RabbitMQ, a subsidiary of VMware, stands as one of the world’s most widely-used message queueing and streaming solutions. Pivotal for modern applications that require reliable and flexible communication, the extensible message broker facilitates smooth transfer of messages between application services to ensure efficient delegation of tasks and to prevent performance bottlenecks.

Built on the robust Erlang OTP technology, RabbitMQ is known for its high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability, making it a preferred choice for handling large volumes of concurrent operations. As a result, millions have adopted the tool worldwide, with notable clients like AWS, Zendesk, Bloomberg, and JPMorgan Chase relying on it for secure and seamless message distribution across their systems. With operations in 93 countries, over 9,000 clusters, and a footprint that’s increasing by over 20 percent every year, RabbitMQ plays a critical role in today’s interconnected digital world.

As the middleware layer for extremely heavy workloads, RabbitMQ’s successful, seamless, and high-speed delivery of communications between its clients’ applications, components, and people requires successful, seamless, and high-speed delivery of its solution to those clients. However, by 2023, the team at RabbitMQ was faced with a familiar challenge in the world of software development: managing their own package publishing and distribution infrastructure. The tools at their disposal predated the streamlined efficiency of the API age and performed like the relics they were. Every time a package needed publishing or distributing, the team had to grapple with arcane systems, trying to make them fit into a modern workflow.

The responsibility of maintaining the system's availability also posed a challenge, which fell on the shoulders of a dedicated team. This meant that instead of focusing on innovation and pushing the boundaries of what RabbitMQ could offer, they were spending significant chunks of time keeping their internal systems up and running.

Supporting a myriad of Linux distributions added another layer of complexity. Each distribution had its own nuances, and ensuring compatibility across all of them was no small feat. The team needed a contemporary solution that would:

• simplify and elevate the process;
• seamlessly integrate with their workflow; and
• make package publishing for the numerous Linux distributions they supported manageable and effortless.

Introducing Cloudsmith’s fully-managed platform to its workflow has ended RabbitMQ’s days of wrestling with outdated tools and manual processes. With our modern API, they now enjoy fully automated packaging and publishing.

“I like Cloudsmith’s API, especially the publishing part,” says Michael Klishin, Senior Staff Software Engineer at RabbitMQ. “It just works. Compared to some of the alternatives out there and what we’ve used before, it’s very nice and just makes sense.”

Cloudsmith’s extensive format support and seamless integration with DevOps tools has allowed RabbitMQ to centralize and scale its artifact management without disrupting its engineers’ tooling or workflows. Today, Michael’s team manages the 20GB of new Debian and RPM artifacts and raw Windows binaries uploaded to Cloudsmith each month hands-free.

The number of distributions RabbitMQ supports, which previously posed a daunting challenge, are now a non-event. With Cloudsmith handling distribution across 600 points of presence, RabbitMQ is enabling over 210K client downloads/month, each with the same speed and streamlined efficiency as the last.

“It has been very smooth sailing,” explains Michael. “We occasionally check various monitoring metrics, and that’s it. Cloudsmith has built a great product that does exactly what we expect it to do.”

This newfound efficiency has freed up Michael’s team to redirect their focus to where it truly matters: improving their product and exploring new possibilities.

With the Cloudsmith platform and support team in its arsenal, RabbitMQ is not just working faster; it’s working smarter— ensuring that their innovations reach their audiences seamlessly, every single time.

“My favorite part of working with Cloudsmith is the interactions with their support, which we don't have to contact very often,” says Michael, “but whenever we do, it’s a very pleasant experience. In fact Cloudsmith’s team has reached out to us more than once, offering their help, their support, and asking what kind of service our team was looking for. That doesn't happen very often with other companies.”