Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM B2B Integrator vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM B2B Integrator
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (5th)
Mule ESB
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Integration solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM B2B Integrator is designed for Business-to-Business Middleware and holds a mindshare of 7.3%, up 7.4% compared to last year.
Mule ESB, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), holds 25.4% mindshare, up 24.6% since last year.
Business-to-Business Middleware
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Nagasaikiran Kesana - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast, easy to use, and useful for integration purposes
In the initial stage, I used only business processes to build code. As I used the product more and more, I learned that we could monitor, perform support activities, and install and upgrade servers. We can learn how to manage the clients to get business. We must get into a call with customers and get their requirements. We must pass all the test cases, both positive and negative. We need to manage our team as well. We use various protocols for data security, like SFTP, FTP, and HTTP. We follow the security levels based on the customer’s requirements. We encrypt the file, and the customers decrypt it using the public and private keys we provide. Customers who need high security opt for HTTP certificates and AS2. I have also worked on AWS and Azure to pass files to the buckets. I also work on single sign-on authentication. External users can access our dashboard with a few details. For example, if our customers need to see whether a file is transferred from our end, they can easily log in to the details and monitor it. They can also perform health checks. I will recommend the tool to others. People who want to use the tool must not do anything blindly. They must analyze, learn the concept, and understand the purpose of the tool. There are other products in the market, like MuleSoft, that have the same functionality. We must understand why we are using IBM B2B Integrator. We must gather some information. I take some introductory classes for the new joiners in my organization. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I find the codeless communications, SFTP or FTP, valuable."
"This solution allows for easy integration with heterogeneous applications."
"The technical support on offer through the portal is very helpful and responsive."
"Out-of-box process orchestration yields quick implementations."
"Very flexible product; it allows implementing different flows on the same infrastructure."
"B2B Integrator is multi-platform, so it can be integrated with Windows, Unix, or whatever, and it can work with almost all programming languages. It can also transfer a lot of data in a short time. For instance, a system I recently implemented exchanges about 20 million files a day."
"The best feature is that many companies use the solution so there is a lot of peer support."
"It can scale horizontally as well as vertically as a cluster."
"The most valuable feature is that it's programmer-friendly, so it's very easy to develop APIs."
"We can use Java expressions anywhere in the flow."
"It was pretty fast to develop APIs on this platform, which is something I liked about it. So, the time to value was pretty good."
"The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
"It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"I'm not using ESB directly. It is the integration layer, so it's running under the hood. However, the conversion and transformation performance is excellent. Anypoint Enterprise Security is also solid."
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
 

Cons

"The one thing that is lacking is easy visibility. It's hard to provide business users with a view into the statuses of their transactions."
"End-to-end visibility and monitoring application required. The control center is available and covers this area, but it still fails in many monitoring scenarios."
"The mapping, visibility, deployment, and the dashboard could be improved and updated. The communication logs are very poor. They are not easily understood, and we need to navigate to many places for many reasons. You can't just pull the information; it's very tough."
"The tool requires you to write a lot of code in Java and XSLT, which makes development tough."
"There should be a single place to do things, rather than making it complicated, not moving away and truncating the old features but instead coming up with the new and still keeping the old stuff confuses people sometimes."
"The dashboard is not integrated and should be bundled by the product vendor."
"When working on an elaborate rule, I end up creating it in notepad and then pasting it into the Extended Rule window, which is not convenient."
"Patching or upgrading the product is a bit of a nightmare. It would be nice if they removed the installation manager port. We find it complicates upgrading and patching a great deal."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"In order to meet the new trend of active metadata management, we need intelligent APIs that can retrieve new data designs and trigger actions over new findings without human intervention."
"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."
"We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."
"Community editions need more attention."
"Limitation on external subscribers to listen to the messages on the bus."
"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of IBM B2B Integrator is too high. However, IBM may be willing to give a discount if there are negotiations. If they see that there is a good opportunity for them they can provide a discount."
"Licensing depends upon the package you opt for within the solution. The solution is a bit costly compared to the other integration tools in the market."
"The product costs more than 40K."
"We pay an annual fee based on the number of VPUs. It's fairly reasonable. We're in the middle of analyzing other products, and they're all pretty much in the same range."
"The solution is priced at $20,000 to $30,000 per year with no extra costs."
"The pricing is based on how many cores are used and the type of cores."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"The pricing must be improved."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"The solution is expensive."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business-to-Business Middleware solutions are best for your needs.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM B2B Integrator?
IBM B2B Integrator is a great tool, robust, reliable, low-maintenance, and ideal solution.
What needs improvement with IBM B2B Integrator?
It supports many of our use cases but falls short in some areas as technology evolves, especially with data transfer between edge locations and the cloud or on-premise systems. The solution doesn’t...
Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, Sterling Gentran Integration Suite
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bonnie Plants, Toshiba Europe, Florida Hospital
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Salesforce, Informatica and others in Business-to-Business Middleware. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.