title: When to use actors instead of messaging solutions such as WebSphere MQ or Tibco Rendezvous?
body: <p>I've already read the question and answers to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/4648280/1305344">What design decisions would favour Scala's Actors instead of JMS?</a>.</p>
  
  <p>Usually, we use messaging solutions which have existed for years already: either a JMS implementation such as WebSphere MQ or Apache ActiveMQ is used for Point-To-Point communication, or Tibco Rendevous for Multicast messaging.</p>
  
  <p>They are very stable, proven and offer high availability and performance. Nevertheless, configuration and setup seem much more complex than in Akka.</p>
  
  <p>When and why should I use Akka for some use cases where the aforementioned products - WebSphere MQ or ActiveMQ - have been used successfully so far? Why should I consider using Akka instead of WebSphere MQ or Tibco RV in my future project? </p>
  
  <p>And when should I avoid Akka? Does it offer the same high availability and performance as the other solutions? Or is it a bad idea to even compare Akka to the other messaging middlewares?</p>
  
  <p>Maybe there also is another messaging solution in the JVM environment which I should consider besides JMS (Point-to-Point), TibcoRV (Multicast) and Akka?</p>