Managing persistent messages between a message producer and a remote message consumer using references pointing to messages

A method, system and computer program product is provided for managing persistent messages in a messaging system of a message producer and remote message consumer that share a common message queue, the method comprising a message producer writing (302) a message into a shared memory location in a distributed file system and writing (304) an associated message reference into the message queue, said associated message reference pointing to the shared memory location; and on receiving notification of the message reference in the message queue, a message consumer reading the message reference from the queue and accessing the message in the common file system (308).