Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Integration Bus pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.0 out of 5

70 reviews
90% willing to recommend

1,279 followers

Pros & Cons summary

IBM Integration Bus offers easy deployment without code rewriting, adapting to specific needs. It efficiently integrates backend applications with minimal CPU usage and flexible API support, enhancing performance. Seamless communication is facilitated across platforms like SAP and Oracle, featuring robust transformation and routing. Though based on Eclipse, the toolkit could be more responsive. High licensing costs, complex migration, and limited orchestration support are drawbacks, along with scalability and stability challenges during testing.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM Integration Bus offers strong performance, is stable, and efficiently supports integration with various systems, including legacy and modern applications.

The built-in connectors for systems like SAP and Oracle Database, and advanced features such as integration with Kafka, enhance its functionality.

The powerful error handling and monitoring capabilities make it a reliable choice for enterprise-level integration needs.

The tool supports transformation and routing, making it effective in adapting data formats to meet destination system requirements.

IBM Integration Bus's flexibility and support for different integration approaches, such as document conversions and service-oriented architecture, enhance its overall value.

CONS

Documentation and support resources for IBM Integration Bus are lacking, making it difficult for users to find necessary information and guidance.

The licensing model and overall pricing of IBM Integration Bus are considered expensive and could be improved for better flexibility.

IBM Integration Bus struggles with efficient cloud deployment and needs enhancements for better cloud integration.

Scalability, especially vertical scaling, is seen as challenging with IBM Integration Bus, prompting users to seek improvements.

IBM Integration Bus lacks integration with popular banking applications and fails to support industry-specific connectors, which could enhance its utility.

IBM Integration Bus Pros review quotes

Systems Software Specialist III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 19, 2019

My favorite feature is the XML-based DFDL mapping, which is a tool that allows you to graphically map legacy data formats to modern data formats.

Read full review

PO

PRINCEWILL OPARA

Head Banking Application Customization and Reporting at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

May 15, 2021

The stability is mostly pretty good.

Read full review

Ashraf Siddiqui

IBM Integration & Solution Architect at Meezan Bank

Jul 29, 2024

We've been using IBM Integration Bus for seven years to create a service-oriented architecture in our bank and implement SOAR infrastructure using this tool. It helps us with internal services for core banking and different digital channels. We also use it to expose our services to other banks and companies and consume services from outside our bank using proxy servers.

Read full review

IBM Integration Bus

Free Report: IBM Integration Bus Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Integration Bus. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Chief Executive Officer at Responsiv

Mar 7, 2022

It allows us to avoid the need for consumers to understand multiple API protocols and security arrangements, and in some circumstances can reduce the impact of systems being unavailable.

Read full review

QK

Sr. Manager Software Quality Assurance at UBL

Sep 8, 2020

Promotes the reuse of developed resources to more efficiently consume resources.

Read full review

reviewer1426110

Integration Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2020

I use the integration of Kafka and the message flow, which is really good. It is also good for moving any file from one location to another. Using IBM Integration Bus in the data stage is pretty simple. You can see the preview and other things. The MQ server integrated with IBM Integration Bus is really great. I don't have to do a lot of configuration from that side. It is really good.

Read full review

PS

Pavel Shcherbukha

Team Leader of the Development Team at IBM/IT-Innovation

Sep 28, 2019

This solution is very reliable and it is easy to learn.

Read full review

Harm Van Der Gugten

Managing Director at Talipoint (Pty) Ltd

Sep 19, 2023

The multi-approach and the multi-capabilities are valuable.

Read full review

reviewer1709634

Integration Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

One of the most valuable features is how seamless and easy to use this solution is. This is a fantastic solution and a very measured product.

Read full review

CK

Channu Kambalyal

Enterprise Architect, Mars Global Services at Mars Fishcare

Sep 9, 2020

The cost is pretty cheap, compared to what else is available in the market.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 68)

IBM Integration Bus Cons review quotes

Systems Software Specialist III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 19, 2019

This solution would benefit from improvements to the configuration interface.

Read full review

PO

PRINCEWILL OPARA

Head Banking Application Customization and Reporting at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

May 15, 2021

Today, the IBM business rule engine, the DataPower is outside the Enterprise Service Bus. It's sold as a different feature or application. If it could be integrated, then it's able to handle a lot more of what we are doing now rather than just have a stateless ESB that you can't do much on, and a set of normal business rules.

Read full review

Ashraf Siddiqui

IBM Integration & Solution Architect at Meezan Bank

Jul 29, 2024

Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods.

Read full review

IBM Integration Bus

Free Report: IBM Integration Bus Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Integration Bus. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Chief Executive Officer at Responsiv

Mar 7, 2022

The next versions are moving toward container use. It would be a shame to make the product highly complex just to support one pattern of deployment. It is my hope that IBM continues to focus on practical functionality that is simple and cost-effective.

Read full review

QK

Sr. Manager Software Quality Assurance at UBL

Sep 8, 2020

Session management can sometimes hand forcing server reboots.

Read full review

reviewer1426110

Integration Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2020

It needs improvement in terms of technical support as well as in terms of integration of data mining. I am not convinced about many things in this solution, such as the conversion of the DFDL or copybook file, which is the conversion from a text file to XML. It is very complex. They should also provide more information about this solution in the IBM Knowledge Center. I can get a lot of information from the IBM Knowledge Center about DataStage, but I don't get that much information about IBM Integration Bus. There is hardly any information even on the internet and various channels such as YouTube. They can provide good step-by-step documentation based on a company's requirements. It would be really helpful. My company is mainly looking for data mining and communicating with multiple servers. IBM Integration Bus is good for communicating with multiple servers, but it needs improvement for XML conversion and data mining. We have a lot of old systems that use XML.

Read full review

PS

Pavel Shcherbukha

Team Leader of the Development Team at IBM/IT-Innovation

Sep 28, 2019

I would like to be able to run and install this solution on different platforms.

Read full review

Harm Van Der Gugten

Managing Director at Talipoint (Pty) Ltd

Sep 19, 2023

The solution needs instruction or guidance.

Read full review

reviewer1709634

Integration Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

There are a couple of things I want improved, but I think they have already touched upon all those things in the most recent version. I'm not using the most recent version—I use a version older than the most recent—but I'm sure that if I looked into and explored it, I would see more support on the CI/CD and more support for unit testing automation. I've read that they released all these things in the new version of App Connect. Once I explore the new version of this tool, I'll probably have a better idea of suggested improvements.

Read full review

CK

Channu Kambalyal

Enterprise Architect, Mars Global Services at Mars Fishcare

Sep 9, 2020

The solution needs to improve it's security and its proactive notification of security issues.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 68)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

webMethods.io vs IBM Integration Bus

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM Integration Bus

Mule ESB vs IBM Integration Bus

Oracle Service Bus vs IBM Integration Bus

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator vs IBM Integration Bus

Red Hat Fuse vs IBM Integration Bus

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs IBM Integration Bus

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus vs IBM Integration Bus

JBoss ESB vs IBM Integration Bus

Fiorano ESB vs IBM Integration Bus

See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

webMethods.io vs IBM Integration Bus

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM Integration Bus

Mule ESB vs IBM Integration Bus

Oracle Service Bus vs IBM Integration Bus

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator vs IBM Integration Bus

Red Hat Fuse vs IBM Integration Bus

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs IBM Integration Bus

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus vs IBM Integration Bus

JBoss ESB vs IBM Integration Bus

Fiorano ESB vs IBM Integration Bus

See all alternatives

Related questions

208

Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company

131

What is the biggest difference between IBM Integration Bus and Mule ESB?

89

IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?

134

What are the main cons/pros to choosing Biztalk Server as an ESB platform?

1,006

What is the difference between an API Gateway and ESB?

58

Informatica vs. MuleSoft vs. SnapLogic vs. CastIron - can you help?

132

Sonic ESB was a leader in ESB market in the past. Now Aurea Sonic ESB is shown as 13th position. Can it pick-up market in future?

23

What questions should I ask before buying an ESB?

365

In a Digital Banking Environment how do we see the role of ESB/ API Managers?

7

When evaluating ESB, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?