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IBM Integration Bus vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM Integration Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 22.6%, up from 20.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashraf Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for complex integrations because it has tools and functionality to integrate with other systems
Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods. Cloud integration needs to be more facilitated with the DevOps environment. This IBM technology needs to adapt because in the recent world, in the real world, we see that everything is just a cloud pod. Whenever you need to scale anything, you just put some cloud and pod and improve it, make any server and deploy it. But in IBM Integration Bus, there is a problem because we can't do this as easily. In short, IBM needs to more emphasize or more integrate with the cloud environments as well, similar to DevOps. There are limitations in IBM Integration Bus when it comes to DevOps.
Mustofa Yonus - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Integration Bus has a complete set of tools that are implemented between rules when it comes to run time, but it's not easy to understand."
"It is one of the most stable products which I have seen in the market."
"The solution offers good performance and is stable."
"The most valuable features of the IBM Integration Bus are flexibility. It's also an alternative for integrating it with other projects, which we are not ready at this time to do, such as switching to tunnels. The tunnels would be used with other partners to make sure everything is secured."
"IBM Integration Bus is a very strong tool."
"I found all features valuable. There are a lot of connectors."
"Promotes the reuse of developed resources to more efficiently consume resources."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."
"It is easy to develop. It has a very wide range of features. The older versions are very stable, and there are no issues with the product."
"The technology is really easy to learn."
"It's very stable and reliable."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."
"The most attractive and beneficial feature is the ease of development."
"The GUI and IDE features of this solution are easy to work with and to develop. We find application management easy using this solution. It is a stable product"
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to simplify its documentation, such as the user and operation manuals, to make them even easier to understand."
"There are a couple of things I want improved, but I think they have already touched upon all those things in the most recent version. I'm not using the most recent version—I use a version older than the most recent—but I'm sure that if I looked into and explored it, I would see more support on the CI/CD and more support for unit testing automation. I've read that they released all these things in the new version of App Connect. Once I explore the new version of this tool, I'll probably have a better idea of suggested improvements."
"IBM doesn't really have a very strong community surrounding the product. Most of its direct competitors are open source solutions, and those have an excellent and well-developed community around the tech to help users navigate the ins and outs of the product. IBM is lacking in this area."
"IBM does not support orchestration, which is how they designed it, and other BPM tools in the market support orchestration. If they merged the BPM capability into this product, then it would be a better solution."
"Recently, there was a lot of instability when selecting the solution they needed for testing."
"We have to stop the integration server to start the debugging process."
"IBM Integration Bus can improve JSON Schema validations. We don't have any kind of nodes that can support that kind of validation. If we want to containerize it by means of the docker's containers in the clouds, we are not able to manage it very well."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"The intermediate version that we are using has stability issues. These stability issues should be resolved, but it seems like TIBCO is not focusing on resolving these issues. The resolution timelines are quite high even for high-priority incidents. Its price should be lower. Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"In the next release, there should be improvements made to the API manager."
"We'd like to see improvements in product support."
"The stability of their latest version is not on par with their classic version 5.X."
"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."
"Issues with the support, the fees, and the termination of the professional services are reasons we are looking for other solutions."
"Migration to cloud solutions or products should be made convenient, transparent, and easily understandable."
"If TIBCO could be able to sort the size of their base image in the Container edition, it would be really marvelous. Right now it's around 299 MB. We'd really want it to reduce to a few MBs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a highly-priced solution."
"The price of the IBM Integration Bus is expensive. If you compare the price to the cloud version you can purchase what you need but the on-premise version price is flat."
"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"The price of the license could be cheaper."
"The licensing model of IBM Integration Bus is good. It's a yearly subscription. However, the price is depending on the model that you choose. If it's a Cloud version, then you can pay per month or you can pay it annually upfront. There are three-year options available, but it depends on what deployment you have."
"As customers, we always try to buy things as cheaply as possible. But the price for the IBM Integration Bus is fine. When we compare it to competitors, it's pretty much the same. However, there are a lot of open-source integration platforms coming to the market as well. So overall, the price is fine as far as licensed products are concerned."
"For small companies, First of all, there are a lot of free products that could be used for integration. It can use the cloud or new implementation in the past. But if the tool is IBM, the official box in your company, you can make your submission and also publish the cloud to the work file. But let’s say, if you are working with premises, then you have to buy a reasonable main full support and gain experience with your product."
"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."
"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."
"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."
"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."
"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 IBM Integration Bus?
The message queue, like, message queue connectors. Then they have a built in connectors for most of the systems, like SAP, oracle database, and this Civil connector is there. Of course, we have thi...
What do you like most about TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors. The...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
ActiveMatrix Service Bus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Integration Bus vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.