IBM Integration Bus Reviews

We use the solution for a digital payment system.

The Cloud Pak for Integration is a useful feature.

The solution’s pricing could be improved.

I have been using IBM Integration Bus for five years. We are the solution provider.

The solution is stable.

The product is scalable. There are four customers using this solution.

The initial setup is not complex, but you should have a good understanding of programming. Installation depends on the project. For some projects with a limited interface, it takes two to three months, but for a bigger and complex one, installation can take up to six months.

In banks, it is deployed on both Cloud and On-premise.

The solution is expensive.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use IBM Integration Bus within a finance domain.

The product helps efficiently work with different connectors from different back-end systems.

IBM Integration Bus needs to be more compatible with stable connectors for specific domains. For instance, it has two protocols: ISO 8583, a legacy protocol, and ISO 2022, which works on XML for the finance sector. Similarly, they should add connectors to banking applications and other specific industries.

We have been using IBM Integration Bus for ten years.

Being in the market for quite some years, IBM is a very stable and mature product. I rate its stability a seven out of ten.

The technical support services are good.

Primarily, our customers have the product deployed on-premises to follow protocols. Some customers deploy on private clouds as well. The product’s installation and configuration process is straightforward. It takes six months to two years, depending on the complexity of specific requirements.

I rate IBM Integration Bus a seven out of ten.

We used the solution for opening new accounts for a banking system. Our client used some old techniques and didn’t have an integration layer. I created an account opening application for our client.

IBM Integration Bus is a very strong tool. It helps in integrating the front-end and back-end systems.

We have to stop the integration server to start the debugging process. The debugging mechanism of other products is better than that of IBM.

I have been using the solution for six months.

I did not face any issues with the solution’s stability.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup is easy, but the database is quite heavy for the local DC. It was also a little bit complex to connect to some databases.

The deployment of the solution is very easy. We just add the integration server and drag and drop the services to the integration server. We deployed the solution in-house. We do not face any trouble in the maintenance of the product.

I am a system integrator. In Software AG, debugging does not intervene with any other process. I also use Software AG webMethods and TIBCO. Software AG webMethods is the best product because it is very easy to develop and flexible. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The product helps us develop integration applications. It also enables communication between applications from different environments.

The features I have found most valuable in this solution are transformation and routing.

IBM Integration Bus doesn’t provide some features that MuleSoft provides. These features should be added to the solution.

The product does not provide API management. We have to use a separate tool called API Connect for our needs. It would be good if IBM could combine these tools.

I have been using the solution for the past nine years.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

The people in our organization who faced scalability issues deployed the product on the cloud, where they could make it scalable. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

I have spoken with the support team about a couple of issues. They were really helpful, and the response was very fast.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We did not face any challenges.

It took us a couple of minutes to deploy the product. We deployed the solution with our in-house team. A team of two to three administrators usually monitors the product in the production environment.

I am using the latest version of the solution. We use Jenkins to deploy the applications we build on IBM Integration Bus. My organization is one of the largest IT service providers, with hundreds of customers across the globe.

We depend on IBM for patches when there are some issues in the production environment. I am a developer, and I work in solution development. I have worked with multiple organizations for multiple accounts. I would recommend the solution to others. IBM Integration Bus is a leading product.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for synchronizing data across the enterprise and opening data to extend its use by simplifying and making it consistent regardless of its source. 

It's for installing a line of indirection between data source and consumer to reduce contention at the source, and to add security, audit, and combine data from multiple places.

With it, we are implementing GDPR rules on data use, compensating for systems being unavailable, and delivering low latency for website users.

I have designed solutions for payment processing, Service-Oriented Architectures, micro-service architectures, data sharing and synchronization, and point to point data sharing using this product across banking, retail, and many other industries.

Many projects absorb a great deal of time and budget to find data and understand how to access it. This product allows data to be found and cataloged, allowing multiple projects to create a full directory of data in the enterprise over time.

The introduction of a mediation component allows data to be combined from multiple sources and for those sources to change or expand without impacting the consumers. In some settings, the number of consumers can be significant (100+) making adapter patterns rather expensive to maintain.

Having a single (logical) place to go for information reduces the responsibilities of the consumer for navigation - in turn allowing systems to move, update, and be replaced with reduced risk and cost. 

The cost reductions are significant but rely on proper architecture and design.

The solution's most valuable aspects include:

Data enrichment and consistent access. It reduces the need for programmers of consumer applications to understand where data is sourced, or how it is combined. It allows us to avoid the need for consumers to understand multiple API protocols and security arrangements, and in some circumstances can reduce the impact of systems being unavailable.

Data mediation and secure access. It reduces programmer error and hides the underlying systems, making it simpler to change them. It imposes a line of control between consumer and source, reducing the scope of testing needed for new consumers, and avoiding tests on consumers when the source changes.

High-performance data management for data in motion. The product supports clustering and can be tightly integrated into IBM MQ, making it a perfect platform for payment processing and high-performance data processing (50,000 tx/sec and above). For those that do not need the performance, this translates to cloud consumption savings.

Resilient communication management. The product can use transactional integrity to assure consistent data and non-loss communications (especially when combined with IBM MQ). This means that when processing large numbers of transactions no time is lost trying to discover what was lost.

The product has been well managed and continually improved throughout the time I have used it. 

There is very little that can be improved. It already contains adapters for MS-Dynamics and other enterprise packages and supports many protocols and transmission structures. 

The next versions are moving toward container use. It would be a shame to make the product highly complex just to support one pattern of deployment. It is my hope that IBM continues to focus on practical functionality that is simple and cost-effective.

We've used the solution for 20 years - since it was previously named MQ System Integrator.

IBM ACE is very well engineered and very stable. We have several customers running old versions that have been 100% reliable for their operational lives.

If an installation does encounter a failure, for example power failure, the product is good at reporting useful messages, and in combination with IBM MQ to protect data running through the system. The product can be installed in a clustered configuration to remove single points of failure, and to scale to accommodate higher loads.

It's very stable.

This solution is highly scalable and resilient. It's combined with MQ or load balancers for fault tolerance and highly parallel processing.

It's highly scalable.

In my experience, support has always been very good for this product. 

Positive

I have previously used databases to store and forward and C-programs to manipulate data. When this could no longer cope (sometime in the 1990s), I discovered IBM MQ and other messaging products, which are designed to do what we were building. The MQSI product of the time was simply magic and the latest incarnations (App Connect Enterprise) are far beyond anything that could be done with a database. 

I have reviewed other technologies, including Microsoft, open-source, and others. It remains my opinion and experience that this product delivers quicker development and more reliable outcomes.

A was working as part of the vendor team, as part of the implementation consulting organization.

Very much depends on the industry and project.

Installation of the base product has been simplified over the last five years or so, and is now fairly straight forward. 

You need an infrastructure design for the product deployment and an integration architecture and design documented and agreed to get the best from this software. It is relatively easy to program (Extended SQL, Java, and other options are available), however, it's important to think and take advice before you start.

The product is generally priced per processor core.

We use IBM Integration Bus for application integration. For example, when application A needs to communicate with application B, if Application A is sending the message data in XML format but application B understands the data in JSON format, there needs to be a tool that helps to transform the message data and route the data from one endpoint to another. In such a use case, we use IBM Integration Bus.

I'm working on version 10.0.0.12 of IIB, but we will be migrating the project that I'm currently working on to IBM App Connect Enterprise. It will most probably happen in the summer of this year.

It is deployed on-premises. After the migration to IBM App Connect Enterprise, we're planning to migrate to the cloud from on-premises.

In our project, we are using IBM Integration Bus for doing the payments. We have developed some applications in IBM Integration Bus that help with payment transactions from one client to another.

We can have multiple endpoints, and we can integrate different applications from different platforms. In a large-scale enterprise setup, it becomes so easy to establish communication between applications. You can connect an application to other applications, other legacy applications, and databases. You can also connect with those applications that are in the cloud.  You can connect with other well-known applications, such as Salesforce, SAP, and Workday, by using IBM Integration Bus.

It provides all the features that are required for day-to-day work. So far, I haven't seen any major issues that impact our work. I have been told that IBM App Connect Enterprise, which is the next version of IIB, is really good. It is better than IIB, and it gives you more coverage in terms of application integration.

I have been working with this solution for seven years.

It is stable.

You can scale the product depending upon the flux of data into your application.

It depends upon the issue we are working on. I would rate them a four out of five.

Its initial setup was not that tough or challenging. We could easily do the setup without any challenges.

Usually, we have the support team of a project. The support team takes care of such installations.

Its maintenance is easy. It doesn't take a lot of effort to maintain the product. The Infra team usually does some patching of the environment, but we haven't seen any outage of our application that impacts the business in real-time.

It is a really good product to use if there are lots of applications that need to be integrated in your enterprise. It is a very good solution for enterprise application integration and exposing your product's features to the external client through APIs. 

I have worked with other tools related to IIB, such as API Gateway and API configuration tools, in the past. They do provide a very good solution for your business if you are planning to expose your business assets by creating APIs. You can develop an API in IIB and configure it in API Connect. You can have that gateway on top of the solution. This is another feature you can leverage using IIB.

Based on my experience with this product, I would rate it an eight out of 10. This reduction of two points doesn't mean that it is not as good as other products.

IBM Integration Bus can be deployed in many ways, such as on-premise, cloud, and hybrid. 

The current customer that we have wants to have a hybrid deployment. We're investigating how they can manage to do it. For the hybrid deployment, they will have an instance running in a docker image, or in an Amazon AWS. The heavy operations will be done by the on-premise version. Which is what we currently have.

The most valuable features of the IBM Integration Bus are flexibility. It's also an alternative for integrating it with other projects, which we are not ready at this time to do, such as switching to tunnels. The tunnels would be used with other partners to make sure everything is secured.

IBM Integration Bus could improve by having a more lightweight installation. Additionally, automation could improve.

I have been using IBM Integration Bus for approximately 13 years.

IBM Integration Bus is highly stable.

We have approximately four clients using this solution.

The technical support is very good, they have a fast response.

The installation of the IBM Integration Bus was straightforward. The time frame that it takes for the deployment depends on the environment the customer has. 

The licensing model of IBM Integration Bus is good. It's a yearly subscription. However, the price is depending on the model that you choose. If it's a Cloud version, then you can pay per month or you can pay it annually upfront. There are three-year options available, but it depends on what deployment you have.

As more people are moving operations toward the Cloud. The Clouds are offering subscriptions. They will charge you based on what they're processing. Whereas the on-premise version, the vendors offer a perpetual license. It doesn't have those limitations that the subscriptions models have for the number of transactions. What most of the vendors are doing is they will more or less charge you for a small, medium, or large package based on the number of transactions and they will bill your account.

IBM Integration Bus is a very good solution and they have come a long way with improvements over the years.

I rate IBM Integration Bus a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for integrations of traffic between internal applications, communications, and transactions between various internal applications. We also use it for integration with various external parties.

Before we implemented IBM to integrate with other external parties, we had buckets of applications to build, and maintenance was difficult, as was support. On top of that, integration wasn't well controlled and managed. Right now, post-implementation of IBM ESB, we have a better structure. We have better teams in development and response to customers. We have an application that is centrally managed and monitored. We have better SOA experience in our development process.

The feature we find most useful is the ease of development.

It provides a variable within our application it can easily be used across various applications. 

ESQ is very robust and easy to learn. That's the language the solution is based on. 

The solution can scale.

The stability is mostly pretty good.

There are experiences we have on the application, such as latency issues. There are no inherent components for you to throttle and measure the velocity of transactions. For that, you have to get a separate application and set up more robust rules. Then, you can handle API throttling and a number of business logic and rules. You need to implement DataPower, in order to have this. It should have been integrated into a single application rather than having to deal with various applications and components. It would be nice if everything could be packaged under one solution.

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.

If you have the business rule engine that can help us measure velocity, throttle, monetization, et cetera, within the ESB, it would be better than it is now. There won't be any need for one to start looking out for any possible change in the near future.

The initial setup is a bit complex. 

This is a very expensive product.

We've been using the solution for more than five years at this point. 

There is some latency and slowness in the application. At times, we have to restart the server, and there are some errors we can't handle. We send those to IBM. It's relatively stable, however, periodically, we have problems, which is why we have to get IBM to help us resolve them. That said, I would describe the product as stable.

In terms of extensibility to other applications after development, it's highly extensible. The solution can scale. 

We have developers, who develop various integration requirements, and we have support. Outside that, we don't have physical users using it. There are about 10 developers in all, that handle various requirements that come along. The support unit is about five people and they are handling the support.

We don't deal with IBM directly. There's a local partner of IBM that assists us. We only have a direct relationship with IBM, when the local partner cannot handle a problem. Our contract is designed with IBM in such a way that we have to go through their local partner. In terms of responsiveness, the local partner is good. I wouldn't say excellent, however, they are good in response time. In terms of timeline for issue resolution, TAT for issue resolution, they are fair.

Before we went to IBM, we didn't use a different solution, however, we checked in our industry and we checked how people felt about Microsoft middleware, and they didn't have a good experience. It's not robust, the support wasn't strong, et cetera. Therefore, we chose IBM. We were swayed by how other organizations, including banks in Nigeria, were mostly seeing success with IBM.

We are using WSO2 for some applications, however, we do not rely on it completely as it is open-source and if we run into issues we cannot rely on help from any support.

Setting up the solution is not straightforward. It's difficult and complex. We needed assistance in order to manage the process properly. It's not something you can just pick up, and then, run on your own. You need help from a partner, which involves additional costs.

We didn't do it alone. We worked with IBM, and then, IBM nominated a local partner in Nigeria that worked with us to set this up.

The solution is very expensive. 

We looked at another solution called WSO2. It is a lot easier to set up. It's easier to use, and it's less expensive. However, the challenge we have with that, is that the support is lacking as it is an open-source application. The support is not so strong. That's the only reservation we had for that. Outside that, we are also using it for some other applications as well.

The prominent other contenders were WebLogic from Oracle, and whatever was provided by Microsoft. Among the three then, IBM came out on top in our assessment and rating. However, with the benefit of the insights we now have, if we were to do the same process again, over five years, WSO2 has done so well, and some other middleware is also doing well. Likely we would not choose IBM if we had to choose again.

We are customers and end-users.

I'd rate the solution around a seven out of ten.

I would advise companies to evaluate and consider the options and whether they make sense vis-a-vis the benefit they hope to derive is worth the while. IBM is not cheap. They need to consider costs and make sure they have internal resources available to them. Those using the solution need to be well trained. Otherwise, the company will end up depending on third parties for everything, and that will drive up the costs further. 

I'd also suggest companies implement such a solution early. Load balancing is very critical in our experience. We didn't implement load balancing immediately, and that affected us. As a company is implementing, it should consider load balancing. Rather than invest on the on-prem, a company should consider the cloud. We did on IBM Unix servers on-prem, and that's pretty expensive.