IBM MQ Reviews

I work for a company that has an ESB backbone built on the MQ. It's the enterprise bus for the whole company. I was a trainer for IBM products long ago, but I moved to different companies and now I'm a senior developer supporting MQ and IBM. 

I like the MQ's simplicity and rock-solid stability. I've never experienced a failure in two decades caused by the product itself. It has only failed due to human error. 

I started using MQ on a mainframe, so I understand the thinking behind it. However, there's a lot of legacy stuff lagging behind. I think a start-up company might find the approach to be outdated. 

IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure.

Support utilities are almost non-existent. MQ is dependent on third-party companies. I write everything I use, like a Linux-based command line interface for all admin stuff. 

I started using MQ in 1999, so it has been around 24 years.

I rate IBM MQ 10 out of 10 for stability. I can configure the topology on my laptop and copy identical stuff into a multiple mainframe configuration.

Setting up MQ is straightforward. Generally, installing MQ isn't a big deal. It's a simple product. The magic happens when you go configure the topology and do some performance tuning.

I work for a huge company, so the deployment is done by DevOps. We're on the application side. The installation was dodgy in versions 5 or 6, but now you just drop a container.  We try to automate as much as possible, so we wrote extended Jenkins jobs to flash install all the virtual machinesWe don't deploy MQ on the cloud, but I'm thinking of migrating it to Azure. I see no benefit in a private cloud. 

IBM could lower the price because many companies are abandoning MQ from Mickey Mouse products like RabbitMQ and Kafka. Kafka is horrible but free. 

We are using version 9.2. The solution is deployed on the cloud and Azure is the provider.

There are four people in my company who are working with IBM MQ.

IBM MQ is robust compared to other products in the market. It also gives you support from the IBM team. We can connect to the IBM technical team in case of any production fault or errors.

For security, we have IBM MQ instead of any other products.

IBM support team is really only concerned with the IBM cloud. They're not supporting any other cloud platforms or suggestions. It would be nice if we could get support for Azure.

MQ supports more than 4MB of data transmitting. That is not supported by ASB. Because of this feature, we are using MQ. Otherwise, clients will be motivated to use Azure Service Bus. IBM MQ should think about how the cost can be minimized and how to provide better service for users. MQ could provide more incentives or services that are better than Service Bus, so that our users will be motivated to use IBM MQ.

I have been using this solution for about seven years.

It's very reliable and stable. We haven't received any frequent challenges.

We have sufficient memory and storage. From a network point of view, the TCP/IP protocols are challenging.

It's easy to expand and easy to scale.

We would like to see the IBM technical support team extend their hand to providing support for other cloud vendors like Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS.

I also have experience with RabbitMQ. IBM MQ has more valuable features and is more reliable in comparison when it comes to servers and applications.

Initial deployment is very simple. You don't need someone who is very technical to configure it, unless you are establishing a new environment or a server, or infrastructure as a service. If you're upgrading things, it's very easy.

We use one support engineer for maintenance. They monitor the server and infrastructure.

Deployment was done in-house. We've had some challenges, but that can be fixed while we are connected with our IBM MQ support team.

The length of deployment depends on if there is a huge queue manager and on the type of integrations that need to be done. If it's a simple integration or there are less than 100 or 200 applications, deployment will take four to five hours.

Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost. There are freeware in the markets, and many users are motivated to use those.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

I use the solution in my company since our clients always go for a middleware solution. IBM MQ is a part of the middleware solution category. When I design a middleware solution for our clients, I use IBM MQ to basically store the message.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it offers guaranteed delivery of messages to users. One good thing about the product is the guaranteed delivery since it guarantees that the message won't get lost. My company uses IBM MQ since we handle a lot of asynchronous modes of the design flow, and that is why we choose to use the solution to host the message before we proceed with the other sub-processes. The tool is effective in areas like message delivery and managing large message volumes. It is a very good solution.

In IBM MQ, the channel connection is an area where my company faces some limitations. At times, we hit limitations on the connection, meaning the connection is fully occupied.

I have been using IBM MQ for more than ten years. My company is a reseller of IBM tools.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

The solution can be deployed in an hour.

The tool saves on development, implementation, and operation costs. The product is quite easy to maintain.

If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive.

Maintenance is quite easy when there is an upgrade of any version. You just need to migrate the configuration to the other platform, and it is quite easy.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We mainly use IBM MQ when creating the integration buses for different customers. For example, for creating external API for the internal systems, we use IBM MQ quite extensively.

The interface is good, and we work using API functionality in the main part of our projects. The solution is easy to understand and even medium developers can easily start using it.

More documentation would be good because some features are not deeply implemented.

I have been using the solution for more than ten years. 

It is a stable solution. I rate the stability nine out of ten.

The solution is highly scalable. We have a number of projects with more than one hundred thousand users. I rate the scalability ten out of ten.

The initial setup is easy. If the required access and permissions are provided, the deployment takes one day or less. But in most cases, we wait for some permissions or access to systems to finish the deployment on the customer site. One DevOps employee is enough for the deployment.

I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten.

The pricing seems good according to the functionality that the solution provides.

It is a very stable and scalable product and is a market leader in its appropriate sector. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

IBM MQ is the standard for financial industry messaging. As far as I know, it is the best in class.

The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is it has all the features necessary for contemporary messaging, not only for the financial industry but for any application.

IBM MQ has developed into some newer solutions. It has a message broker, it is now on the cloud, it has containerization, that has high availability features

IBM MQ may not be as convenient for Java programmers as Active MQ, for example, because Java programmers prefer Java, even though it is slower.

IBM MQ could improve by adding more protocols or APIs for a standard application, such as MuleSoft.

I have been using IBM MQ for approximately 15 years.

IBM MQ is stable, performs well, and is highly reliable. They guarantee message delivery.

The scalability of IBM MQ is good. There are cluster, container, and broker features available. It scales well horizontally and vertically.

Most of our company is using IBM MQ in my company.

The support from IBM MQ is good. They have always helped with my problems, but sometimes it can take them a while for a resolution. Sometimes you might find a bug in a one-year span of using the solution, but they will provide a fix within a matter of weeks.

Positive

The initial setup of IBM MQ can be straightforward if you have the documentation, it is step-by-step and straightforward.

IBM MQ is an expensive solution compared to other solutions. However, if you pay less you will not receive the same experience or features.

It may not have all the APIs, features, or protocols that the newest systems have, but in performance and reliability, it is the best.

The amount of people needed to maintain the solution depends on the company and how they want to maintain it. When I was working for a bank I supported 300 MQ managers with approximately 150 systems running. However, for the basic use of the solution, you do not need many people. If you add more features, such as broker and clustering you will need more people for maintenance.

My advice to others is this solution is the best there is. For maintenance, you will probably need fewer people to maintain it than other solutions because of its reliability. The features are probably the most extensive in its class.

I rate IBM MQ a ten out of ten.

There were some long-running processes where it was timing out. We got the request from this source application, and we put the data into IBM MQ. Then, we read the data from IBM MQ before doing the rest of the processing. Especially for real-time processes, we have just decoupled it into two different ways to ensure there is no time-out.

The publish and subscribe features are the most useful aspects of the solution.

It's not too difficult to set up the solution. 

It's stable.

Technical support is quite helpful. 

The moment you send the data, there is no latency there.

We haven't experienced any data loss. 

If they could have some front-end monitoring tool that could be easily available for the team to use, that could be great. While you may not be able to edit your messages, at least if you could look at them, see the queue, and what's inside, et cetera, that would be helpful. We'd like visibility on the health of the environment. 

I've used the solution for two years. 

The stability is good. In fact, we have not seen any issues. Only recently have we observed an issue. There was a limit on the number of messages it could contain. We are having an issue now, however, we have not usually seen any issues related to IBM MQ. Therefore, in general, the solution is stable. I'd rate its reliability eight out of ten. 

I haven't seriously explored the scalability of the product and therefore don't know the full scope of scalability.

We handle about 300 to 400 transactions per day. 

Technical support is very helpful and responsive. We are satisfied with the level of support we get. 

Positive

I have previously used TIBCO EMS as well. 

The initial setup is pretty easy. It's not that complex. I'd rate the ease of implementation at a seven or eight out of ten.

The deployment time is pretty short. It's not a long process. 

In an integration scenario, like payment processing, where the payment has to go to the backend system, SAP, or talk to multiple applications, due to the fact that it's a lengthy, complex business process, we just decouple it. Some of the information we get immediately after receiving the request, and we pass on the information to the customer. Then, we put the payload into the IBM MQ, and then we started processing from IBM MQ. So there are integrations that sometimes need to be done or worked with. 

We have an admin team that does the configuration and setup of the solution. They can do it in one or two business days. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using this product. For example, we've had no data loss since using the solution

A different team handles the setup, and likely they also handle the licensing. I don't have any visibility on the cost of the product. 

I'm a user and customer. I'm not a core developer of IBM MQ. However, I'm a user of IBM MQ.

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate it seven out of ten overall. 

The solution has many use cases from the middleware like IBM WebSphere, Message Broker, and payments.

All the features are valuable.

When comparing the solution to the new age of streaming in messaging technology it is so large, that there are complexities dealing with multi-cloud, multi-deployment, or high availability models. The use cases and APIs can also use some simplification.

I would like to see a dashboard that shows the application's performance.

I have been using the solution for ten to fifteen years.

The solution is rock-solid and stable. 

The solution is scalable in a vertical sense however when considering the available modern cloud technology, horizontal scalability is not a viable solution. It is not worth the additional resources, time, and cost required.

Customer support is good but there is room for improvement in their process. Their support is 24 hours so if you are dealing with support in the U.S. and it is passed over to a support person in the UK for example the person in the UK will not be provided with a detailed log of what has transpired. A lot of time is wasted waiting for them to catch up by reviewing the information each time the case is passed to a support person in a different country.

Neutral

If it is a standalone implementation, it is straightforward. If the implementation is the higher availability mode, XM mode, it becomes a complicated process because it comes with a shared disk resource where one instance goes down, and another instance comes up. This means it can not always be an Active mode, you require an Active-Passive mode all the time. This can increase the setup cost and complexity.

Implementation was done in-house and it took a couple of hours.

Within the first two years, you will see the initial cost returned. 

The fee for this solution is on the higher end of the scale. The licensing fee is high.

I rate the solution nine out of ten.

We currently use the solution with 30 to 40 applications across the organization. It requires four to five people to maintain the solution including engineers, application support, an architect, and integration engineers.

For all the cases where IBM MQ is no longer required, we are migrating to a different solution (Kafka). 

The solution requires a lot of work to implement and maintain. I would suggest looking at other more modern solutions depending on what your organization requires.

We're using the IBM MQ series in development, integration, UAT, and production areas.

What I found most valuable in this software is its reliability because messages that are sent into the queues are consumed by the other end of the connectivity. It has helped us maintain integration between two different systems, so that has been part of one of the layers of our architecture that communicates, for example, a back-end platform and back-end core system with a front-end platform. In our case, we are using the backend as a 224 banking system and the frontend we are using the Wall Street front office system. Those two systems are interconnected via the IBM MQ series.

An area for improvement for this software is that sometimes, messages are not consumed in the queues. We have seen queues where not all messages are emptied. That issue has been solved by our IBM team located in Spain, but we haven't received detailed technical information as to why those queues are not totally consumed. A probable reason could be some service and availability issue because of server updates in IBM MQ itself, or server updates related to the operating system, which in our case, we are using Red Hat Linux.

I have seen a lot of problems with the file transfers, e.g. using FTP or SFTP or LFTP. Normally with all these kinds of transfers, they are not on a transaction boundary, meaning a transfer can fail during the execution. We are not certain why it hasn't reached the destination as these protocols are not transactional which you normally have in MQ messages. What I would like to see in the next release is a solution for the MQ file transfer. I saw some literature about it, but I am not sure if the feature is available, or if it will be easy to configure and maintain in the bank.

We've used IBM MQ within the last year. We've being using it on a continuous basis because it is the secure platform we have in our banking system.

IBM MQ is very stable. It's the best server in terms of interconnectivity. The reliability that the MQ series has, I haven't seen in other servers that are also based in MQ.

My impression of the scalability of this software: We started with a very easy installation where we have very few queues defined. Then, we had a huge integration where we applied, pulled, and observed that the scalability is very straightforward. We also found an easy way: making an active-passive configuration automatic. For example: If you have one active server going down, the passive server is switched on automatically, without us needing to do anything from our end, which means the active-passive configuration works properly.

I haven't been involved in contacting IBM's support, but in general, we didn't have any vendor issues.

The setup for this software was very complex, particularly with the integration between the two systems I was talking about earlier: on the core backend and on the user frontend that is the Wall Street system. It has a lot of different types of flows, and all those flows are defined into the server that is called TTI that is working under the MQ series. That contains a lot of complexities because the vendor of the front-end system has included in the MQ side the server functionality for the application, instead of doing it directly in either the backend or the frontend. This means the MQ part is also helping with the logic for processing messages, and the logic is maintained in a layer: the MQ layer in the server that's called TTI. This is the first time we have faced such complexity, but regarding the MQ as is, meaning the vanilla version, it is quite straightforward. That server works the proper way.

We used consultants for the implementation and those were consultants from the vendor who were already experienced in the TTI server.

The licensing for this software is on a yearly basis, but the bank is holding just one license for the entire bank: a corporate license. As for additional costs, it's a standard fee that includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically.

I didn't download Active MQ and IBM MQ. I was checking on the website because I wanted to know certain functionalities about those two series. So what I downloaded was the literature about their functionalities.

Regarding IBM products, the only one that I was working with was the MQ series.

All products in our organization, particularly the banking systems are on-premise. We are not yet ready to do cloud deployment.

Deployment of this software in the TTI part took three months. For the core part, deployment took approximately one month. The time that it took for deployment is also associated with the number of servers that we had.

We have four groups: development, integration, user acceptance test, and production. In each of these groups, they have their own MQ servers. We started with the installation for the development group, then going forward and solving the issues we found at the beginning with the installation instructions. We continued with the other areas until we reached the production server recently, back in mid-October.

We currently have 200 users of this software.

Deployment of the IBM MQ at core requires two people in our organization, but for the personalized application or the customized one, we have 10 people.

I'm rating this software a five because it is quite expensive and complex. I'm giving this a five over ten rating not just because it runs, but because it has a lot of features.