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IBM MQ vs Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure 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
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Software AG Optimize for In...
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 22.0%, down from 25.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure is 4.1%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ22.0%
Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure4.1%
Other73.9%
Business Activity Monitoring
 

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.
RK
Vice President - Digital Integration at Kellton Tech Solutions Limited
Mature, stable, and powerful managed platform
Sometimes Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure goes through an upgrade cycle of four years to get to the next version. Some of the utilities need to be definitely advanced as well so that migration to the latest version is even smoother and easier. That could probably be the only improvements that they can look at. I definitely think that their cloud version capabilities are still nascent. They need to evolve into offering similar capabilities to the cloud infrastructure as well. That is not specifically SaaS but any managed infrastructure that customers would subscribe to in AWS, Azure, and other public clouds. How to employ Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure and also to see if it can be subscribed as a service from Software AG would be the ideal next steps for this solution to evolve into.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"MQ is a very affordable and easy to use messaging product."
"IBM MQ processes many thousands of messages in a second, which is efficient for handling high transaction volumes."
"In conjunction with some other products we use, such as IIB, it does a lot of the transformation and cuts out a lot of programming that has to be done for transforming data from our carrier customers into the format that we need it to be."
"IBM HQ's stability is great - we send six million messages a day, and we're very satisfied with HQ's ability to handle that volume."
"We use MQ as part of the core of our enterprise information bus, allowing messaging to integrate with third-party solutions, like for web banking, so we are able to create an information highway that takes in legacy events, captures ATM and credit card transactions, and integrates that into a digital web dashboard."
"So all in all, I think it's been fantastic."
"We are able to transport data across any platform in a secure fashion, be it internal or external."
"The clusterization which results in persistence is the most valuable feature."
"The infrastructure monitoring features are the most valuable. The primary purpose of Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure is to automate the aspects of monitoring various infrastructure and applications. They will definitely automate an alert automatically, but a lot of such tools differ from each other on aspects of various low-level components that they can monitor."
"It kind of alleviates all the complexity in the IT support and service teams, and it will make their life easier."
 

Cons

"The customer service or technical support from IBM is not as good as we expected; it could be better. They don't meet our standards due to the timing to get a person with knowledge."
"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"
"It could get a face lift with a modern marketing campaign."
"The areas of IBM MQ that have room for improvement are its compatibility with the public clouds, specifically its compatibility with Azure or AWS, as there is definitely a lot of scope for improvement there."
"They need to provide more and more platform integrations because I'm not sure what are the latest upgrades, in terms of MQ as of today."
"The response time for IBM MQ support could be better because when we are using IBM MQ and something goes wrong, support is required as the resource availability of the IBM product is very limited."
"Opening a PMR is a pain in the neck. When you're in a critical event, you don't want to go open up a web ticket; you want to get somebody on the phone who could fix the problem now."
"The initial setup is difficult. Creating your own cluster is difficult. Working with cluster repositories is difficult. Issue management with IBM MQ is difficult."
"Sometimes Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure goes through an upgrade cycle of four years to get to the next version."
"Sometimes Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure goes through an upgrade cycle of four years to get to the next version. Some of the utilities need to be definitely advanced as well so that migration to the latest version is even smoother and easier. That could probably be the only improvements that they can look at. I definitely think that their cloud version capabilities are still nascent. They need to evolve into offering similar capabilities to the cloud infrastructure as well. That is not specifically SaaS but any managed infrastructure that customers would subscribe to in AWS, Azure, and other public clouds. How to employ Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure and also to see if it can be subscribed as a service from Software AG would be the ideal next steps for this solution to evolve into."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We have a special contract with IBM MQ that give us a certain price."
"IBM MQ appliance has pricing options, but they are costly."
"I think it's pretty reasonable, but I'm not so too sure of the current pricing strategy from IBM. We use many bundled services, and most often, we go through a service provided by some other third-party implementation. So, I can't really give an honest opinion about that."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"In terms of cost, IBM MQ is slightly on the higher side."
"To implement such an IBM solution, a company has to pay a lot in term of licensing and consultancy. A pricing model might be a better option."
"Pricing could be better, as with all IBM products. But their performance in production, along with security and scalability, will pay returns in the long run."
Information not available
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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
webMethods Optimize for Infrastructure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Swisscom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, TIBCO, Aurea and others in Business Activity Monitoring. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.