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IBM Integration Bus vs Sopera Advanced Service Factory 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
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sopera Advanced Service Fac...
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 21.9%, up from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sopera Advanced Service Factory is 0.2%, up from 0.1% 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.
SG
Functional administrative controls, highly scalable, and reliable
ESB will connect in real-time data between the two systems. For example, for one of our customers, we implemented Salesforce and with an on-premises system but the account master data and project master data did not work together. As soon as it requests the information, I have to fix the data from the SAP on-premise with this solution. This is the use case for service and sales implementations. The solution has enabled us to be able to fix our data by combining the cloud and on-premises systems which has helped a lot.

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 is flexible, easy to use, and easy to configure."
"The most valuable thing is the loose coupling and making the change in only one stack of the ESB layer or the middleware layer."
"One of the most valuable features is App Connect Enterprise makes it possible to deploy it in the OpenShift cluster, which is very good. Overall the solution is very flexible."
"What I like best are the monitoring features."
"The most valuable feature is that it's robust and its time to market is very short."
"like the API lead integration, which is more focused, and I also like real-time integration."
"The cost is pretty cheap, compared to what else is available in the market."
"The Aspera feature for high-speed transfer is highly effective."
"I have found the best feature are the administrative controls."
 

Cons

"IBM Integration Bus isn't particularly user-friendly and has a big learning curve."
"We have to stop the integration server to start the debugging process."
"Storage capacity of the product should be addressed."
"They could integrate AI technologies with the product. Additionally, ongoing developments and enhancements in integration technologies could be beneficial."
"I would like to be able to build an Integration Bus cluster that is active-active."
"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."
"The solution is complex and there is a need for more resources and greatly improved quality."
"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."
"This solution is running on the Eclipse platform and this is where all the designing takes place. The Eclipse performance should be improved. The Open Studio tool we have been using for the development is not up to the industry standard and the performance should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"IBM Integration Bus solution is expensive and this is one of the reasons we are looking for an alternative, such as MuleSoft."
"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"IBM is expensive."
"The solution requires a license and is very expensive here in India."
"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."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive."
"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."
"This solution is less expensive than competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
Advanced Service Factory
 

Overview

Information not available
 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: August 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.