IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs OpenESB comparison

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM WebSphere Message Broker and OpenESB compete in the enterprise application integration space. IBM WebSphere Message Broker has an advantage due to its robust support and structured pricing.

Features: IBM WebSphere Message Broker is recognized for its comprehensive integration capabilities, scalability, and reliability. It offers extensive support for various messaging protocols and data formats. OpenESB is notable for its flexibility, ease of component integration, and effective use of Java-based technologies. WebSphere caters to traditional enterprise needs, whereas OpenESB focuses on a modular, agile architecture.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM WebSphere Message Broker facilitates a structured deployment process with substantial support and training services, advantageous for organizations needing vendor assistance. OpenESB's community-driven deployment model allows for quick implementation with minimal vendor intervention. IBM provides more direct vendor involvement, while OpenESB relies on a strong community.

Pricing and ROI: IBM WebSphere Message Broker involves higher initial setup costs with a potentially significant return on investment, given its robust enterprise-level features. OpenESB has a lower setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious organizations, still delivering satisfactory ROI through its open-source foundation. The main distinction is in the initial investment, with WebSphere demanding higher upfront costs for greater long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. OpenESB Report (Updated: April 2025).

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. OpenESB

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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 WebSphere Message Broker

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

8th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (16th)

OpenESB

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

14th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 3.9%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenESB is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

BrajendraKumar

Technical Architect at HCL Technologies

Offers large-sized business information processing with a time-saving setup and impressive stability

I primarily use two previews of the product for Dev and two for QA as part of the production process. Whatever tools our company is using, the cost of a license in IBM WebSphere Message Broker is about 80% of all these software or tools. The message routing capabilities satisfy workflow efficiency. The product supports message formats of XML, JSON, and SSID, which are around 24 KB to 50 KB in size. The solution supports communication protocols like STTP and TCP. Features like DataGraph need to be introduced in IBM WebSphere Message Broker. Some of the clients of our organization are using an outdated version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker for which the vendor doesn't provide direct support anymore. For the aforementioned version, our company professionals can solve the queries on their own without seeking support from IBM. During the installation of a prior version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker, sometimes I have to configure the failovers through the cluster, where issues arise, and I often seek help from the support team. The solution is being used by some medicine companies in our organization that receive sales orders from the EDR or JDE. I would not recommend the product to others as its becoming obsolete and they can rather choose a middleware solution from Amazon or Azure. But I would overall rate the product a nine out of ten.

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PaulPerez

Integration Architect at Pymma consulting

Enables us to define the business process and integrate it with other software

I used to work with Integration Bus. What is interesting is that the two products were made mainly by the same team, but OpenESB is lighter, you can run it on a simple GBM. It's lighter and has quite a few resources, no application server, and no database. This provides you with more intelligence because there is some kind of friction in the routing service, and you can play with that friction to provide some connection policy, like the last deployed policy. For example, if you were to install version one, and afterward, you deployed version two, automatically — if you decided that your connection will be the right deployed connection — you would be routed to the last version. If it doesn't work, you would just need to redeploy version one. Also, there are higher-level concepts, such as the interface of services, which allows you to define your interface and choose the method of implementation, like Java for example. On the other hand, with OpenESB, I am more connected. At the monitoring level, you can trust the level and replay the process, which is interesting, but because you have to store everything on the database, you have a conventional system that makes your system require more resources. The push ability to extract data from the process and then publish it in the data container is very interesting. For example, by using a database like Google's big data analytic search, you can create your own analytics from the data in your process without disturbing the process.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."

"The most valuable feature of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is the ability to facilitate communication with legacy systems, offering a multitude of great capabilities. For example, if there is a mainframe system in place with a web service serving as the front end. In that case, the solution enables efficient protocol transformations to convert all request payloads into a format that the legacy systems can accept, rendering the integration and transformation processes seamless and highly effective."

"Message Broker is valuable because most of the applications are using MQ. Even in my current engagement, the few applications which I audit to onboard the bank are using MQ."

"It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy."

"The transactions and message queuing are the most valuable features of the solution."

"The solution has good integration."

"We only use the basic features, but the most valuable one for us is the Publish-subscribe pattern."

"It has many interfaces and you can connect to any backend source that has another format, and convert it to the desired format."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker pros

"The core is very stable."

"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."

"One of the most valuable features is being able to implement business processes while keeping track of the design from BPMN to a BPEL Implementation."

"OpenESB pushes the organization to clearly define service boundaries and interfaces. So it motives the business and the development teams to clearly define their business services and processes they want to implement. OpenESB supports fine and coarse-grain granularity for the services and supports top-down and bottom-up approaches for the services, processes definition, and composition."

Cons

"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."

"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."

"The user interface is designed mainly for experts, much in the way a BPM or another integration tool is."

"The solution can add container engines such as docker."

"There is some lag in the GUI. There have been some performance issues and maybe it's because of the application data."

"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."

"I know that Message Broker was a very tightly copied product with another IBM product, that is, IBM MQ. I would like to have a little bit more decoupling from the IBM MQ because it should not be a prerequisite for IBM WebSphere Message Broker usage."

"The images and size of the containers are too big and I think that they should be more lightweight."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker cons

"The documentation of the product must be improved. It could be tricky to find the right documentation on a topic since the documentation is spread in many places. I advise the new joiner to contact the community to get entry points and additional documentation. Tutorial and Video must be present to take up the product."

"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."

"The documentation needs to be better."

"Cloud deployment is weak and needs to be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."

"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"

"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."

"The solution is expensive."

"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."

"This product is more expensive than competing products."

"The solution is expensive."

"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."

"The cost for the prediction instrument is high because it is charged per instances based on prediction, but the rest of the solution is free."

"The Community Edition is a full product you can use in production, it does not have limitations like other alternatives."

"There are two versions. The first is the community version, which is free and contains the last part of the feature, but if you want to get the Enterprise version, you'll have to pay €60,000 which covers support and two instances on production."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Hospitality Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time.

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What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

There could be greater flexibility and agility in service creation for the product. As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordi...

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Product Reports

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

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Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker

No data available

Overview

WebSphere Message Broker is an enterprise service bus (ESB) providing connectivity and universal data transformation for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and non-SOA environments. It allows businesses of any size to eliminate point-to-point connections and batch processing regardless of platform, protocol or data format.

IBM

OpenESB is a Java-based open-source enterprise service bus. It can be used as a platform for both enterprise application integration and service-oriented architecture. OpenESB allows you to integrate legacy systems, external and internal partners and new development in your Business Process.

Sample Customers

WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire

Information Not Available

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. OpenESB