Prospective clients frequently ask a version of the same question: "If I can buy RabbitMQ commercial licensing from Broadcom directly, why would I go through AceMQ?" It's a fair question, and the answer is specific enough to be worth explaining clearly.
This post covers what AceMQ's Broadcom partnership actually means, how the licensing relationship works, when going through AceMQ is a better path than Broadcom direct, and how resellers and systems integrators can work with us.
Who is AceMQ in the Broadcom ecosystem?
AceMQ is the only global Managed Service Provider (MSP) exclusively focused on RabbitMQ. In the Broadcom Tanzu ecosystem, that distinction matters:
- We're not a reseller who adds RabbitMQ to a broader catalog. RabbitMQ is the core of what we do.
- We were named Broadcom's 2025 Tanzu Partner of the Year.
- Our partnership pre-dates the Broadcom acquisition — we've worked with the RabbitMQ project since it was under Pivotal, then VMware.
The MSP designation means AceMQ has a unique licensing structure with Broadcom that allows us to distribute commercial RabbitMQ licenses directly, at our own minimums, independently of Broadcom's direct go-to-market model.
How is AceMQ licensing different from buying from Broadcom directly?
The practical difference comes down to minimum purchase thresholds and escalation quality.
On minimums: Broadcom goes to market with a 72-core minimum for commercial RabbitMQ licensing. If your deployment runs 12 cores, Broadcom will still quote you for 72 — because they don't have a lower tier.
AceMQ, through the MSP arrangement, can license starting significantly below that threshold. This is why roughly 90% of our licensing customers are sub-72-core deployments.
"Because we are the only MSP globally, we have a unique relationship with Broadcom. The whole guise of this partnership was to help smaller customers get licensed at a reasonable commercial price. About 90% of our customers are sub-72-core customers and most are around the 20-core mark and below. The $72,000 Broadcom minimum just wasn't attainable."
— Tyler Eastridge, Press Ganey engagement, May 2026
On escalation: AceMQ has a direct Slack channel with Broadcom's core RabbitMQ development team. When a customer identifies a defect or a critical CVE, we don't route through Broadcom's general support queue — we escalate directly to the engineers who build and maintain the product. We've had cases where a customer-identified CVE was patched within three business days through this channel.
What does the customer relationship look like when licensing through AceMQ?
Your contract is with AceMQ, not Broadcom. That's a deliberate feature of the arrangement, not a workaround.
- You sign an agreement with AceMQ and an End User License Agreement (EULA) that covers your use of the commercial RabbitMQ builds
- You're onboarded into AceMQ's licensing portal (via JFrog) where you access all commercial downloads self-service
- You're onboarded into AceMQ's support portal (Jira-based) for unlimited users to raise tickets
- Your escalation path is AceMQ first, with direct Broadcom core team access when needed
"Your contract would be with AceMQ directly, not with Broadcom. For most people that's a good thing — depending on if you've dealt with Broadcom in the past."
— Tyler Eastridge, CSC engagement, February 2026
What about resellers and systems integrators?
AceMQ works with resellers and systems integrators in a subcontractor/supplier model. If your organization is:
- A systems integrator delivering a managed solution to an end customer that includes RabbitMQ
- A public-sector preferred supplier who needs to include RabbitMQ licensing and support as part of a larger contract
- A technology partner who wants to add RabbitMQ expertise to your service offering without building that practice internally
AceMQ can supply the commercial license, patches, and L3 technical escalation while you own the customer relationship and first-line support. Multi-year, price-locked agreements are available for tender purposes, including the pricing schedule language that public-sector procurement processes require.
Is there anything AceMQ can't offer that Broadcom direct can?
Yes — one thing worth being transparent about. AceMQ's commercial licensing is currently available to organizations with a base in the Americas (North and South America). EMEA and APAC licensing is outside our current scope due to the terms of the MSP partnership.
For EMEA and APAC organizations: if your entity has an Americas-based office or contracting entity, licensing can be structured through that entity. This is a path we've used with customers in the UK, Australia, and continental Europe who have North American operations.
Why specialize only in RabbitMQ?
This question comes up regularly when clients compare us to generalist consulting firms. The honest answer is that the depth required to provide genuinely expert RabbitMQ support — knowing the internals of the Raft implementation, having hands-on experience with federation link reset bugs, understanding how Erlang's scheduler affects RabbitMQ performance under specific load patterns — isn't something you accumulate incidentally.
AceMQ's engineers work with RabbitMQ every day across hundreds of client deployments. The breadth of real-world scenarios we've encountered — across industries, versions, deployment patterns, and edge cases — is the actual value. A generalist consultancy with a RabbitMQ capability can staff a team with Rabbit experience; they can't replicate the pattern recognition that comes from this level of specialization.
Have questions about licensing structure, the Broadcom partnership, or whether AceMQ is the right fit for your organization? Contact our team for a direct conversation.