No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM MQ vs Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Software AG Optimize for In...
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 20.9%, down from 29.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure is 4.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ20.9%
Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure4.0%
Other75.1%
Business Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

David Pizinger - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has faced unexpected VM restarts but continues to deliver messages reliably
I'm not sure if we've utilized IBM MQ's high availability. Our MQ VMs are set up in clusters, and I think our queue managers are set up in pairs. However, I don't know if we actually use any specific high availability features of IBM MQ that are out of the box. We have it architected with high availability because we use F5 load balancers, and everything about our architecture is highly available. I haven't personally used the management tools with IBM MQ, but we do have them, and our middleware folks leverage them. I can't really comment on them because I don't use them myself. I don't think the management tools help optimize message flows, and I'm not really aware of how they help in this. I'm not familiar with dynamic routing for IBM MQ.
RK
Vice President - Digital Integration at Kellton Tech Solutions Limited
Mature, stable, and powerful managed platform
Sometimes Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure goes through an upgrade cycle of four years to get to the next version. Some of the utilities need to be definitely advanced as well so that migration to the latest version is even smoother and easier. That could probably be the only improvements that they can look at. I definitely think that their cloud version capabilities are still nascent. They need to evolve into offering similar capabilities to the cloud infrastructure as well. That is not specifically SaaS but any managed infrastructure that customers would subscribe to in AWS, Azure, and other public clouds. How to employ Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure and also to see if it can be subscribed as a service from Software AG would be the ideal next steps for this solution to evolve into.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"We use queue managers/concentrators for message flow going upstream and downstream on applications with enterprise licenses."
"In conjunction with some other products we use, such as IIB, it does a lot of the transformation and cuts out a lot of programming that has to be done for transforming data from our carrier customers into the format that we need it to be."
"Setting up MQ is easy; we had a "grow as you go" implementation strategy, starting with a single channel and progressing to multiple queues and channels depending on the systems and integrations with other systems, resulting in a gradual deployment and expansion as we grew the services interacting with the core system using MQ."
"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."
"We are able to transport data across any platform in a secure fashion, be it internal or external."
"Seamless integration with IBM WebSphere Application Server, which is the most stable application server I ever worked with."
"It's a great product."
"The infrastructure monitoring features are the most valuable. The primary purpose of Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure is to automate the aspects of monitoring various infrastructure and applications. They will definitely automate an alert automatically, but a lot of such tools differ from each other on aspects of various low-level components that they can monitor."
"It kind of alleviates all the complexity in the IT support and service teams, and it will make their life easier."
 

Cons

"We have used technical support. Not for the solution, but for problems or issues. I would say that they are okay. If you want me to rate between one to ten, I would rate them four."
"Better testing by the supplier is needed Ability to send to a group of queues without the need to use pubsub and without the need to write one's own programmes."
"Better error handling, such as a default dead message queue for errors, would be beneficial."
"They probably need to virtualize the MQ flow and allow us to design the MQ flow using the UI. It would also help to migrate to the cloud easily and implement AWS Lambda functions with minimum coding. If you have to code, then just with NodeJS or Java."
"It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs."
"They could integrate monitoring into the solution, a bit more than they do now."
"In the next release, I would like for there to be easier monitoring. The UI should be easier for non-technical users to set up appliances and servers."
"I have used the support from IBM MQ. There is some room for improvement."
"Sometimes Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure goes through an upgrade cycle of four years to get to the next version. Some of the utilities need to be definitely advanced as well so that migration to the latest version is even smoother and easier. That could probably be the only improvements that they can look at. I definitely think that their cloud version capabilities are still nascent. They need to evolve into offering similar capabilities to the cloud infrastructure as well. That is not specifically SaaS but any managed infrastructure that customers would subscribe to in AWS, Azure, and other public clouds. How to employ Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure and also to see if it can be subscribed as a service from Software AG would be the ideal next steps for this solution to evolve into."
"Sometimes Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure goes through an upgrade cycle of four years to get to the next version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
"I think it's pretty reasonable, but I'm not so too sure of the current pricing strategy from IBM. We use many bundled services, and most often, we go through a service provided by some other third-party implementation. So, I can't really give an honest opinion about that."
"There is real money involved here. As compared to RabbitMQ, IBM MQ is on the higher side in terms of cost."
"Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost."
"The licensing fees are paid quarterly and they are expensive."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."
"It's a very expensive product."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Activity Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
webMethods Optimize for Infrastructure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Swisscom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, TIBCO, Aurea and others in Business Activity Monitoring. Updated: August 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.