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ActiveMQ vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

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

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (5th), Relational Databases Tools (11th), Data Warehouse (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 20.0%, down from 25.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Data Solutions is 9.7%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ20.0%
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions9.7%
Other70.3%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot
Jun 27, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

MD
Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction
With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks. The configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.
Karthik Shivaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director at STI INFOTECH PVT LTD
Improved multi-cloud data management has simplified operations and supports seamless Kubernetes
From my perspective, the biggest challenge with VMware right now is the pricing. To be very honest, in many cases I find myself recommending alternative solutions instead of VMware. Even if those alternatives come with a bit more complexity, customers are often more willing to accept that than the current VMware pricing model. In the past, VMware used a socket-based licensing model, which was easier for customers to understand and budget for. Now the shift to a core-based licensing model has significantly increased costs for many environments, especially for organizations running modern high-core CPUs. One positive aspect of the new model is that VMware has bundled several components together. For example, earlier when deploying vSphere, customers also had to purchase vCenter separately for management. Now multiple components are packaged into a single SKU, which simplifies some aspects of procurement and deployment. While this consolidation has its benefits, the overall licensing and commercial costs remain very high. Pricing is not the only issue. I believe Broadcom also needs to reconsider its strategy in light of the current market conditions. The approach they are taking may be strategic from a business perspective, but from what I see in the field, it is leading to lost opportunities. Many customers who previously relied on VMware are now actively exploring alternative virtualization platforms. I’m not sure where this direction will ultimately lead, but based on my experience, it is already affecting adoption. Since you’ve been trying to reach me for some time—and we also had a discussion a couple of years ago—I hope this feedback helps Broadcom understand the current sentiment in the market and potentially make adjustments. Another important concern is the way features are bundled. In many cases, customers only need basic virtualization and high availability capabilities. However, the current packaging often includes additional features that they may not need. A good analogy is that if a customer only needs an entry-level car, we shouldn’t be forced to sell them a Rolls-Royce. VMware could benefit from adopting a more modular or à la carte licensing model, where customers can choose only the components they truly require. For example, if a customer only needs core virtualization functionality, they should be able to purchase just that. This would allow partners and solution providers to better align solutions with customer requirements and position VMware more competitively in the market. Another challenge I want to highlight is the pricing model based on U.S. dollars and the way multi-year licensing is handled. In many enterprise and government projects, customers prefer to commit to three-year or five-year licenses and pay the full amount upfront. However, in approximately 20% of the deals I work on, we lose opportunities because VMware only provides dollar-based pricing for the first year. When it comes to the following years, the contract requires renewals annually rather than allowing a fixed multi-year upfront payment. This approach is particularly problematic for government and public sector customers. Many of them are ready and willing to pay for three or five years in advance, but the current VMware model does not support that structure effectively. Because pricing is tied to the U.S. dollar and subject to yearly adjustments, VMware does not lock in pricing for the full term. From a customer’s perspective, this introduces uncertainty and makes procurement more complicated. Ideally, if a price is quoted—for example, $100 per year—it should remain consistent across a multi-year agreement. Customers would be comfortable committing to a five-year term if the price were fixed and predictable. Unfortunately, that flexibility is currently not available across VMware products, whether it is vSphere, VMware Tanzu solutions, or other offerings. For large enterprise environments, one-year commitments are usually not practical. Many enterprise customers prefer longer-term agreements for budgeting and procurement reasons. Even when they are willing to accept the higher cost associated with the core-based licensing model, the lack of a clear multi-year upfront option often becomes a deal-breaker.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The database and message queuing are valuable features."
"Loose coupling of components by the use of messaging queues allows for completely separate component life cycles and ownership within the organization."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"ActiveMQ is a great messaging system for synchronizing call and "fire and forget" types of calls."
"I fully recommend this product, but you need to have some expertise working with JMS and asynchronous tasks."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"Batch processing times have dramatically decreased from over 12 hours to under three hours."
"We use VMware RabbitMQ to transfer information from one point to another."
"RabbitMQ helped us develop a highly scalable system by decoupling the front end and back end, easily withstanding and passing stress and load testing with more than 10K API calls while providing message queuing and a distributed environment."
"Strong integration with Greenplum Servers."
"The previous data warehouse was built in Oracle, and one of the things which has improved in GreenPlum is that we can query millions of rows at speed, without creating lags."
"I like the high throughput of 20K messages/sec, and that it supports multiple protocols."
"Some of the most valuable features are publish and subscribe, fanout, and queues."
"Scalable (Massive) Parallel Processing (MPP) – The ability to bring to bear large amounts of compute against large data sets with Greenplum and the EMC DCA has proven itself to be very effective."
 

Cons

"The clustering for sure needs improvement. When we were using it, the only thing available was an active/passive relationship that had to be maintained via shared file storage. That model includes a single point of failure in that storage medium."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"I do not recommend ActiveMQ over Apache Kafka partly because I don't know who provides support for the solution."
"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."
"Because this is an open-source project, there is no support. We don't have any help or anything like that."
"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"I would like to see the performance of the administration portal improved and additional messaging protocols."
"RabbitMQ needs 2 additional features: It is lacking a good dashboard on the web interface; maybe they can develop a dashboard for monitoring."
"The availability could be better."
"Lacks sufficient inbuilt machine-learning functions for complex use cases."
"They need to enhance integration with other Big Data products... to integrate with Big Data platforms, and to open a bi-directional connection between Greenplum and Big Data."
"Some integration with other platforms like design tools, and ETL development tools, that will enable some advanced functionality (like fully down processing, etc.) would be helpful in future releases."
"Implementing a circuit breaker scenario using RabbitMQ is complicated. This complexity arises because manual intervention is required to manage worker details and handle operations based on worker IP addresses."
"Every so often, I need to clear out the queue during development."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"We use the open-source version."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I think the software is free."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"Since the tool is an open-source product, there is no need to pay anything."
"It is an open-source product."
"The pricing for RabbitMQ is reasonable. It is worth the cost."
"It’s an open-source solution."
"The solution's pricing is cost-effective as it does not involve significant expenses. Licensing is required only for the server, while clients do not need any licensing. Therefore, it proves to be a cost-efficient option."
"Pricing is good compared to other products. It's fine."
"It is the best product with best fit for price/performance customer objectives."
"The pricing is okay."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selection. Focusing on AI is essential nowadays. AI capabilities require improvement ...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ.
What advice do you have for others considering ActiveMQ?
We have not deployed ActiveMQ's flexible clustering as that requirement is not present for us. We only use active-passive configuration. On a scale of one to ten, I rate ActiveMQ a ten out of ten.
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu GemFire?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for VMware Tanzu Data Solutions is that it is a bit expensive.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu GemFire?
In terms of weak points in VMware Tanzu Data Solutions, pricing is always the root cause of people not wanting to renew licenses or do any upgrades.
 

Also Known As

AMQ
Greenplum, Pivotal Greenplum, VMware RabbitMQ, VMware Tanzu GemFire, VMware Postgres
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
General Electric, Conversant, China CITIC Bank, Aridhia, Purdue University
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. VMware Tanzu Data Solutions and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.