The methods and apparatus of the present invention operate in publish-subscribe messaging systems including at least publishing clients, subscribing clients and a plurality of broker machines. The broker machines form an overlay network responsible for receiving input messages from publishing clients, transforming information contained in the input messages according to pre-determined transformation specifications, and transmitting output messages containing the transformed information to the subscribing clients. The pre-determined transformation specifications are reduced to information transforms implemented as software modules that are distributed among the broker machines. The present invention provides methods and apparatus for placing transforms among the broker machines comprising the overlay network in such a way that the latency and throughput of messaging activities executed by the broker machines of the overlay network is improved.