  Commercial vs Local Middleware? 
 The Question is:
 
We are using queues in global sections and blocking ASTs for signalling for
 interprocess communication between processes on the same Alpha.
What are the options or the products, if any, for establishing support for
 similar interprocess communication between processes on different Alpha's or
 Alpha and other platforms?
Thank you very much.
 
 The Answer is:
 
  You have followed a course of software development that is surprisingly
  common, developing and debugging and supporting your own inter-process
  communications mechanisms.  You now have the original choice you made
  presented to you again, either to extend your existing communications
  APIs further by using DECnet, IP, Intra Cluster Communications Services
  (ICC), COM, RPC, or other means, or you can write your own customized
  networking software and base your communications on it, or you can
  acquire and utilize a supported middleware environment that handles
  these communications for you.  The best choice depends on the costs
  of development and support in your environment, the costs of the
  middleware, and the particular details of the application
  communications requirements.
 
