IBM Integration Bus Reviews

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. 

The solution is primarily a middleware. It's security-enabled and we are using the same credentials for development. We plan on making a backend to handle growing requests.

The solution is similar to Adobe X Pro. We can intersect with any of those items.

The scalability is very good.

The integration with other tools is excellent. It integrates well with batch issues.

Overall, the solution works very well.

IBM could improve its connectivity. 

The solution needs to be better integrated with the cloud version of the solution.

The solution is constrained by the environment - whether it's on-premises or the cloud. The cloud seems to be more adaptable.

I've been using the solution since 2014.

The solution is very stable. We haven't found any bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes. It's quite reliable.

We have more than 20 people that use the solution. We use it on a daily basis. The scalability is good and is simple to expand as necessary.

I didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is simple enough. Right now, in its entirety, the download is very simple. It's actually a one-click solution.

Deployment takes very little time. It depends mostly on the load and what we are pushing out. However, it usually takes a matter of seconds.

We have 14 people in general on our team using the solution, and they are all able to perform maintenance.

I handled the implementation myself.

I don't have any information about licensing or costs. It's not something that I am in charge of.

We're just IBM customers. We're not partners and we don't have a relationship with the company.

In terms of on-premises vs cloud, I'd suggest users go to the cloud. It obviously depends on the market and the adoption rate.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The primary use case for the solution is infrastructure optimization. Most times the client wants to optimize their integration infrastructure and they want to simplify it. When they feel home-grown solutions are not scaling well for them in terms of complexity, in terms of speed to market, they look to this solution. Projects take long and they break down all the time. That's when the clients start thinking Integration Bus. It's a solution that offloads all the integrations of their system.

The solution offers pretty good pricing.

The technical support is great.

The solution is stable and can scale relatively easily.

The user interface is easy to navigate.

The performance is decent.

The solution offers good dashboards.

The management and monitoring on offer are very good.

IBM doesn't really have a very strong community surrounding the product. Most of its direct competitors are open source solutions, and those have an excellent and well-developed community around the tech to help users navigate the ins and outs of the product. IBM is lacking in this area. If they had more of a community, more people would know about the product. They should push to create a developer community around it and make the products more accessible to developers.

I've heard some clients are asking for autoscaling capabilities. It could improve DevOps. They might have something similar in other products, however, if they could introduce it within this product at some small level, it would make many clients happy.

We've been using the solution in the company for less than a year.

We've been pleased with the solution's reliability. It's stable. It doesn't crash or freeze. I don't recall facing any bugs or glitches. It just works well all the time.

The solution scales quite well. If a company needs to expand it out, they can do so easily.

Technical support has been good. They're responsive and knowledgeable. We've been satisfied with their support. It's been great.

The implementation is straightforward. It's not complex. What takes a long time, however, is implementing the workflows or projects. That's where the efforts is. In terms of implementation, the implementation is straightforward. However, building the integration of workflows can be a bit tricky. 

You have to pick the right project as the first project, due to the fact that you're introducing a new product inside an organization. The first project is important in terms of setting the stage for understanding the underlying functionality. It shouldn't be too complex. At the same time, it should be impactful enough that you get management support going forward. It should be a project that is big enough whereby you can see the impact of the Integration Bus. 

The pricing is pretty good. What they charge isn't unreasonable.

We're IBM partner-resellers.

The reason we've implemented the solution is driven more by our clients' demands. The clients want IBM Integration Bus, or they already have some investment in IBM Integration Bus. We want to build capability in it to support the clients. We don't have a level of experience with the solution.

My personal advice to others is to start small so that you give yourself a good preliminary base that's not too overwhelming. Most clients want to do everything with this solution, which is fine. However, it's always better to start small with a departmental project, as opposed to an enterprise-wide kind of thing. It is better to start small and tackle a practical project and get used to everything before going really big.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We implement this solution for our customers.

It has the ability to be deployed without rewriting the code. 

I would like for them to make the training much easier. Once you work with a sphere of people that can integrate the solution, then it's stable. But just to educate people, it's not that easy to do. It's not easy content to teach people.

I have been using it for over ten years. 

I have only contacted their support for implementing application integration.

Overall, they're good. They're able to replenish and reboot the data much easier.

The initial setup is straightforward.

IBM is huge once you start it up. There's not a lot of coding, not a lot of method to the mapping, and they have the need for application software management. 

I'd rate it a nine out of 10. It's stable across multiple platforms and across multiple applications. They're very strong and a trusted brand. They are patient and good friends. One of the only challenges is that it is hard to teach people.  

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.

A retail customer used it to connect with the backend Oracle retail system. There were some plugins that were available for that particular use case on top of the Integration Bus for message transformation, schemas, etc. It has also been widely used in banking.

It is mostly deployed on the hardware, but it is also available on the cloud.

It aligns well with containerized environments, which increases its scalability and high availability. 

Overall, it has good coverage of features.

Its licensing or subscription model should be improved for more flexible adoption. There should also be more ease of use.

I used this solution for five to six years in my previous company.

It is highly scalable. It is used in high-volume environments with thousands of users, such as retail banking. It is being used a lot for digital banking, and all the transactions are through the ESB layer. So, it is quite scalable and has good performance.

It has a moderate or medium-level complexity. The duration depends on the use case in terms of the number of services and workflows, but typically, doing installation and configuration is a matter of a few weeks.

It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.