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IBM MQ vs Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure 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:
 

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
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 21.0%, down from 39.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure is 4.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ21.0%
Software AG Optimize for Infrastructure4.2%
Other74.8%
Business Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

David Pizinger - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has faced unexpected VM restarts but continues to deliver messages reliably
I'm not sure if we've utilized IBM MQ's high availability. Our MQ VMs are set up in clusters, and I think our queue managers are set up in pairs. However, I don't know if we actually use any specific high availability features of IBM MQ that are out of the box. We have it architected with high availability because we use F5 load balancers, and everything about our architecture is highly available. I haven't personally used the management tools with IBM MQ, but we do have them, and our middleware folks leverage them. I can't really comment on them because I don't use them myself. I don't think the management tools help optimize message flows, and I'm not really aware of how they help in this. I'm not familiar with dynamic routing for IBM MQ.
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

"All the features are valuable."
"One of the most important features is data persistence."
"I would rate the solution ten out of ten because I have been working on it for the past fifteen years."
"This product has very strong stability."
"The first things are its simplicity and its robustness. Compared to any other product, it's the most robust I've worked with. And it's extremely easy to manage."
"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."
"It is very robust and very scalable."
"The major thing we like about it is zero transaction loss."
"It kind of alleviates all the complexity in the IT support and service teams, and it will make their life easier."
"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."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."
"Normally, the system is very stable but we've actually just got a call, "Part of it's down!" So, at the moment, we have got a bit of downtime."
"We are looking for another solution that is less expensive."
"We have used technical support. Not for the solution, but for problems or issues. I would say that they are okay. If you want me to rate between one to ten, I would rate them four."
"They might be able to improve the monitoring features."
"IBM MQ can scale, but there are some challenges with it."
"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka."
"They could integrate monitoring into the solution, a bit more than they do now."
"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."
"There is real money involved here. As compared to RabbitMQ, IBM MQ is on the higher side in terms of cost."
"IBM is expensive."
"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"We have a special contract with IBM MQ that give us a certain price."
"The price is high."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing 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: July 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.