IBM MQ Reviews

The asynchronous messaging and the assured delivery are the most valuable features because your data needs to make it through from one app to the other, and you don't want to lose it.

It's multi-platform, so we can go between mainframe, Unix, Windows, different platforms, and we can have applications send data using the messaging.

I really can't think of anything that needs improvement. For our company, it does what we need it to do.

The price is always an issue. Like anything you buy, you want the best deal. We are retailers, so we are always looking at costs. I am sure every company does. It would be nice if the message security and file transfer weren’t an extra cost. But I suppose if you want a deluxe of anything, you will need to pay.

We've had it for 20 years.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable.

We don't have to use support very often, but they are responsive.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Implement it. It's pretty easy and straightforward.

I don't do the vendor selection, but I get involved a little bit. When selecting a vendor, I would want ease of administration and installation.

• Ease of use
• Access to support resources
• Access to new release information in a timely manner
• Easy to digest

It is easy to use and seamless with our existing technology. It's a trusted name we know that we've used for years. It performs and it has very low downtime, if any.

With MQ, we always have trouble with the initial priming call failing. It would be nice if we didn't have the little wake-up service. Maybe if it self-monitored, had it's own health monitor, to fire those off upon startup, so we don't have to pay the price for it.

We are happy with the stability.

We have not had any scalability issues to my knowledge.

Our admins have used support in the past. As far as I know, they are satisfied with it. It's pretty solid and it's kind of the backbone of a lot of our stuff.

The initial install was a long time ago.

Stick with the out-of-the-box requirements, unless something tells you to go in another direction. And if so, definitely work with the vendor to make sure that they give you the adequate tools to do that, or help you scope that out.

When selecting a vendor, support is the most important criteria.

It's rock solid. It just works. We have to have guaranteed delivery and support. Support is solid as well, knowing that IBM is there. We looked at some open-source products and other competitors, and at the time that we made the decision, IBM was the one that had the largest support structure. Rock-solid performance really is the most solid feature of it.

We had to integrate different systems and MQ allowed us to send messages between systems and guarantee delivery. What that did is allow us to more easily integrate those systems and feel 100% trust in this solution.

From an MQ perspective, if they had some built-in monitoring, built-in dashboards, maybe some web-enabled functions so we don't have to load specific tools on our workstations. The training and scalability clustering could be a little bit easier. They could also make it failover- and fault-tolerant. The training aspect is a big part. I think IBM maybe has some work to do on the training side a little bit.

Stability is great. Stability is rock solid. We have very few issues with it.

Scalability: We're a smaller shop so we don't have the resources necessarily to take care of it. Scaling out MQ is possible, but it's not as easy as some other products. It's not as easy as other technologies even.

We were not previously using a different solution. The business challenged the pattern we used. Using queuing and messaging presented itself as the best solution.

When choosing a vendor, we want support, access to information, solid products, and, hopefully, building blocks where we can build on and use other products and foundation.

Setup was more complex than what I thought it might be. We have an active-active cluster, meaning that the systems will fail over to each other if they need to. It was more complicated to set up. We had difficulties setting that up initially, even with consultant help.

I would go back to the rock solid performance. If you can get through the setup and the learning curve with the product, it will just run and work for you. That would be the advice I would give.

It provides scalability and it also provides secure messaging.

It is very robust and very scalable.

At a recent conference, I went to a presentation that had the latest version and it has amazing stuff that's coming out. So, I am excited to use those, specifically surrounding the web console and the fact that it's API integrated.

We have stability in our environment because of the product. We can keep adding solutions to the mixture and it still performs as is, which is again a more stable process.

It provides scalability.

I usually deal with level three support and they're pretty awesome; so, they're very good. I rate them 5/5.

There was not a previous solution. I know because of experience with my other jobs that this is a more robust technology to invest in.

Setup was straightforward. I had experience from my previous work, so I was able to bring that experience and implement it here. I was fully versed with it, so it was easier for me.

It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs. But, IBM is IBM, so I guess we'll pay for it.

IBM was on the top of our short list. I didn't even look at the others, because I am biased.

I would do a PoC with IBM and there's a lot of technical help out there and people who would come to help you. So, use them and also look for other customers who have used the product. Then, you will be able to see the benefits of it and try to fit it in to your department.

It can do messaging throughout multiple platforms. That's the major benefit for MQ. At the same time, we use it quite extensively to do messages between the iSeries and the mainframe.

The amount of transactions: You don't have to send a file down. You just send the messages; whatever the transaction is. It's going to be much more effective and more trackable.

It's pretty good right now the way it is.

I don't know whether it is available with the new features, but in the older versions, I remember, to test a queue, you actually had to call an API to send messages back and forth. If that would be a one-command scenario like on the iSeries, instead of me calling the API, sending a message and receiving it, I would like to have something like that. I don't know if MQ’s new features support something like this.

Stability’s pretty good. I haven't had any issues. Although, in clustering, you have to know exactly what you're doing. Otherwise, your cluster will be out of whack a little bit. Otherwise, it's stable. It's very stable.

You can scale it anywhere.

I have not really used technical support in the last year.

When I did, I've had experiences with channels not starting up, either due to connectivity issues which turned out to be either network-related. The messages are really clearly defined and errors are logged, so we referenced that and based on that, we took action.

When we do contact technical support, they're excellent; 5/5.

Because I had worked with it before, initial setup wasn't that bad. If I look at myself at the beginning, when we wanted to set it up, I actually went and took a course before setting it up. Especially on the iSeries side and all the communications, you have to get familiar with all the terms and terminology that are being used on the application. Once you know that, then setting it up is not a big deal.

It's very easy to set up, it's very stable and it's trackable. MQ is a really good tool to be able to send messages back and forth between multiple platforms. If they're looking for a solution for sending files across, they can actually use MQ to send the messages across.

I haven’t given it a perfect rating because there's always room for improvement.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is being strong and supporting it, and being there for a number of years, so I don't have to worry about an unsupported product.

We use it mainly on iSeries and mainframe, so I’m not really involved in using MQ to connect across cloud, mobile, and devices as part of the intranet of things.

Stability and reliability are the most valuable features. It's very reliable and very stable. You can do a fast recovery in case of any failure. It's a very consistent and stable system.

The whole integration channel between PowerVM and third-party applications goes through MQ. This is why MQ plays the role of middleware, of integration, and it helps us to quickly integrate all applications around PowerVM.

One possible area with room for improvement is some integration with the alert system to alert us in case of any failure of any message to be transmitted from one source to another; maybe that could help. It doesn't do that right now.

We will see how MQ will help us when we go to cloud, one day.

It’s very stable.

We have never faced any problem with upgrading or scalability between MQ series and the IBM the PowerVM. It's good.

Once you install MQ, you don't need a lot of support. Of course, we have support with an IBM partner in our country, but up until now, we have never faced a major issue that could impact our business.

Implementation was very straightforward.

Our environment is 60% IBM. We did not shop to search for another solution.

In general, though, the most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are support, response time, credibility, to be near to us, and that they are not working from the cloud.

In a financial institution, for very critical applications, when you invest, you have to invest one time. You don't have time to redo the work over and over. When you build your setup, your infrastructure, to do your service and your financial service for mission-critical applications, you have to choose the best-of-breed application that supports you. This is why we choose IBM without any hesitation.

We have never faced any problem. It works fine.

We are a bank, and regulations restrict us from using the cloud, at this point. We're using MQ only on our data center.

I inherited it when I took over administration of a platform. It is pretty core in our business. I haven't really dealt with configuration that much. It is used to push transactions throughout z/OS, IBM i, Windows, and Linux. It seems to be pretty reliable. It's one of the few things we have that just runs, almost to a point where you forget to go back and do some upgrades. We're running a couple versions that are a little old, and you just forget that; like, "Oh yeah, it's running." It's pretty solid.

It gives us flexibility to drive a solution on any platform but have a reliable communication network.

I didn't know how to get into it. I had to Google how to get into it. Once I got into it, it made sense. It was a green-screen implementation, but it made sense.

I don't know enough about it to really say, "This is where it's missing something."

You can always say price is an area with room for improvement.

It's solid. It's one of the few things that just runs, and runs, and runs.

We've upgraded multiple systems and it's kind of come along. As far as the transaction basis that it's responsible for, it's done a really good job. There might be some lagging Windows versions; that's really been more about operating systems lagging behind because of other applications, not MQ. You might get some spots there, where performance might not be what we would've expected, but that's really not an MQ issue.

We have hardly ever used technical support for it. The last time we did, we found out that we were running an unsupported release. That kind of shows how long it just runs. Sometimes you forget to upgrade a couple of the components.

When I have used technical support, I thought it was very good. They even reached out and helped us a little bit in that situation – when we weren't even supported – to take a look at some of the basic stuff, just to make sure we didn't miss anything. Eventually, we got through the situation. We figured out what it was. It turned out it wasn't MQ at all. It was just a configuration change. I think tech support has been pretty good.

I'm an IBM i guy. I always think IBM support is excellent. I haven't dealt with z/OS in a long time, but they were good there, too. The product support, I would imagine, has been pretty good, too.

It's a worthwhile product. If it's priced accordingly and does everything for you, go for it. It's a good product.

I haven’t given it a perfect rating because I haven't had enough experience with it to say, "This is where it's lacking something." As I’ve mentioned, it seems to be really solid and just works.

The most important criteria for you when selecting a vendor is probably the durability of the vendor. You can get into these relationships that look good, with all good intentions from them, but they're not around. With IBM, obviously, we've invested heavily in the company for a long time. We have a good relationship with them. I think durability, and then going with that is innovation. Those are probably the two biggest characteristics.

I don't know that much about our mobile and cloud initiatives. I think we have some. They're probably beyond the infancy stage but certainly not mature at any point. I'm not sure how this technology is driving any of that. I'm not sure.

For Rogers, MQ is the cornerstone for the billing system for cable. It's accessed through the help desk and through the online stores. It's a very valuable piece of software that interfaces with the customers; there are well over 8 million customers.

Using MQ, because of the speed of getting the transactions, adds the value back to the customers. When you are dealing with a customer in the store, you don't want to be sitting and waiting for transactions to come back on the customer information, the CIF file. Having MQ with the instant response adds value back to the customer's experience.

Price is one thing that could be improved.

Probably because I don't know how it interfaces with the cloud, I would like to see more of that functionality; get more of the cloud experience and more of the mobile experience back into MQ from the customers. That's something I don't have right now.

I think MQ could go farther in terms of the customer experience.

Stability is awesome. MQ is up all the time. We never have an MQ issue. The interfaces that feed into MQ are quite stable and the APIs associated with it are quite proficient. MQ is a very efficient piece of software from a CPU utilization perspective, which I'm interested in. It's very productive and it's quite tuned in terms of performance.

It's quite easy to scale out and to build other regions using MQ. We've developed a peak performance testing area with MQ and we're planning on putting it in the sandbox area to gain more experience before we roll out versions of it. It's quite easy and adaptable to implement into other regions.

I have not used technical support.

It's a very stable product. It's been out in the industry for years. Many industries use it, so it fits into any commodity that you have. It's a very solid product. Give it a try, look at it and understand what it's used for.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are reputation, post-support, reliability, and improvements on the product.

They’re not really using MQ to connect across cloud, mobile, or devices as part of the internet of things.