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Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

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Message Queue (MQ) Software
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability
I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…
SelvaKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to batch metadata transfers between systems that support MQ as the communication method
We find it scalable for internal applications, but not so much for external integrations. It should support a wider range of protocols, not just a few specific ones. Many other products have broader protocol support, and IBM MQ is lagging in that area. IBM MQ needs to improve the UI for quicker logging. Users should also have a lot more control over logging, with a dashboard-like interface. That's something they should definitely work on.
Sther Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-learn solution that can be used with microservices
We have done around 20 projects in Red Hat AMQ. I have two projects using Red Hat AMQ, and I can share how its scalability has impacted them. In one project, we have a solution for authentication and authorization using SSO. We need to integrate with other systems in two ways. We use Red Hat AMQ for social data, sending messages to other queues, and integrating with business. We have two databases with the same information. The solution is good because it helps us solve problems with messaging. For instance, when messaging doesn't change, we still check the cloud and verify the information. In another project, we have a large banking solution for the Amazon region using Red Hat AMQ for financial transactions. In this solution, business messages are sent, and another system processes them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stream processing is a very valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"The high availability is valuable. It is robust, and we can rely on it for a huge amount of data."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is its versatility. It can solve many use cases or can be a part of many use cases. Its fundamental value of it is in the real-time processing capability."
"The stability is very nice. We currently manage 50 million events daily."
"Apache Kafka is effective when dealing with large volumes of data flowing at high speeds, requiring real-time processing."
"I have seen a return on investment with this solution."
"Kafka's most valuable feature is its user-friendliness."
"The most important feature for me is the guaranteed delivery of messages from producers to consumers."
"It is very robust and very scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the stability. It's perfect in this way."
"Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."
"The solution allows one to easily configure an IBM MQQueueManager."
"It's highly scalable. It provides various ways to establish high availability and workloads. E.g., you can spread workloads inside of your clusters."
"Reliable integration between MQ servers is the most valuable feature."
"This solution has improved and influenced the communication between different applications, then standardized that communication."
"IBM MQ processes many thousands of messages in a second, which is efficient for handling high transaction volumes."
"This product is well adopted on the OpenShift platform. For organizations like ours that use OpenShift for many of our products, this is a good feature."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination."
"The most valuable feature for us is the operator-based automation that is provided by Streams for infrastructure as well as user and topic management. This saves a lot of time and effort on our part to provide infrastructure. For example, the deployment of infrastructure is reduced from approximately a week to a day."
"Reliability is the main criterion for selecting this tool for one of the busiest airports in Mumbai."
"My impression is that it is average in terms of scalability."
"Red Hat AMQ's best feature is its reliability."
"I can organize the tool with microservices, which allows me to use it across different services. It is easy to learn."
 

Cons

"In the data sharing space, the performance of Apache Kafka could be improved."
"I would like to see monitoring service tools."
"Observability could be improved."
"Apache Kafka has performance issues that cause it to lag."
"Managing Apache Kafka can be a challenge, but there are solutions. I used the newest release, as it seems they have removed Zookeeper, which should make it easier. Confluent provides a fully managed Kafka platform, in which the cluster does not need to be managed."
"Kafka has some limitations in terms of queue management."
"The support on Apache Kafka could be improved."
"We struggled a bit with the built-in data transformations because it was a challenge to get them up and running the way we wanted."
"The product does not allow users to access data from API or external networks since it can only be used in a closed network, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There are many complications with IBM MQ servers."
"We are looking at the latest version, and we hope that resilience, high availability, and monitoring will be improved. It can have some more improvements in the heterogeneous messaging feature. The current solution is on-premises, so good integration with public cloud messaging solutions would be useful."
"I have used the support from IBM MQ. There is some room for improvement."
"Scaling is difficult with IBM MQ."
"It could provide more monitoring tools and some improvement to the UI. I would also like to see more throughput in future versions."
"SonicMQ CAA (continuous availability architecture) functionality on auto failover and data persistence should be made available without a shared drive, as it exists in multi-instance queue managers."
"The memory management is very poor and it consumes too much memory."
"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."
"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."
"There are some aspects of the monitoring that could be improved on. There is a tool that is somewhat connected to Kafka called Service Registry. This is a product by Red Hat that I would like to see integrated more tightly."
"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"The challenge is the multiple components it has. This brings a higher complexity compared to IBM MQ, which is a single complete unit."
"AMQ could be better integrated with Jira and patch management tools."
"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."
"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."
"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"I was using the product's free version."
"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
"Apache Kafka is an open-sourced solution. There are fees if you want the support, and I would recommend it for enterprises. There are annual subscriptions available."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"The solution is open source."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"It is a licensed product. As compared to an open-source solution, such as RabbitMQ, it is obviously costly. If you're using IBM Message Broker, which is a licensed product, IBM MQ is included in the same license. You don't have to pay separately for IBM MQ. The license cost of IBM MQ is lesser than IBM Message Broker."
"The licensing fees are paid quarterly and they are expensive."
"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"IBM is expensive."
"IBM's licensing model seems more reasonable than some competitors. They charge based on usage, which is good."
"The problem with this product is that it's a little bit expensive."
"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."
"The solution is open-source."
"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.
What is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" sol...
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, si...
What do you like most about IBM MQ?
The feature I find most effective for ensuring message delivery without loss is the backup threshold. This feature al...
What do you like most about Red Hat AMQ?
AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift ...
What needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?
The product needs to improve its documentation and training.
What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?
We just started working with Red Hat AMQ. We selected it as the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) platform for a new airpo...
 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere MQ
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
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