JPMorgan open-sourced AMQP so no middleware vendor could hold its messaging hostage

By 2003 a bank ran dozens of messaging systems that could not talk to one another, and every middleware vendor's broker spoke a private language. John O'Hara at JPMorgan Chase started AMQP so that messaging software from different vendors could interoperate at the wire level.

The initial design was done between 2004 and 2006 with iMatix, then opened to a working group including Cisco, Red Hat and others. AMQP defines the message format and protocol behavior itself, unlike API-level standards that leave brokers unable to exchange messages.

Open implementations followed — Apache Qpid and RabbitMQ — and in 2011 the work moved to OASIS, which approved AMQP 1.0 as a standard in October 2012; ISO/IEC followed in April 2014. A standard started by a bank became the open backbone of enterprise messaging.

A wire protocol no vendor owns, so brokers interoperate

A wire-level spec made different vendors' brokers interoperate

A bank driving the standard removed vendor lock-in

Open implementations like RabbitMQ spread it through the industry

OASIS and ISO standing made it safe for enterprises to adopt

If you are locked into a vendor by a protocol, write the protocol yourself and give it away — the standard becomes the competitive market.

AMQP 1.0 is implemented by RabbitMQ, Apache Qpid, Microsoft's Azure Service Bus and other major brokers, and remains a core enterprise messaging standard. MQTT later won the lightweight IoT niche, but AMQP kept the enterprise middleware market.