Microsoft Joins AMQP working group

 Decision to join AMQP Working Group based on commitment to
     openness,interoperability and providing customer choice.

REDMOND, Wash., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft
Corp. today announced that it is joining the Advanced Message
Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Working Group, an organization
focused on the development of the AMQP specification. Microsoft
is joining the AMQP Working Group at the request of its members,
including several of Microsoft's customers in the financial services
industry, in order to support the development of an open industry
standard for ubiquitous messaging.

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AMQP is a specification for platform-neutral, open standards-based
business messaging. The primary goal of AMQP is to enable the
communications necessary for business processes. AMQP Working
Group members are collaborating on specifications for messaging
infrastructure that provide businesses with a simple and more
powerful way of connecting messaging-dependent applications both
within and between firms. By joining the AMQP Working Group,
Microsoft is seeking to contribute toward the development of such
solutions and to enable greater customer choice in the marketplace.

"Customers are seeking scalable solutions with lower costs that will
allow messaging within the enterprise and outside the corporate
infrastructure," said Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy
at Microsoft. "By joining the AMQP Working Group, Microsoft is
aiming to contribute to the development of the specification in ways
that will best promote interoperability for existing market
implementations and provide customers with increased choice."

Message-based transports with security and transactional integrity
are a vital infrastructure component throughout institutions. As
Microsoft continues to provide vertical industry solutions, AMQP will
provide an alternative to current messaging options. The AMQP
specification and related implementations may provide greater
interoperability for a number of vertical scenarios in addition to
financial services, insurance and healthcare, among others.

AMQP Working Group members embraced the news of Microsoft's
decision to join.

"The AMQP Working Group is doing great work to facilitate open
and interoperable standards for messaging infrastructure across
platforms," said Adrian Kunzle, head of Engineering and
Architecture at J.P. Morgan."We welcome Microsoft's commitment
as another step toward AMQP becoming the preferred connectivity
for business messaging on the Internet."

"Cisco has long been a proponent of open industry standards that
benefit our customers," said Pranta Das, technical leader for Cisco
Systems Inc. and member of the AMQP Working Group. "We are
pleased to welcome Microsoft to the AMQP Working Group as we
continue to develop open specifications for messaging."

Paul Fremantle, chief technology officer of WSO2 Inc., another
working group participant, noted: "We welcome Microsoft's
commitment to openness and the AMQP messaging specification.
Their participation will be valuable to our efforts to support the
development of interoperability solutions across heterogeneous
IT environments."

Members of the AMQP Working Group are Cisco, Credit Suisse,
Deutsche Boerse Systems, Envoy Technologies Inc., The Goldman
Sachs Group Inc.,iMatix Corporation, IONA Technologies,
J.P. Morgan, Novell, Rabbit Technologies Ltd., Red Hat Inc.,
TWIST Process Innovations Ltd., WSO2 and
29West Inc.

More information about Microsoft's interoperability efforts can be
found at http://www.microsoft.com/interop.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader
in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses
realize their full potential.