IBM MQ Reviews

Our use cases include ATM transactions where a customer, for example, inquires about balances. Transactions go from an ATM at a branch, using a Java application to take the information, and it connects into our mainframe, gets the balances, and goes back. 

We also use it for when customers go online using the internet itself for things like pre-approved home loans. We take the customers' information from the front-end and pop it into MQ to look up the customer's data in the bank itself — all of the databases — and then come back to the customer. 

It is also used in our mobile banking. MQ is connected to SAP in the background. MQ is in between, passing information to SAP and SAP will give the reply back on the mobile banking app, like when a customer asks for a one-time password.

We initially went with a single server or two servers. We used a lot of the mainframe and we used it on the one server. Then we realized that we were down to a single point of failure. What we did was we enabled something called queue sharing where you have multiple landing platforms, which lets you execute multiple applications in the background. And we're now able to use our HA failover quite extensively. It previously required one server to be down and there would be an effect on customer business. Now it requires at least three servers to be down before we start feeling the workload. And even then, we're hardly ever down because we have now spread the load using the queue shared clusters.

In terms of the solution helping to reduce the cost of integration, we're using what is called the MQ Appliance. Because the appliance connects multiple solutions in our bank to this platform, we don't need to procure more licenses or more servers or more infrastructure. So at the moment, we're using a very cost-effective model, compared to two to three years ago, which is when we started to consolidate servers. We had about 400 servers but we've reduced their number by moving them to the appliance. We've consolidated all of those server licenses and server infrastructures.

For example, we took a server that was front-end, using Java, and connected to the mainframe. We have that entire server's application queue, entry queue, and all the objects moved onto the appliance. And there is no cost to it. It's just a box. There's no operating system on it. We have MQ on it and MQ then connects things to the rest of the bank, so we save on the infrastructure, on server licenses, and MQ licenses. We've created a setup like that a few times already in our bank.

This process of integration has saved us a lot of time. Previously our projects would take at least three to four weeks. Now, once we have firewalls and security in place, and once we have an acceptable solution design in front of us, they take three to four days. From the time we design the solution until things are connected to the appliance, it takes a week. It's only fast because most of it is scripted. It's almost like a container.

What we find most valuable is the fact that we can decouple it from the application. If one side is down, but someone in the bank is serving a customer and needs to connect to an account, he can put in the information and wait. When the remote system comes up and connects, we can push messages with the push function. So what is quite useful is the asynchronous function which means we don't lose everything in the bank. Although we use a lot of things synchronously, asynch is the best thing so that no banking information is ever lost, even when the network goes down and comes up.

We can also expand it across many servers with the cluster, using load balancing and failover. We use that extensively as well. The load balancing works absolutely wonderfully.

Overall, it makes us very flexible in the architecture we can use at the moment. When someone comes to us and says, "I need ABC," we can put together the correct solution for him with all our flexibility.

We use Red Hat from a server point of view. With our Linux box, MQ is on the box itself. We use that quite extensively as well. Inside of that, we find the shared HA function quite useful. It allows us to do HA really quickly, compared to how things were before.

At the moment we're very limited in the way we can interface with the cloud. 

I have been using it for 20 years now. I've been at the bank for 17 years and I used it before that as well.

The stability of the solution is very good. I would give it a nine out of 10. The main features are its reliability and availability and, as a messaging platform, it's very good in those areas.

The scalability is the one area where IBM has fallen behind. As much as it is used, there is a limit to the number of people who are skilled in MQ. That is definitely an issue. Places have kept their MQ-skilled people and other places have really struggled to get MQ skills. It's not a widely-known skillset.

In terms of the number of business areas using it in our bank, there are about 15. A lot of the major ones use it, such as credit, operations/finance, home loans, and ATMs. 

The bank has been very good in getting good technical resources to help us. There is a specific couple of people in IBM who know our architecture itself. We have what is called a value-add program where, when we have a problem or a service request, it will go through IBM but it will automatically land in the box of one of the experts who knows our architecture very well. We reach the same two people each time. We don't have to explain things to them.

We did not have a previous solution. Early on, we didn't have many options to choose from. A procurement person came along and told us that this is the best solution for us.

The setup was very complex in the beginning: how we had to put it in, how we had to tune it, and how we had to fix it. There were so many parameters. It wasn't just a simple drop-in, deploy, and go. In addition, because certain applications work in a certain manner, it required a lot of tuning.

My team, on average, has 10 years of experience on MQ so at this stage we've come to the point where we can tune it fairly quickly. So while the initial setup wasn't simple and quick, it has become very quick.

The initial setup took us several weeks, if not a few months. We had to get IBM to help with things in the beginning. We had system issues then, but it has been stable since then.

The IBM consultants we worked with were very good.

MQ's features are very extensive compared to SQS on Amazon or messaging from Microsoft. Those solutions have basic features in there. They say, "This is what 90 percent of the use cases will use," whereas MQ is very robust in the way it's set up, in the way it works, and in the way it can be tuned. You have a lot of connections where you can connect thousands of users to the bank and thousands out of the bank as well.

It is definitely way ahead of all the other messaging platforms. It's like the "BMW" or "Mercedes" of messaging. The others will still do the work, but they're fairly average in what they do. They're very basic compared to what we do. Because we are a major bank, we have many different platforms and many languages, so we use it very extensively.

You must be careful in that it must fit what you want it to do. A few years ago, we had a silo approach where everybody had their own IBM MQ and their own application support with their own teams. That got out of control. In the last few years we realized that you need to be careful about the deployment model you're using. And you need to make sure it's used for the proper use cases.

That's really the biggest lesson I've learned from using IBM MQ: You need to be very sure about what you want it to do.

I would advise that you talk to someone who knows about the solution and who is not biased. Set up a call with someone like me to look at the solution before you decide to go down this path and, similarly, before you decide to throw it out. Talk to someone who has at least seven years of experience with it and who can give you an unbiased opinion about how it works, and then make up your mind. People have come to us and we have said, "Based on what you are doing, we don't think MQ is the best solution for you. You should be looking at other solutions." And other times, we'll tell them that this is the perfect solution. 

The way MQ works is very good from a messaging point of view. There is very little that needs improving. MQ is very flexible and very tunable. We use it to transport hundreds of thousands of messages every day with absolutely no problems.

At the moment the solution is on-premise. But in the last two years, the bank has decided that it needs to go with the public cloud. So in the last two years, most of our development has gone towards decoupling MQ because a lot of the vendor applications were on the box where MQ was. We're working on the solution and decoupling everything so we can push toward the cloud itself. The solution's built-in connectors are more applicable to when we talk about cloud solutions. 

As for containerization, eventually we will go for it but, at the moment, we don't use it. It's difficult to work on a mainframe because of the way it's set up. But it's definitely something the guys will be using when we look at the Unix servers and other boxes.

For deployment and maintenance we have a team of eight people. We have three people on the mainframe and another three to four people for the appliance. They work with each other as well. On the Unix solution, which includes Linux, AIX, etc., we have another team of four, but all these teams overlap. The average upgrade won't take less than two people, but on the Unix box, upgrades are straightforward and someone can do it on his own.

We are a bank whose core banking system is not so advanced. It is still running on an AS/400 system. Credit Card system is are deployed on IBM mainframes. About 70 to 80 percent of the bank's core systems rely on IBM AS/400 and mainframes. The enterprise service bus is used in conjunction with MQ to break synchronous web service /TCP calls into asynchronous MQ calls and expose them a web services-based or API-based service for both internal and external customers. 

As part of enterprise architecture principles, we have enforced all connectivity to be service/ interface based by using ESB, MFT or API. Minimize the point to point connectivity.

We are using dedicated IBM power/pure-app servers to run IBM Integration Bus, IBM MQ, and WebSphere Application Server. These are the three components being used for the bank's enterprise service bus.

People have started using the likes of Kafka, Spark and other new messaging technologies. But when you take the likes of banks into consideration, which mostly are running on mainframes and AS/400, implementing advanced technologies are not an easy job. Getting an MQ-certified guy is not that difficult in the ASEAN market. There are a lot of certified professionals. That's one of the reasons we still use MQ for most of our messaging. We are still looking at open-source deployments but we have not yet implemented anything like that because of the knowledge GAP & dependency on the existing products. We do not have a dedicated team to take on that task yet.

With IBM MQ still in the bank, and a dedicated team which has expertise in it, we really cut down the time-to-market, from a few months to a few weeks. The development framework is already there. If business comes up with requirements, technology team already know what needs to be done. And by building the in-house team, it gives us the facility where we don't need to ask the IBM guys or other vendors in the market to help us every time we have a new requirement.

Another way MQ has improved the way our organization functions is customer notification. Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. There are requirements for notifying customers on a real-time base & also for each and every payment sometimes, once a day. These are be enabled with the help of MQ.

In addition, there are fewer failures during the end-to-end payment process. MQ comes in very handy because we don't lose messages in transit (message persistence). It gives us the ability to store and forward messages when required. We heavily rely on MQ for these kinds of requirements.

Also, we have certain applications that want to receive the messages in both production and the disaster-recovery data center at the same time. Without MQ in the picture, it would have been very difficult for us to configure that. MQ Publish subscribe capability is very helpful in that scenario.

MQ has helped to reduce integration costs, mostly by acquiring the enterprise license of MQ. We can actually set up multiple MQ servers in the same environment and each MQ server is dedicated to a particular application. We also use MQ up to a level where the messages are coming from multiple host systems and they go back to a single channel. When written back, the response goes to the exact host that had sent the request (Message Affinity). Without a tool and without a messaging architecture that is as good as MQ's, it would take a lot of time in hard-coding to achieve that. Prior to the team being set up and having these frameworks in place, it took roughly two to three months to deliver any of these integrations. Now it takes three to four weeks. It has helped reduce the effort and man-hours by half.

We have been using the normal messaging along with channel authorization. 

At certain times — although not in this bank, in my previous experience — we had used the message authorization on top of the queue. That meant that the moment a user tried to write a message it would be authorized before it was written. 

In the ESB architecture, MQ is used to decouple synchronous consumer specific web services calls from the host system calls, by implementing state management. Request and response message matching rely on MQ Message ID & Correlation ID (MQMD header properties).

Message load balancing being implemented using MQ or achieving high throughput, while Message affinity ensures response messages are propagated to the very same host system which had generated the request message.

MQ publish subscribe feature being used to for notification where multiple instance of one or more applications can subscribe to the same topic at different time. 

Message expiry features ensures the redundant or unwanted messages are expired automatically from the MQ based on the settings. This feature is being used at times to ensure no duplication of payments.

Message persistence feature ensures the message availability even after any planned/unplanned downtime.

MQMFT feature ensures files are delivered asynchronously and complete file transfers are automated.

MQ authorization can help to ensure high level of security in accessing the messages from a MQ server or sending messages via MQ channels between two or more systems. 

Day-to-day, I don't really see anything much that we are lacking, but I have never really compared MQ with other products to see what it lacks.

I am well aware of the way that IBM sells the suite of products. But I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka.

One of the other improvements that I would like to see from MQ is for it to be containerized. It may already have that functionality.

I have worked with IBM MQ for more than 10 years. I started using it in 2006. Recently, in the last three to four years, I have not had any work in the development area. I have moved on to enterprise architecture, so I don't really get a chance to use the solution every day. I haven't used it in the last three years.

I do read up on the new features when I get a chance to read, but I don't exactly have hands-on now-a-days. I now guide the team when they have issues, on things like how to set it up, how to have particular architectures on MQ. I still consult on it and I'm still familiar with it.

It is stable.

We have only had issues with the IBM GPFS File System, but that is a different product. We had an issue when we wanted to have an Active-Active deployment architecture across our production and disaster recovery site. We wanted the same MQ server to fail over to the disaster recovery site and come up from the state in which it went down on the production site. To achieve that we need a synchronous file system that is able to replicate the same data on the other side.

We haven't had any scalability issues with MQ. We are running on a scalable hardware platform with a goal of virtualizing deployment up to multiple cores, and it can add on more and more compute and RAM when required.

For at least the next five years we are sticking with the existing implementation, while we are looking to implement new features, such as containerization.

Our in-house support members are all certified. Most of them have 5 to 10 years of hands-on experience. They don't fall back on IBM for day-to-day support/issues. But if there is a Severity-1, they do log a problem ticket for further expert advises from IBM.

We have only had one issue that I can recall from the last four or five years, to do with the file synchronization. To figure it out, it took a few days.

Overall, the support has been good. As IBM doesn't have a lot of resources in Malaysia, they rely on India or Singapore region for support sometimes.

I am MQ version 6, & 7 -certified solutions architect & system administrator. So I find the setup to be very easy. I have been using MQ since very early of my career, and I was also with IBM for quite some time. So for me, it's very straightforward. The installers come with a nice, quick-setup guide, and most of the time, after the training, users can go set up their own MQ.

The amount of time it would take to bring it to production depends on the scope of the services. If I just have to install MQ, it is not more than an hour. But if I have to install MQ for specific servers, I would probably have to take account of the log size, its location, and what the volume is per day or per week, availability aspects, so it would take a bit longer.

Most of the time, when we implement MQ, we implement it along with other products. It depends on the use case. If you just want to query the server to get the information, I would recommend that to be asynchronous because inquiries are huge in volume. If the use case is payments, it could be defined as synchronous mode, and within the flow we could still break it into two or three parts.

From the design point of view, it is still pretty straightforward, depending on what licensing model you want to go for. If you want to use one MQ server with multiple clients it's doable, but if you have more critical systems running, then you should go for multiple MQ servers so that you have a dedicated server for each particular application. Those are the guiding principles that we use internally for projects to follow.

For deployment, we have written our own scripts. We are mostly relying on AIX/ Linux server. Our scripts are pretty much standard to do things like create/ change queue, channels and it's properties, shut down, restart the MQ services. All these are already scripted, so for our support team it takes them a few minutes to run through them, one after the other, and wait for scripts to be executed.

We have a fully dedicated team in-house to support MQ. There are teams that can help. TCS is one of them and IBM itself is one of them. And there are a few local vendors in the market that are quite proficient in it.

We have a support/ maintenance team of four pax and we are running 200 to 300 services on MQ. The solution doesn't exactly provide a user interface to the business user. The solution is more of a technology layer to support applications and we have 15 to 20 applications that are connected via ESB & MQ.

We have a multi-year OIO (open infrastructure offering) with IBM and if there is any additional licensing required it gets deducted from the OIO. We have been using IBM's other services as well.

We have been looking at some competitors; for example, TIBCO Messaging and MuleSoft from Salesforce. One difference I have seen is that TIBCO is already a containerized edition. I have yet to discuss with IBM MQ if it is available on container. Another thing TIBCO has is that its messaging framework comes with a package for Kafka support as well as plugins for MQ connectivity. It allows you to connect to MQ or to Kafka for messaging.

We are also going to look at the IBM API-led integration. We have been running IBM products for some years so we may want to compare & see how these gets compared with their counter-parts.

Overall, MQ is good, capability-wise. You still need a messaging platform and MQ is quite a reliable messaging platform. I have not seen hiccups using MQ across multiple environments in the bank. I have been using it since 2006 and I have never experienced any issues with the product itself. The guidelines of the product, the way it is used, the way things are done, are pretty self-explanatory. There are multiple blogs/ online helps available and there is a lot of help available from experts around the world.

Have a look at the features. If they complement the requirements you have, go ahead with it. If you are very technical and want to understand more about the open-source tools and features, that may require a notable learning curve.

The product has been around for a long time. It's probably time to see what MQ is going to add to its features. We have not started using IBM Cloud Pak with Red Hat OpenShift yet. We are also looking at using containerization but probably it may take some time.

For 90 percent of our applications, we are using IBM MQ for a point-to-point setup, from one application to another application. It is like a passage between them. For the other 10 percent of our applications, we are using topic subscriptions.

It's deployed on-premises. We have tried it on Docker Containers as well, where we have an instance. We haven't done a cluster setup using Docker and Kubernetes. 

It is very stable. We haven't seen any failures.

You should be able to increase the message size. It should be dynamic. Each queue has a limitation of 5,000. Also, the maximum message length defaults to 4 MB. If it is more than that it should be able to increase and allow whatever the particular size of the message is into the queue.

In terms of additional features, I would like to see it be lightweight and go to the cloud easily, and dynamic scaling should be added.

I have been using IBM MQ for the last five years at my current company but I also used it in different agencies, so overall I have used it for about seven years.

It is scalable but we have to do it manually. There is no automation for scaling it.

Support is very good. It is very fast. If an issue is Priority 1 they will respond very quickly and call you.

It is pretty easy to set up. The installation takes less than five minutes for each server. People can learn IBM MQ in one week.

Even a version upgrade can be done easily. Including doing backups and installation, it can be completed in 10 to 15 minutes. Even RabbitMQ and Kafka require more steps for setup than IBM MQ. Installation of the IBM product is very simple. 

For individual projects, IBM MQ may cost more. Here, we are using it globally. It is distributed around the world for our operations, so cost-wise it is less for us. But if you go with individual licenses, the cost of IBM is much more.

We are also slowly moving forward into using Kafka.

We calculated the costs for our total environment of going with RabbitMQ, and if we went with priority support for RabbitMQ versus the cost of IBM MQ, there was almost no difference in the costs. Unless we went fully open-source, we would not save anything with RabbitMQ.

My advice to someone who is looking into using IBM MQ would depend on their budget, the application criticality, etc. If applications are less critical, you can go with open-source products. 

Apache Kafka is growing quickly. People are using it on almost every project. The future will be Apache Kafka only and there might be some RabbitMQ use as well. But I see that Kafka is gaining the most. IBM MQ won’t support large streams of data but Kafka will support large streams of data. For example, for Big Data projects, will only go with Kafka.

IBM MQ is used to ensure that transactions are properly handled.

The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is transaction processing.

I have been using IBM MQ for approximately 10 years.

IBM MQ is stable.

The scalability of IBM MQ is good.

We have only customer transactions using IBM MQ.

I have used the support from IBM MQ. There is some room for improvement.

I rate the support from IBM MQ a four out of five.

Positive

I have not used another solution prior to IBM MQ.

The initial setup of IBM MQ is complex.

The price of IBM MQ could improve by being less expensive.

I rate the price of IBM MQ a three out of five.

I choose IBM MQ over other solutions because of personal comfort.

I would recommend IBM MQ to others that are using major transaction processing.

I rate IBM MQ an eight out of ten.

I use IBM HQ to communicate with subsystems within our plants e.g. the supply chain.

I've been using IBM HQ for eight years.

IBM HQ's stability is great - we send six million messages a day, and we're very satisfied with HQ's ability to handle that volume.

IBM HQ's scalability isn't the best.

IBM's technical support is great.

The initial setup was straightforward and took around half an hour.

We used an in-house team and a system integrator.

I would absolutely recommend IBM HQ to others as a very robust, reliable, responsive product. I would give IBM HQ a rating of nine out of ten.

Primarily, I use IBM MQ for microservices, modeling, and communications.

IBM MQ's flexibility has sped up our active communication. 

I've been using IBM MQ for five and a half years.

IBM MQ's stability is good.

IBM MQ can scale, but there are some challenges with it.

IBM MQ's pricing is higher than its competitors'.

I would rate IBM MQ seven out of ten.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

The primary use case for IBM MQ is handling the transportation of messages between applications.

This is being used in a mainframe environment.

Our clients complain about the price of this solution but otherwise, they have not had any problems with it. They are very happy with the quality of the product.

This product has good security.

There is no data loss while transporting messages.

The licensing fees should be more cost-effective so that we can better pitch the product to our clients. With the pricing as it is, they tend to move away from IBM products. They look for other solutions, such as open-source products.

I have been working with IBM MQ for fifteen years.

This product is used on a daily basis and it is quite stable. In terms of reliability, I would rate it a five out of five.

I have not found any issues related to scalability.

We have multiple clients that use IBM MQ.

We handle the support that initially comes in from our clients. If we have any problem, then we take it to IBM using a PMR (Problem Management Report). When there is an issue then we feel that we can go to them.

We did not use another similar solution prior to IBM MQ.

IBM MQ is not at all difficult to set up.

There is no deployment, per se. A broker will handle the deployment.

We handle the implementation and maintenance in-house. The number of people required for maintenance depends on the team. Our team members support multiple accounts.

The problem with this product is that it's a little bit expensive. This is one of the main challenges that we face with our clients. The charges are high and there should be a less costly solution available. This is especially true when you consider it in comparison to open-source tools that are available.

Overall, I am very happy with this product and my only complaint is that the price is high. I definitely recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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.