Guaranteed delivery of the messages and then the ability to scale the messages the way we need it according to our application, performance, and scalability.
Senior Business Leader at Visa
Partnership with the vendor and stability of the product are most important when selecting a vendor.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
It helps us to make sure that every time you do a swipe on your credit card, the credit card transaction is guaranteed to transact.
What needs improvement?
Some of the new features that their competitors are coming out with. Things like AMQ are coming out with - transformation of messages with the security aspect of it and even scalability with AMQ, it's scaled at the microservices level and MQ is not quite there yet.
For how long have I used the solution?
We're currently evaluating AMQ to see if from a cost perspective it makes sense or not to switch from IBM MQ. We still have IBM MQ.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Very stable. Within the last year or so we hardly had any issues with the MQ or the queue itself going down.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability good, we can scale by the application needs and also scale by the need of the application but also the need of the infrastructure. At our peak, we're able to scale and make sure the transaction goes through.
How are customer service and support?
Customer Service:
Service is good. We've been able to meet all our SLAs in the agreement that we signed with them.
Technical Support:We have an enterprise level agreement with IBM. If there's any issue with MQ, we have a direct line to them.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
AMQ is one of them, Kafka is the other, and of course IBM MQ has always been on the list.
We chose IBM a long time ago from all the criteria I mentioned and then at the time other players were not evolving yet. IBM MQ has been an enterprise solution for many companies and the stability's there. It made a lot of sense for us to use IBM MQ back then.
What other advice do I have?
Partnership with the vendor and stability of the product are most important when selecting a vendor. I mentioned AMQ earlier, and there's no guarantee that AMQ will be around next year.
Stability is key to the product and the performance of it, you can get high availability, high performance too, but we talk about tens of thousands TPS through the product so, from that perspective there's no other competitor on it.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Project Leader at EDF
Its reliability and efficiency are valuable. It would be nice to have better reporting, such as elasticsearch
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of this solution are its reliability, efficiency, and the capacity to bring value.
How has it helped my organization?
The benefits are the satisfaction of my users (my clients), the stability of the solution, and the availability it provides.
What needs improvement?
It would be nice for the next release to have better reporting. For example, elasticsearch or ELK. We don't have that with IBM. So we have implemented our own solution.
We have a major application based on DataPowers and WebSphere servers.
We had an main issue to visualize efficiently the utilization of our WebSphere applications (load, who is using, when, how). It’s critical in defining our “capacity planning”.
Actually, we’ve developed our own reporting solution based on Kibana/Elasticsearch. Kibana analyses ours logs in real time. We have done a portal with several graphs. It is really impressive. We are very happy with our solution.
IBM doesn’t provide, by default, a reporting item as efficient as Kibana. DMGR is not as powerful and flexible.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is quite good. It's strong and the performance is important.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is a bit difficult for us. Since this product is an IBM product, we have to work together with IBM to be more efficient at this point.
How is customer service and technical support?
We are not really happy with their support. They don't have the skills to very efficiently answer our questions, so our relationship with them is difficult.
How was the initial setup?
I was not involved in the initial setup.
What other advice do I have?
When it's too difficult to have what we want with IBM, we develop our own, better solution and we try to integrate our own solution with IBM.
When selecting a vendor, we look for the confidence, the relationship. We have to share the same objectives and to agree in order to deliver the same value to the client.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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November 2024
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Director IT Platform Engineering at Staples
I think the most valuable feature is the scale that it can run at.
What is most valuable?
I think the most valuable feature is the scale that it can run at. It runs millions of transactions in our environment on a daily basis, scales and works well.
How has it helped my organization?
I don't know if it improved my organization but it basically drives communications between a lot of our subsystems and processes. It's kind of the backbone of a lot of our services.
What needs improvement?
I think some of the management tools could be improved. We've got a variety of different management tools, that we have in place. Having them be more a core part of a product, rather than being add-ons from either other solutions or open source, would be good.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is very good.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support is good. For the most part, we get what we need. We did have AVP for a number of years, which was another level of support. We're reconsidering that maybe we should be going back to that level just for the more timeliness and quality of support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There are a lot of open-source alternatives coming out now, today. Sometimes MQ can be perceived in the organization as being expensive. Price is an issue.
Where we've deployed other open-source solutions, we're not at the same scale so it's difficult to say at this point whether they do as good of a job as MQ. Obviously, we're very conservative in taking some of our core systems and moving them to unproven technologies.
There aren’t any features that they have that I wish MQ had as well. They actually tend to be a little lighter weight than MQ, in a bad way.
What other advice do I have?
Make sure that whatever solution you have is going to scale to meet your needs and that you have the tooling infrastructure available to you, as well.
The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is, obviously, quality. Reliability of the product is number one but it needs to be cost effective, as well.
We haven't really moved into the cloud with MQ at this point.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
System Engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
It provides content security and delivery from the network protocol perspective.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are content security and content delivery, from a whole network protocol perspective.
It's adapting itself to get into every single component throughout the entire world being Java enabled.
How has it helped my organization?
We are able to transport data across any platform in a secure fashion, be it internal or external.
From the send and forget perspective, MQ allows you to – on your own – manage your data, collect your data, and manage your data perspective.
What needs improvement?
The barrier to success is basically the engine behind the collection of the data.
I also think the administration could be a little more straightforward. Right now, we have to develop our own truly distributed administration system. There's a GUI that's really not manageable; not that easy to use.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It’s very scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is responsive; it comes out of Hursley, which is their main support and development location. There is a direct line to their development; it's very good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were previously using all kinds of solutions, including SCP, SFTP, FTP and proprietary APIs. MQ allowed standardization to port data.
We decided to use WebSphere MQ because we needed data transport from all kinds of systems.
Responsiveness is the most important criteria for me when selecting or working with a vendor.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward and flexible.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not really consider any options other than MQ.
What other advice do I have?
My advice is to lay out your infrastructure in a fashion you can support.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Department Manager at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Guaranteed message delivery and robust security enhance enterprise message handling
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of IBM MQ are its guarantee of delivery, ability to handle high volume while maintaining high availability, and robust security measures such as SSL, TLS, and RBAC."
- "There are no improvements needed at this time."
What is our primary use case?
I usually recommend IBM MQ for financial, government, and large enterprise companies. It is beneficial for handling high volumes of messages.
How has it helped my organization?
Using IBM MQ ensures the guaranteed delivery of messages, which is significant for my clients. It is also known for its security.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of IBM MQ are its guarantee of delivery, ability to handle high volume while maintaining high availability, and robust security measures such as SSL, TLS, and RBAC.
What needs improvement?
There are no improvements needed at this time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been familiar with IBM MQ for roughly 20 years. It's been essential for many sectors during this time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of IBM MQ as ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I give the scalability of IBM MQ a rating of eight out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support from IBM is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before IBM MQ, I was not using similar products. For comparison, I have used Kafka.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is generally straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
Part of our work is to assist customers during the installation and configuration of IBM MQ.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For an enterprise solution, the pricing of IBM MQ is very reasonable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have also used Kafka before.
What other advice do I have?
IBM MQ has been in the market for over 20 years; it is an essential solution for most banking, financial, and government sectors.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Last updated: Nov 7, 2024
Flag as inappropriateEnterprise Architect at Enterprise architecture Tool
Scalable and has a reconciliation mechanism but lacks extensive documentation
Pros and Cons
- "It is quite stable."
- "I couldn't find a lot of information on the system API side."
What is our primary use case?
I worked as an employee for a bank where we recommended IBM MQ, and we used it.
It's for real-time messaging, an exchange between applications.
On the IBM side, we use Message Queue, all the Message Queue products from IBM. For six years, we used it for a bank, an international bank, and we integrated all the applications synchronously using Message Queue.
What is most valuable?
IBM MQ is highly scalable and has a reconciliation mechanism. These are the two main reasons we use IBM MQ.
What needs improvement?
IBM MQ should have more extensive documentation because I couldn't find a lot of information on the system API side to help us monitor the message queuing.
I would like to see more documentation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for six years. We used it for a bank, an international bank, and we integrated all the applications synchronously using Message Queue.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has been a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and support have always been great.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I know there are competitors like RabbitMQ and Dell Boomi. I believe RabbitMQ is built on open source and they have a licensed version as well. I don't know much about RabbitMQ or Dell Boomi at this point.
IBM MQ is highly stable and quite customizable to integrate with our systems.
How was the initial setup?
We definitely installed using a service provider, and it's not that complex. It's easy. It took three to six months to start implementing the first use case.
Around six to ten people were involved in the deployment. It is easy to maintain and stable.
What was our ROI?
The ROI is good, but we only used it for a few use cases like banking customers. It's quite stable, so we got the value out of the installation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would rate it an eight out of ten. It's expensive, not cheap.
What other advice do I have?
I would like to rate it as a seven out of ten. It is quite stable, but it needs to have more documentation, and that is why I rate it as a seven out of ten.
At this moment, we don't see a use case for implementing AI, but it is definitely in our roadmap. We will definitely try to find a use case to implement any new features that get announced.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: MSP
Last updated: Sep 15, 2024
Flag as inappropriateIndependent Consultant at a non-profit with self employed
Has great system integration features
Pros and Cons
- "The system integration is good."
- "The pricing needs improvement."
What is our primary use case?
MQ is the middleware, which takees the files from an upstream system to a downstream system or the downstream system to an upstream system.
What is most valuable?
The system integration is good.
What needs improvement?
The pricing needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM MQ for six years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is a nine out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is complex.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: May 16, 2024
Flag as inappropriateExaminerExaminer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Detailed documentation, highly stable, and plenty of features
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is it has all the features necessary for contemporary messaging, not only for the financial industry but for any application."
- "IBM MQ could improve by adding more protocols or APIs for a standard application, such as MuleSoft."
What is our primary use case?
IBM MQ is the standard for financial industry messaging. As far as I know, it is the best in class.
How has it helped my organization?
Standard, most reliable messaging infrastructure software.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is it has all the features necessary for contemporary messaging, not only for the financial industry but for any application.
IBM MQ has developed into some newer solutions. It has a message broker, it is now on the cloud, it has containerization, that has high availability features
What needs improvement?
IBM MQ may not be as convenient for Java programmers as Active MQ, for example, because Java programmers prefer Java, even though it is slower.
IBM MQ could improve by adding more protocols or APIs for a standard application, such as MuleSoft.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM MQ for approximately 15 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM MQ is stable, performs well, and is highly reliable. They guarantee message delivery.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of IBM MQ is good. There are cluster, container, and broker features available. It scales well horizontally and vertically.
Most of our company is using IBM MQ in my company.
How are customer service and support?
The support from IBM MQ is good. They have always helped with my problems, but sometimes it can take them a while for a resolution. Sometimes you might find a bug in a one-year span of using the solution, but they will provide a fix within a matter of weeks.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
N/A
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of IBM MQ can be straightforward if you have the documentation, it is step-by-step and straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
IBM MQ is an expensive solution compared to other solutions. However, if you pay less you will not receive the same experience or features.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
N/A
What other advice do I have?
It may not have all the APIs, features, or protocols that the newest systems have, but in performance and reliability, it is the best.
The amount of people needed to maintain the solution depends on the company and how they want to maintain it. When I was working for a bank I supported 300 MQ managers with approximately 150 systems running. However, for the basic use of the solution, you do not need many people. If you add more features, such as broker and clustering you will need more people for maintenance.
My advice to others is this solution is the best there is. For maintenance, you will probably need fewer people to maintain it than other solutions because of its reliability. The features are probably the most extensive in its class.
I rate IBM MQ a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Mar 18, 2024
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