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IBM MQ vs Software AG Apama comparison

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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 MQ
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Software AG Apama
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Complex Event Processing (CEP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM MQ and Software AG Apama aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM MQ is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 21.4%, down 24.7% compared to last year.
Software AG Apama, on the other hand, focuses on Complex Event Processing (CEP), holds 22.2% mindshare, down 22.5% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ21.4%
ActiveMQ20.1%
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions9.8%
Other48.7%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Complex Event Processing (CEP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Software AG Apama22.2%
IBM Operational Decision Manager22.0%
TIBCO Streaming21.6%
Other34.19999999999999%
Complex Event Processing (CEP)
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Krishnamsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, At Tiaa Senior Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Asynchronous messaging has streamlined workflow triggers and supports reliable session rollbacks
The best features IBM MQ offers are the topic and subscription, as well as the IBM MQ session and message rollbacks, especially for JMS integration. IBM MQ serves as the underlying foundation for our JMS messages. IBM MQ has positively impacted my organization by enabling asynchronous processing, which means we do not need to wait for any responses from our downstream systems.
SP
Sr Executive Accounts at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A tool to send out promotional notifications that need to improve areas, like deployment and maintenance
Software AG Apama should support offline scenarios as it may not always be possible to stay connected with the cloud. The solution should be deployed on an on-premises model, and it should be able to handle offline scenarios. If certain rules are set in Software AG Apama, then it should be able to execute them without being connected to an open internet source. With Software AG Apama, one may face challenges since it is difficult to find people with the right skill set to operate it. The solution also makes use of a proprietary programming language that is hard to trace in the market. It is better to go with the new options available in the market since Software AG Apama has become an old product. The ease of development and maintenance should be enhanced, but it is difficult due to the use of the proprietary programming language in the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Assists with our apps and has great message processing."
"IBM MQ processes many thousands of messages in a second, which is efficient for handling high transaction volumes."
"Stability is awesome. MQ is up all the time."
"If you want to keep your data safe, I would definitely recommend using IBM MQ."
"Data integrity, reliability and security are valuable features that IBM MQ possesses."
"If you have mission-critical applications that rely on an exchange of data, and the data is very valuable, then I would suggest using MQ."
"IBM MQ is the right choice because of the stability and the performance. And from the support perspective, it's enough to have a really small team."
"Give it a try."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability that it provides its users to handle different kinds of rules."
 

Cons

"We need to have a better administration console and better monitoring features. Right now, they are not good and could be a lot better."
"In terms of volume, it is not able to handle a huge volume. We also have limitations of queues related to IBM MQ. We often need to handle a very big volume, but currently we do have limitations. If those kinds of limitations could be relaxed, it would help us to work better."
"If they could come up with monitoring dashboards that would be good. We are using external monitoring tools, apart from our IBM MQ, to monitor IBM MQ. If we could get monitoring tools or dashboards to keep everything simple for the user to understand, that would be good."
"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka."
"IBM support team is really only concerned with the IBM cloud. They're not supporting any other cloud platforms or suggestions."
"The price is high."
"I feel that the MQ takes a longer time when DataPower is trying to connect to the MQ part, so I'm looking for that."
"One of the bottlenecks for us is owing to the industry that we're in, we sometimes get the large payloads and the MQ queues that we can increase."
"The ease of development and maintenance should be enhanced, but it is difficult due to the use of the proprietary programming language in the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"Our costs haven't increased but they also have not improved."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"Most of our customers are quite happy with the solution but they have an issue with the cost. They want to move to cheaper solutions."
"The licensing fees are paid quarterly and they are expensive."
"This solution requires a license and we have purchased an enterprise license."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive."
"A commercial license is required to operate Software AG Apama."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise147
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
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...
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Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Progress Apama
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Okasan Online Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.