at IBM, said customers are already well served interoperability-wise via WebSphere MQ.