Microsoft has signed on to an effort to establish an open standard for messaging.

The company said that it would work with the likes of Cisco, Red Hat and Novell on the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP). The project looks to establish an open industry standard for future enterprise messaging platforms.

"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, " commented Sam Ramji, Microsoft's senior director of platform strategy.

The move is the latest in an ongoing campaign by Microsoft to recast itself as a proponent of interoperability and cooperation in the IT market. The company has long been maligned by the open standards and open source communities over its legal battles with Linux vendors.

The software giant has also been wrapped up in a long-standing feud between supporters of the ODF system, which rivals the Office OpenXML document format. Microsoft attempted to ease the conflict by including support for both formats in Office, however, the two sides remain in competition.