The rise of hardware in messaging systems?

Messaging is the sort of technology that's easy to take for granted. These days we sort of assume that all applications are in touch with one another. We get sort of indignant when we realize that lots of applications and data are still islands unto themselves. But the ability of all programs across an enterprise to communicate and share is on the rise, especially on Wall Street, where messaging is a competitive necessity. 

Solace Systems aims to make a big splash with its just launched hardware solution, which it touts as "the first time that all of the messaging needs of distributed applications can be met in a single product, with a single API and one management framework." It represents another nod toward the use of hardware as a preferred method of performance enhancement. 

"Firms are increasingly realizing that a hardware approach to messaging makes sense for many reasons," Larry Neumann, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Alliances, says. "Software has hit its performance limits, Data rates are increasing faster than software is improving performance. Segregating middleware installations to address throughput concerns is costly and complicated. A single hardware platform that unifies all kinds of messaging traffic and easily grows as traffic volumes grow, just like a network router, makes capacity planning much simpler for all firms." 

Gartner estimates the low-latency messaging market segment is worth about $100 million per year--approximately 13 percent of the overall message-oriented middleware (MOM) market. This segment seems to be growing faster than the general messaging market; it would also appear to have higher margins. 

Tibco remains the largest vendor in the market with its hardware accelerated Rendezvous messaging product, but its market share has been slipping. One twist in all this is that Tibco and Solace are partners on one of Tibco's key Rendezvous solutions. Both now appear to be firm champions of the use of hardware to satisfy the most robust messaging needs. Of course there are plenty of competitors at the hardware and software level. 

IBM, 29 West, Intel, Kongsberg, Object Computing, PrismTech, RTI, Wombat and others all have designs on the market. In general, you may have to get familiar with the basic economics of messaging as it affects your firm. It's a becoming more important in many units, notably capital markets. It may also make sense to start talking about a unified messaging system; most firms have several systems supporting specific uses. - Jim