IBM Integration Bus Reviews

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.

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 using the solution as an outer layer for all of our API calls we are making outside of our own devices. All APIs integrations are routing through the ESB only. We are using it for IIB server components and the DataPower, which is an API gateway. It is providing us with a security layer because all the outside calls do not have direct communication with our own server, this middle layer is called the ESB. 

The solution has helped my organization because any new integration coming to my backend system, we can easily implement it in a shorter time. This is because the middle layer takes care of all API language conversions or the code conversion, and also does the maintaining of the logs.

Having the solution come from IBM you know you are receiving a product of quality in components and in the services, it is very good.

I do not think there are any improvement areas because it depends on what exactly the use case for this ESB is. Some organizations are having a lot of integration and they will choose a regular ESB. While others will choose the security purpose route, making an extra layer. It depends from organization to organization, to determine how this solution can be improved from their specific use cases. Otherwise, I think that there are not any relevant improvement areas to give.

I used the solution in my last company for a long while.

The solution came to the market a long while ago, it has had time to mature. It is really stable and large organizations can rely on it. Smaller companies could too but it is too expensive.

It is a scalable solution. You can have any number of integration, it depends on the server and how much space you are providing to the IIB servers. We plan to have more than 50 wired integration by the end of the year.

The installation is not easy. You need experts who know how to install this IIB. The common technician will not have the knowledge to do it. You will need assistance installing the solution even though on IBM's website you can download the complete user manual explaining how to install the IIB servers. 

We used a third-party vendor, who help us install the solution and it was not easy. If you have most things in place at the site the whole installation process can take approximately three days. 

To do the complete deployment you will need at least one architecture that understands this IIB solution. It all depends on what kind of IP division architecture you have. Based on the project's scope, you then can define your team. There is no certain number of how many team members is required. It depends on your project, how large it is, and based on that you can decide how much manpower is required.

The solution requires a license and is very expensive here in India. Large organizations will be able to afford it but smaller companies will have a difficult time paying for the solution at the current price.

I am going to continue to use this solution, when you purchase this solution you have spent a lot of money, you have to continue to use it to make a return on investment.

I would recommend this solution if they have a large budget.

I rate IBM Integration Bus an eight out of ten.

We are working on MQ, soap and rest based services. Some clients are accessing our services and vice versa.

Yes IIB help us to shape up our organization in service oriented architecture. Usability has increased and integration has become easier.

Multiple protocols support,  development environment is user friendly.

Documentation is not easy to understand.

There should be inclusion of more and more adapters that make this product more usable.

I've been using IBM Integration Bus for four years.

IBM Integration Bus is a stable solution. As far as the technical side is concerned, we don't have an issue. 

IBM Integration Bus is easy to scale.

IBM technical support is fine, and we have a good relationship with them.

The installation is very simple. I've been working with the Oracle platform as well, and the Oracle platform installation is quite difficult compared to IBM Integration Bus.

We are working in the bank, and we implement everything internally ourselves. We are maintaining it, and we don't have to do too much. We have a separate team for maintenance. We have administrators as well on the operations side. They are looking after it.

When I compare it to other products that are available in the marketplace, I rate it better than others because it's easy to develop things, and it's easy to handle. I also use Oracle, and I prefer IBM Integration Bus to Oracle.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM Integration Bus an eight.

I'm responsible for Strategy and Architecture for an IT consulting company they are partners with IBM. 

I like that this solution is suitable for any size company. It's simple to use from a development perspective because the content is easily infiltrated in the eclipse infrastructure. It's also credible in all the application aspects and easy to integrate into the enterprise application landscape. Finally, there is also a good relationship with IBM itself that assists us in implementing. You can really use this architecture but you have to understand the technology itself. It means you can do everything with this technology on condition that implementation is carried out correctly but this is a general term and valid for all solutions on the market. IBM is offering with the Integration Bus a very robust and stable solution.

The solution itself is quite expensive for smaller companies because of a complex architecture setup if you just start. Easier and a more plug and playable solution which make an MVP easier in being able to show the value faster to the customer.

I've been using this solution for about 10 years in different projects and for different customers.

This is a very stable solution.

Scalability depends on the money that you have in your pockets. Technologically speaking, it's a scalable solution. 

I get good support from the IBM technical people. It also depends on your philosophy, how you implement this. I have a lot of very experienced people, but also a good relationship with the laboratories, which is also sometimes necessary when you're doing something new and a highly sophisticated implementation is required. You need to have a support team for the product development. 

The initial setup is straightforward, it's a simple solution. 

Evaluate and define a clear architecture, and set up a governance framework that includes a competence center that will take care of the usage, the licenses which will be needed, and do guarantee the reuse of interfaces and components.

I always suggest carrying out a proof of concept each time. People who are able to set this up and also monitor it, will discover how easy it is to customize and to integrate the architecture. The POC creates familiarity and also an understanding of the skill set required. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

The interface is quite stable.

Licensing is too high. It is quite expensive. We don't have a lot of clients who apply for it because they cannot justify the price. They know it's a good product but it just is too expensive for them. So we have to send them to products that are cheaper. 

It's scalable. We don't have that concern for IBM products.

Expanding the product would depend on our client's needs. We don't have any restrictions. 

Our installation is quite fast, but the process or the competition of user testing is what takes a longer time. Normally the user has to do a Tableau test, so it's not just the deployment. After the installation, they have to spend time to test.

I would rate IBM Integration Bus a seven out of ten.

We are looking forward to the pricing packaging because we do like the product, but we are don't go for it because the price is too high and we not able to sell it to our customer.

I am a developer and this is one of the products that I use in that capacity.

What I like best are the monitoring features.

Technical support is something that should be better.

Lowering the price would be an improvement.

The deployment should be easier.

I have been working with IBM Integration Bus for approximately three years.

This is a stable product.

We have not needed to scale because we use multithreading in the flow.

The technical support for this product is not very good. Sometimes, examples we get when we ask support for help do not work.

It also does not have a large community.

We did not use a similar product before implementing IBM Integration Bus. In some instances, we have used microservice applications instead.

The deployment is complex and you need to have an experienced administrator.

The price of this product could be lower.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We use this product as an integration point between systems. We use it for logging and transformation of data between backend and frontend.

Our use case involves the communications industry.

The most valuable feature is that it is clear and easy to learn.

There is a community available where I can find a solution if I am facing a problem.

The interface could be more user-friendly.

I have been using IBM Integration Bus for about one year.

IBM Integration Bus is stable, although it depends on the efficiency of our code, the network stability, and the infrastructure. It will be stable if all of the applications are running efficiently.

We have a support agreement that is included with our license and whenever we have a problem, we contact them. In my experience, they provide good support. They also provide good material and documents.

I have not used another similar solution by another vendor, although I have been part of projects where other systems had been implemented.

The initial setup is straightforward, especially with Java and EasyCODE.

We make use of tools like bash scripting when we deploy files. When we deploy a single file, it takes about five minutes.

In summary, I can recommend this product because it is easy and straightforward to learn and use. It is also stable and has a good market share. All of the features that I have needed already exist.

If a developer would like to shift and try becoming an integration developer, then this is a good product to work with.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.