IBM MQ Reviews

Our use cases for IBM MQ involve share markets.

In this organization, we are not using many of the features because we have a very small infrastructure. In my previous organizations, I used many of the components including AMS. However, here, we are just using it as a messaging solution and not any of the other components.

The MQ appliance has very good performance.

The user interface should be easier to use.

The user interface should be enhanced to include more monitoring features and other metrics. The metrics should include not only those from the IBM MQ point of view but also CPU and memory utilization. These kinds of features would be really helpful when we have a large infrastructure. Right now, this limits us from using the product.

In general, the user interface should be more catchy, to entice users.

IBM should promote the use of the MQ appliance because the speed and performance are superior when compared to traditional ways of using the product.

If IBM were to release as least some limited features for MQ as open-source, then it would be great because people will migrate to this solution instead of choosing open-source products like Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ.

I have been working with IBM MQ for almost 13 years across different organizations. I began working with version 5.3 and am currently using version 9.

The stability is absolutely perfect when it is running on AIX. However, I have experienced some issues with certain Linux distributions. With AIX, I have not had any problems with IBM MQ. With other flavors of Linux, there is some instability whereby the MQ configuration parameters are not giving the proper information. From this, I have concluded that the stability of MQ depends on the Linux distribution that it is running on.

The number of users in my current organization is six or seven. This is the number of applications that we have. This is not an extensive use of the product but we do plan to increase usage in the future.

In my previous organization, our use was more extensive. We had between 700 and 710 users.

This product scales and the number of users depends on the industry, as well as the financial strengths that the organization has.

The technical support from IBM is always reachable.

Internally, we provide technical support to our users. This is possible because our team is only six or seven users.

This initial setup is not complex at all. Deploying it was very easy.

Limited staff is required to maintain this solution because of its stability.

The licensing fees are paid quarterly and they are expensive. This is something that I have heard from all of the organizations that I have worked with.

I have evaluated Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ because of the open-source features and benefits. The open-source aspect is an advantage. I have found that not many users choose IBM MQ, even though it is stable, because of financial constraints.

If IBM were to release MQ or at least some limited version as open-source, it would become more popular. People would choose it instead of implementing other products, or other streaming solutions. This is what people are trying to do with DevOps.

IBM MQ is much more stable than these other products, although the rest of them work well with cloud providers such as AWS.

Overall, this is a good product. The only thing that I found complex was to build the user interface with the latest versions of IBM MQ. It was a little bit tricky to do.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

• Secure
• Safe
• Very fast

It's a very good product. Very easy to work with.

I have been using IBM MQ for about nine years. We have many projects with it in many places in Kuwait.

There have been no issues with the stability of the solution.

I haven't had any issues with the scalability.

I only contacted technical support when I wanted to upgrade Windows Server. It's not that easy to move. I had Windows 2008, and I wanted to go to Windows 2012 or '16. You have to reinstall, or there was a solution somebody told me about and that made life easier.

The initial setup is straightforward. On the AS/400, setup takes about an hour.

Whatever the price is, it's worth it.

I would recommend it to other people. When somebody wants to do colocation with us, we force them to buy IBM MQ.

We use it to send a notification to our customers.

The clusterization which results in persistence is the most valuable feature. I only use a very small number of its features.

I have been using IBM MQ for about three years. For about one year I wrote adapters for IBM Broker and for two years or more I wrote services that used IBM MQ. This was a Java application by JMS.

The stability is okay.

Scalability is not an issue of IBM MQ. There is no replication of messages and that is very bad for systems. Only persistence can solve this issue.

IBM technical support is good.

The initial setup is difficult. Creating your own cluster is difficult and working with cluster repositories is difficult. Issue management with IBM MQ is difficult.

It's a very expensive product.

I like RabbitMQ more than IBM MQ.

If you have a lot of money then I would, of course, recommend IBM MQ.

All our applications run around MQ. We run a backend system working with a mainframe and we distribute records via MQ. We are using it daily.

From the time I joined this company I have been working with IBM MQ. Until now I haven't seen any severe issues related to it. Most of the time it's running. That is the advantage of IBM MQ.

It could be easier to use.

I have been working with IBM MQ for close to 14 years.

It is stable.

It can scale but sometimes, in terms of volume, it is not able to handle a huge volume. We also have limitations of queues related to IBM MQ. We often need to handle a very big volume, but currently we do have limitations. If those kinds of limitations could be relaxed, it would help us to work better.

I'm working on the development side. There is a setup team that is dedicated to working on implementations. I don't have enough hands-on in the configuration of MQ to comment on the setup.

If you're looking for stability I would recommend using IBM MQ. But people, these days, are starting to work with Kafka, which is an open system. I don't have enough knowledge about Kafka to comment on it. I just work with MQ.

MQ is one of the key integrations that we use for the z Systems to the open system connectivity. It helps us to transform the systems from the legacy enrollment to the latest technologies, as well. I'm part of the legacy transformations team and it provides really easy migrations, when it comes to integration with MQ. Any other integrations are a little bit challenging for us.

As I mentioned elsewhere, it provides one of the most seamless integrations that we can do both from open systems to z Systems or vice versa. These are the major benefits that we see. Since we are major resellers for IBM products, we generally look for transformation from z Systems to open systems and this tool helps us in transforming those.

They need to provide more and more platform integrations because I'm not sure what are the latest upgrades, in terms of MQ as of today. The latest integrations are going to take place in different cloud environments. So, I am not quite sure as to how seamless it can be integrated with other environments and I need to check that. This is also part of my job exercise, that I need to do every time.

There were not many stability issues, for sure. MQ is predominately a stable product, right from the z System days. I started out my career with z Systems, so we used MQ with part of the integration and it really helped us.

A long time ago, and not in the recent past, we did experience some issues with the technical support.

Our company has its own IBM center of excellence, where we have all of the required expertise within our organization, predominantly for this product. In addition, we have partnership support that we are getting every time from IBM.

We haven't faced a situation where we needed to invest in a new solution, predominately since our clients already have MQ. We are just transforming, upgrading or optimizing those versions; we are only doing this type of work.

The setup is moderate; it's not that complex. Recently, we are working for one of the Microsoft technologies transformation, i.e., from the legacy Microsoft technologies to the latest Microsoft technologies and that integrates with some of the z Systems.They are using MQ as the integration layer and even there, it was a very seamless integration for us. It's not too complicated nor very simple either. It is at the moderate level, which for integration is anticipated.

There is quite a good amount of documentation that you can get either from the IBM Redbooks or from the IBM support websites. Also, if you are partners with our company, then you will get the required support.

Before installing, I would request you to do a quick analysis and go through the end-to-end process, as to what are your requirements and how to configure this product up-front, i.e., instead of directly installing it and then, trying to configure it on the fly.

In general, when selecting a vendor, we look for more and more support.

Most valuable for us are the queue depths and creations for the installations. Being a business in financial solutions, we depend on it more for those things, so it's very valuable for us. For most of the applications like JBoss and others we use IBM MQ.

It just needs a better installation. An easier user-friendly installation.

The stability is good. I mean we do have some issues but we always contact IBM whenever we have performance-based issues and we get solutions quick and fast.

Scalability is great.

The technical support is great. Normally, whenever we have an issue, within 24 hours we will get a resolution, so we can close it and leave it to the IBM technical support guys. We get a solution mostly within 24 hours, so that's great.

We didn't have another solution previously, we have always been with MQ.

I would say it was both straightforward and complex, but not that complex. I mean the installation normally would take some time and with all of them open, it's just a button click and you're done.

I wasn't involved in the selection of the vendors.

Go for it. You should always check out the performance and trust for a good solution.

We can do the authentication and authorization of incoming requests using IBM WebSphere and DataPower. That's important to us because we can confidentially send the data with restrictions to other platforms.

In terms of benefits, our customers are happier since we are doing a good job.

In the next release, we would like to see more authentication capabilities embedded and included in the existing product.

I don't know about the stability.

We are good with the scalable data in the product.

I haven't used the technical support.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

I'm not sure about alternative solutions considered.

I definitely recommend them.

When selecting a vendor, we are looking for timely interaction. In case there any issues, we need to get support immediately.

It can be managed from a web page.

The benefits of the new version are greater ease of use and management of MQ.

At a recent industry event, I discovered that the future version of MQ would provide more web services, such as API, and the ability to manage MQ using a web application. Those will be very good improvements to the product.

I can say that it's stable.

It is scalable, but not easily.

I have opened a ticket. Technical support are not bad.

Relationship is the most important element when looking for a vendor.

I was not involved with the initial setup. We usually get in touch with them in order to solve the issues.

Just go ahead and do it.