IBM Integration Bus Reviews

My only client at the moment is a national government bank. Currently, the IBM Integration Bus is the integration platform for all the various departments of the bank. There are probably six or seven major departments across the bank that subscribe to or use the integration services like MessageQ, Broker, or the platform's orchestration capabilities. And we have a team of about 15 people managing it.  

Integration Bus has also been put in place to lay the foundation for hybrid integration into the two specific systems on the cloud. We are still deploying it, so we haven't gotten into any actual use cases yet. In the past, it was relatively easy for the team, but I don't think they've ever leveraged the suite's full capabilities. It hasn't been easy in some instances because the reserve bank is unique. It's not the same as other financial institutions, but we've had challenges on the platform before.

IBM Integration Bus could be easier to manage, but this is true of all vendors. It doesn't always do what it says on the box. In terms of new features, we have a roadmap, and it's looking quite comprehensive. However, we may not necessarily need everything they're putting out. I know that's probably driven by global demand. 

I've been dealing with IBM Integration Bus off and on for the last 15 years.

I think IBM support could be faster. It took us a while to resolve our issues because they don't necessarily have the technical resources in our country. We had to source the resources internationally, so it took a while to get that done. But once we got what we needed, IBM resolved it relatively quickly.

Setting up IBM Integration Bus wasn't simple, but we've got a unique environment. We're probably about two or three months behind on our implementation because of unforeseen interoperability problems between Red Hat OpenShift and VMware. We've got a team of about 15 overseeing the deployment, including engineers, developers, and the support staff for the platform.

I think our enterprise license agreement is included with a bundle of products.

I would give IBM Integration Bus a solid eight out of 10. I recommend it for large enterprises but only for specific use cases. You need to have a relatively mature integration practice in your organization to leverage its capabilities fully. So I wouldn't recommend it to startups or somebody new. I'd instead go open source or something relatively easy.

We are a software development company and we use IBM Integration Bus for integrating different internal systems for the customer side and to integrate the internal systems with external systems for different kinds of flows.

There are three elements that make IBM Integration Bus very important for our organization's payroll systems which are the solution's high scalability, performance, and reliability.

The current version of IBM Integration Bus, now called App Connect Enterprise, provides operators for deployment in the OpenShift cluster, which makes deployment much easier and significantly increases the scalability and reliability of the integration solutions.

I have been using IBM Integration Bus for approximately two years.

IBM Integration Bus is very reliable and stable. If the right configuration is done, in operation everything is runs very well. If you have not configured everything well then you most likely will have some stability or performance issues.

IBM Integration Bus is scalable. If you are using OpenShift then the solution's scalability becomes even better.

We have approximately 12 people who have the experience to use this solution.

I would rate the support from IBM Integration Bus a seven out of ten. They are very helpful but sometimes it takes too long for them to respond.

The implementation of the solution at the beginning phase can be complicated. The time it takes for the implementation depends on the environment a lot of other factors.

The development toolkit that is provided is very good. It helps to configure all the message flows and data transformation. They also provide Extended SQL language (ESQL) for different types of data transformation.

The solution does not require much maintenance.

IBM provides a quite complicated licensing model.

We have evaluated other solutions and we have found that IBM solutions to be highly stable and scalable.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate IBM Integration Bus an eight out of ten.

Our prime use case of Integration Bus is for message enrichment and message transformations. 

The solution offers good performance and it's stable. The message enrichment and message transformations are great features and the solution also has great security.

There are a few issues; the memory footprint needs to be improved. Memory replacements for on-prem should be minimized. Nowadays, if an application takes 4GB of RAM, that should be the minimum. Having this solution on-prem, is taking more memory and that memory footprint should be minimized.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution can be scaled horizontally and vertically.

The initial setup is straightforward and took a maximum of two hours. Our technical team had eight people dealing with the end-to-end deployment. 

I recommend this solution, it's an industry standard product.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

In general, we are using IBM Integration Bus for integration purposes only because we have multiple applications to integrate.

I have found IBM Integration Bus is very useful because it can integrate multiple backend applications.

The solution could improve by having built-in implementation and secure monitoring without the need for API Connect.

I have been using IBM Integration Bus for approximately six years.

We have not had any issue with the stability of the solution. However, there are times when we have policies in place and after the installation, the data wizard does not work.

The technical from IBM has been very good.

The installation was straightforward.

IBM Integration Bus itself is prices fair but App-Connect is a bit expensive which we use in conjunction with it.

I have evaluated MuleSoft.

I would recommend this solution to developers.

I rate IBM Integration Bus a seven out of ten.

The IBM Integration Bus is a very strong, very easy-to-use product. 

We prefer it due to the fact that we can get support from IBM when we need to, as opposed to using open-source tools that do not have support.

Sometimes companies have systems from IBM, Oracle, HP, et cetera. IIB is a good candidate to enable all heterogeneous systems to exchange data smoothly without any effort.

The product is a user-customized tool so that you can adjust it to your specific needs pretty well with little trouble. 

The initial setup is easy.

While it is very user-friendly there is another open-source tool in the market you can use instead of it.

The integration could be better, especially when it comes to integrating with older systems or solutions. 

The solution needs to simplify its documentation, such as the user and operation manuals, to make them even easier to understand. 

I've been working with IBM products for 30 years or so. This particular IBM solution, however, I've dealt with for the last four years. That said, I have a lot of IBM experience. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The product is upgradable. There is the potential to scale. 

In the Middle East, the customers are looking for a company that can take over anything and handles everything if there are issues. The support is very reliable and helpful. They are responsive and knowledgeable and we are very happy with their capabilities. 

I'm also familiar with Apache Kafka. Kafka is much faster. The performance is much greater than IIB. IIB is not as fast as Kafka.

For myself, the initial setup was very easy due to the fact that I have worked with IBM for many years and I'm quite comfortable with the brand.

That said, the IBM environment is fairly complicated. It is much easier than other options, even so, and technical support is quite helpful if users run into issues. 

I am not a partner for IBM. That said, IBM has used me for consultation issues and training sources. I used to be a partner, maybe six years ago.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are, of course, using the latest version. 

We use the solution for bridging the gap between different legacy systems. Re-usability is another function of the solution. So too, we use it to limit the challenges faced between different systems that are unable to communicate at the same speed and rate, or that need to talk among different systems, to utilize a channel which is bigger and better, to make use of the back-end or in respect of some other point-to-point integration need. As such, our uses for the solution vary depending on the customer. An example would be that which relates to a banking industry, for which there would be a core banking system, the need for card systems, ATM transactions, et cetera. Middleware plays a key role in the usability of these services. The goal is to avoid point-to-point integration between the channels and the back-end systems making use of the solution.

We have come across many customer complaints about the excessive time it takes for IBM to provide customer and technical support. 

Our organization has been using IBM Integration Bus in various branches, spanning a host of  locations, since before I joined 14 years ago. It has been doing so for the past 15 to 20 years. 

I consider the solution to be one of the most stable in the market, in comparison with others such as Oracle and this assessment I maintain on an ongoing basis. I have received much feedback from customers about the solution's stability. 

The solution is scalable, but we have yet to receive the full review and feedback. This is because we have been informed that the latest systems have only recently been produced. So, I cannot give you complete feedback about the scalability of the solution at the moment. The latest deployment is on a container platform.

We have received many complaints from customers that the customer and technical support should be faster. 

I believe the initial setup was easy, but this is a question best taken up with the technical team. 

I use the traditional licensing model, which I believe to not be on a monthly basis, as the solution is not cloud-based. 

I don't mind the pricing.

90 percent of days the solution is on the client enrollment. We are hoping to encounter good business cases, involving integration planning, as the trend is for people to gradually transition to the cloud, the government initiative being that involving Azure. 

As we are a service provider, I cannot give you exact figures about the number of users in our organization who are making use of the solution. As mentioned, this depends on the customer, with each one involving its own user type. 

I would, of course, recommend this solution to others.

I rate IBM Integration Bus as an eight out of ten. 

Although my organization is not a bank, it does have communication needs throughout its different departments. 

While maintenance and support of the solution, like that of Dell Boomi, are very expensive, in the long run, though, say... six months to a year, it will be worthwhile for running one's business. The expense stems from the communication needs which necessitate the support of many preferences.

An issue which should be addressed concerns the difficulty of the product connecting to SAP.  In contrast, Mule has developed many connectors so that it can interact with multiple points. This allows us to write our own Java programming for, say, better database connectivity.

As the databases have different versions, we have different connectors for opening them. 

With Mule Force, we will write our own connector.  

While we do have different types of storage capacity, including that of hardware, RAM and transactions per minute, this is an area that should be addressed. There needs to be more storage capacity for logins and database file storage. Transactions per minute is a point that will need to be hammered out by senior management in its SLA. 

When it comes to the technical support of IBM Integration Bus, we are talking about a good product. As with Oracle and Microsoft, the problem with IBM revolves around maintenance, as well as integration. Owing to the expense, there will be insufficient resources. 

The initial setup of IBM Integration Bus was not complex. 

The product is usually very easy to deploy.

The product was only integrated with IBM servers. 

As mentioned, the maintenance and support are very expensive. 

Every bank has data available in the mainframe and there is a need to connect to this and extract it, which is where ELT loads come in.

While I would not say that IBM Integration Bus is not a good product, I would point out that it is limited to its own infrastructure. IBM Integration Bus lacks connectors for connecting with other technologies, even though it is not limited to its one cloud. These must be developed from other technologies, such as Azure. If I wish to interact with Azure in the cloud then I must develop a connector to do so. Moreover, IBM is large and we need to have smaller solutions. 

I would rate it a four out of ten. 

We are a system integrator and this is one of the products that we propose for our clients.

Some of our clients for this product are banks.

IBM Integration Bus is flexible, easy to use, and easy to configure.

I would like to be able to build an Integration Bus cluster that is active-active.

This is a scalable product.

We have five or six customers who are using it.

I have seen no problems with respect to technical support.

We have experienced no trouble installing this product.

It takes a few days to deploy.

We have a team of 10 or 11 people for deployment and maintenance.

The pricing could be improved to make it more competitive.

This is a product that I can recommend.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.