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IBM Integration Bus pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.0 out of 5

69 reviews
90% willing to recommend

1,643 followers

Pros & Cons summary

IBM Integration Bus offers strong REST API design and development, with reliable scalability, CPU efficiency, and integration with systems like SAP and Oracle Database. It enhances data processing and is valuable for banks needing service-oriented architecture. Despite its robust error handling and communication efficiency, scaling vertically is problematic, pricing is high for small companies, and inadequate documentation and support slow technical assistance. Improved data mining and XML conversion are needed.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM Integration Bus offers robust performance, requiring minimal CPU resources for efficient operation.

It excels in seamless integration of multiple applications, including legacy systems and cloud-based applications.

IBM Integration Bus supports fast and easy deployment, often without the need to rewrite code.

The service promotes resource reuse, enhancing efficiency in resource consumption.

It provides extensive flexibility in integrating with other tools like SAP, Oracle Database, and enables high-speed data transfers.

CONS

Development toolkit based on Eclipse requires improvements in responsiveness and better integration with current technologies.

The aggregation implementation should be re-evaluated with a proposal for more intuitive and independent solutions from MQ.

IBM Integration Bus's lack of support for orchestration and BPM tools integration could be enhanced by integrating BPM capabilities.

Technical support and scalability need improvement, as prolonged response times have been a concern.

Migration complexity and lack of comprehensive documentation create challenges, complicating deployment and integration processes.

IBM Integration Bus Pros review quotes

Systems Software Specialist III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 19, 2019

My favorite feature is the XML-based DFDL mapping, which is a tool that allows you to graphically map legacy data formats to modern data formats.

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PO

PRINCEWILL OPARA

Head Banking Application Customization and Reporting at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

May 15, 2021

The stability is mostly pretty good.

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Ashraf Siddiqui

IBM Integration & Solution Architect at Meezan Bank

Jul 29, 2024

We've been using IBM Integration Bus for seven years to create a service-oriented architecture in our bank and implement SOAR infrastructure using this tool. It helps us with internal services for core banking and different digital channels. We also use it to expose our services to other banks and companies and consume services from outside our bank using proxy servers.

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IBM Integration Bus

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Chief Executive Officer at Responsiv

Mar 7, 2022

It allows us to avoid the need for consumers to understand multiple API protocols and security arrangements, and in some circumstances can reduce the impact of systems being unavailable.

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QK

Sr. Manager Software Quality Assurance at UBL

Sep 8, 2020

Promotes the reuse of developed resources to more efficiently consume resources.

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reviewer1426110

Integration Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2020

I use the integration of Kafka and the message flow, which is really good. It is also good for moving any file from one location to another. Using IBM Integration Bus in the data stage is pretty simple. You can see the preview and other things. The MQ server integrated with IBM Integration Bus is really great. I don't have to do a lot of configuration from that side. It is really good.

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PS

Pavel Shcherbukha

Team Leader of the Development Team at IBM/IT-Innovation

Sep 28, 2019

This solution is very reliable and it is easy to learn.

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Harm Van Der Gugten

Managing Director at Talipoint (Pty) Ltd

Sep 19, 2023

The multi-approach and the multi-capabilities are valuable.

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reviewer1709634

Integration Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

One of the most valuable features is how seamless and easy to use this solution is. This is a fantastic solution and a very measured product.

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CK

Channu Kambalyal

Enterprise Architect, Mars Global Services at Mars Fishcare

Sep 9, 2020

The cost is pretty cheap, compared to what else is available in the market.

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IBM Integration Bus Cons review quotes

Systems Software Specialist III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 19, 2019

This solution would benefit from improvements to the configuration interface.

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PO

PRINCEWILL OPARA

Head Banking Application Customization and Reporting at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

May 15, 2021

Today, the IBM business rule engine, the DataPower is outside the Enterprise Service Bus. It's sold as a different feature or application. If it could be integrated, then it's able to handle a lot more of what we are doing now rather than just have a stateless ESB that you can't do much on, and a set of normal business rules.

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Ashraf Siddiqui

IBM Integration & Solution Architect at Meezan Bank

Jul 29, 2024

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.

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IBM Integration Bus

Free Report: IBM Integration Bus Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Integration Bus. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.

839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Chief Executive Officer at Responsiv

Mar 7, 2022

The next versions are moving toward container use. It would be a shame to make the product highly complex just to support one pattern of deployment. It is my hope that IBM continues to focus on practical functionality that is simple and cost-effective.

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QK

Sr. Manager Software Quality Assurance at UBL

Sep 8, 2020

Session management can sometimes hand forcing server reboots.

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reviewer1426110

Integration Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2020

It needs improvement in terms of technical support as well as in terms of integration of data mining. I am not convinced about many things in this solution, such as the conversion of the DFDL or copybook file, which is the conversion from a text file to XML. It is very complex. They should also provide more information about this solution in the IBM Knowledge Center. I can get a lot of information from the IBM Knowledge Center about DataStage, but I don't get that much information about IBM Integration Bus. There is hardly any information even on the internet and various channels such as YouTube. They can provide good step-by-step documentation based on a company's requirements. It would be really helpful. My company is mainly looking for data mining and communicating with multiple servers. IBM Integration Bus is good for communicating with multiple servers, but it needs improvement for XML conversion and data mining. We have a lot of old systems that use XML.

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PS

Pavel Shcherbukha

Team Leader of the Development Team at IBM/IT-Innovation

Sep 28, 2019

I would like to be able to run and install this solution on different platforms.

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Harm Van Der Gugten

Managing Director at Talipoint (Pty) Ltd

Sep 19, 2023

The solution needs instruction or guidance.

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reviewer1709634

Integration Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

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.

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CK

Channu Kambalyal

Enterprise Architect, Mars Global Services at Mars Fishcare

Sep 9, 2020

The solution needs to improve it's security and its proactive notification of security issues.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 67)

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