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IBM B2B Integrator vs Mule ESB 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
IBM B2B Integrator is cost-effective and offers financial returns within a year, but has additional maintenance expenses.
Sentiment score
5.6
Calculating ROI from Mule ESB varies, influenced by design strategies, licensing costs, and varying perceptions of its value.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
IBM B2B Integrator support is responsive and professional but inconsistent, with escalation delays and regional service variations.
Sentiment score
6.6
Mule ESB support varies by subscription, offering quick responses but sometimes lacks depth; forums provide additional insights.
We have a good relationship with our vendor, and they are ready to help us with any technical issues.
The technical support of Mule ESB can be rated from nine to ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM B2B Integrator offers strong scalability but faces integration challenges, cloud ambiguity, and high costs for small businesses.
Sentiment score
7.5
Mule ESB scales efficiently for diverse enterprises, supporting seamless cloud deployments and handling extensive data through flexible integration.
If it's properly configured and installed with the right infrastructure, it's the best product for scalability.
Mule ESB is a scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
IBM B2B Integrator is stable and reliable with minor configuration challenges, offering high availability and robust support.
Sentiment score
7.1
Mule ESB is stable and reliable, despite minor issues with older versions, large files, and clustering.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM B2B Integrator needs feature, interface, and integration improvements to enhance usability, efficiency, and functionality for users.
Mule ESB users report challenges with documentation, stability, performance, licensing costs, support, and integration, requiring significant improvements.
More information is needed from MuleSoft.
From my perspective, Mule ESB is lightweight, but it can be improved when it comes to the agility of the system.
 

Setup Cost

IBM B2B Integrator is costly but feature-rich, with variable licensing options and potential additional support costs.
Mule ESB is seen as expensive with flexible pricing and offers support only in the paid Enterprise version.
It tends to be very expensive because the IBM license model is oriented toward paying for the power of the machine where you install the platform.
 

Valuable Features

IBM B2B Integrator offers secure, scalable data transformation and integration with multiple protocols, enhancing business process efficiency and management.
Mule ESB provides flexible, high-performance integration with extensive connectivity, DataWeave, API-led architecture, cloud capabilities, and strong support.
They have their own language called DataWeave, which helps transform data and is efficient enough to handle any kind of transformation.
The best features of Mule ESB are that it's very robust and solid; I find that even our legacy systems go well with ESB.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM B2B Integrator
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (7th)
Mule ESB
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
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 7.0%, up 5.8% compared to last year.
Mule ESB, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), holds 18.7% mindshare, down 22.6% 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.
Maharsh-Kapadia - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms enterprise integration with comprehensive platform and excellent support
The best features of this solution are that everything we get into a single platform, whether it's integration, API, or data modeling; everything is available in one platform. It's a hybrid, including cloud and on-premise solutions with good connectivity and good connectors. From the benefits of using Mule ESB, we could reduce the manual tasks to 50% in one to two years. The cost is still something we are trying to make lower because we see some advantages when we move from point-to-point integration to API-led connectivity. We have seen a lot of reusable assets, so the cost is reduced. Ultimately, we want to see how it's transformed into business revenue; that's what we are still looking into.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM B2B Integrator?
Regarding pricing, IBM B2B Integrator rates in the middle range. This integrator has embedded all the functionality needed to handle files and messages. It tends to be very expensive because the IB...
What needs improvement with IBM B2B Integrator?
Based on my experience and my clients' feedback, there are a few points IBM can improve for IBM B2B Integrator. One of these is the graphical user interface. For several years, IBM has been promisi...
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
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bonnie Plants, Toshiba Europe, Florida Hospital
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
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