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IBM MQ vs Software AG Apama comparison

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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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Software AG Apama
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Complex Event Processing (CEP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM MQ and Software AG Apama aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM MQ is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 21.4%, down 24.7% compared to last year.
Software AG Apama, on the other hand, focuses on Complex Event Processing (CEP), holds 22.2% mindshare, down 22.5% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ21.4%
ActiveMQ20.1%
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions9.8%
Other48.7%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Complex Event Processing (CEP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Software AG Apama22.2%
IBM Operational Decision Manager22.0%
TIBCO Streaming21.6%
Other34.19999999999999%
Complex Event Processing (CEP)
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Krishnamsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, At Tiaa Senior Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Asynchronous messaging has streamlined workflow triggers and supports reliable session rollbacks
The best features IBM MQ offers are the topic and subscription, as well as the IBM MQ session and message rollbacks, especially for JMS integration. IBM MQ serves as the underlying foundation for our JMS messages. IBM MQ has positively impacted my organization by enabling asynchronous processing, which means we do not need to wait for any responses from our downstream systems.
SP
Sr Executive Accounts at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A tool to send out promotional notifications that need to improve areas, like deployment and maintenance
Software AG Apama should support offline scenarios as it may not always be possible to stay connected with the cloud. The solution should be deployed on an on-premises model, and it should be able to handle offline scenarios. If certain rules are set in Software AG Apama, then it should be able to execute them without being connected to an open internet source. With Software AG Apama, one may face challenges since it is difficult to find people with the right skill set to operate it. The solution also makes use of a proprietary programming language that is hard to trace in the market. It is better to go with the new options available in the market since Software AG Apama has become an old product. The ease of development and maintenance should be enhanced, but it is difficult due to the use of the proprietary programming language in the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's reliable."
"Ease of use and ease of setup; I'm an admin type, and I can set things up from the command line, and I can set things up through a GUI, and it's easy to work with."
"The solution allows one to easily configure an IBM MQQueueManager, is very easy and demonstrates comparatively better performance than that of other products, and makes it impossible to lose a message, with its greatest advantage being its robustness."
"It's easy to install and it's bulletproof."
"The reliability of the queuing is the most valuable feature."
"The biggest advantage of IBM MQ is its reliability."
"The high availability and session recovery are the most valuable features because we need the solution live all day."
"To have that relationship, and to have MQ being able to service what they service and support that expansion has been fantastic."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability that it provides its users to handle different kinds of rules."
 

Cons

"They have provided a Liberty Profile in the Web Console for administration, and that could be further enhanced. It is not fit for use by an enterprise. They have to get rid of their WebSphere process and develop a front-end on Node.js or the like."
"It is scalable, but not easily."
"Maybe, there should be a containerized version of the application, that can be deployed on the enterprises."
"Customer support response times could be improved."
"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."
"It could provide more monitoring tools and some improvement to the UI. I would also like to see more throughput in future versions."
"As far as I know, that is currently lacking, but maybe I just don't know."
"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."
"The ease of development and maintenance should be enhanced, but it is difficult due to the use of the proprietary programming language in the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"It would be a 10 out of 10 if it wasn't so expensive."
"The price is high."
"I think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."
"The license for IBM MQ is commercial and not cheap. You get a multi-platform solution, which is important because it lets you connect systems on mainframes, personal solutions, Unix, Linux, etc."
"You have to license per application installation and if you expand vertically or horizontally, you will be paying for more licenses. The licenses are approximately $10,000 to $15,000 a license, it can get expensive quite quickly."
"A commercial license is required to operate Software AG Apama."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
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...
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Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Progress Apama
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Okasan Online Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.