IBM WebSphere Application Server Reviews

We use it as a gateway for our payment application. It receives requests and processes it. 

The most valuable feature is the configuration of the application server. It has a variety of configuration database certificates and connection pools. It has good stability of the application server in the long term compared to other solutions. 

It should be able to serve more concurrent requests like Oracle. Oracle has more powerful stability, availability, and real-time serving. 

WebSphere is not light enough to implement high available applications like gateways. But WebSphere has more configuration abilities and customizability.  

I have been using it for three months. 

Stability is frustrating. It goes down after a specific number of user connections. It does not have high availability. 

I have contacted their technical support. They offer good help to help resolve the issue. They were efficient and helpful. They have good documentation. 

I deployed it from scratch. It was not complex. It's easy to implement compared to other application servers. 

The implementation took eight hours. 

We require three engineers who do maintenance. We have an unlimited amount of users.

There aren't any additional costs besides for the standard licensing. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

It has a sensitive implementation. If you do a wrong step, it will destroy the whole thing and you will need to start from scratch. 

We have some services which are doubled up using Java. To deploy this research we are using the WebSphere Application Server. A lot of channel applications are consuming these services in particular.

The solution is robust. The connection management and the scalability, which IBM provides to the Stack, are also valuable.

Nowadays the industry is moving towards a more open-source operating framework.

The cost factor is huge. It's very pricey compared to other open-source stacks. In the future, we'll deal with the IBM Stack so we might move to a compact server and other open-source alternatives which are comparatively less in terms of cost.

They should make the solution more lightweight and not bundle everything into a single product.

The solution would benefit from having a different licensing model.

I've been using the solution for 12 to 14 years.

The solution's scalability is good, but there is a cost factor, which is a disappointing element. If you want to go for another node then you have to go pull up that code license model, and that produces another licensing cost.

We've reached out to technical support. I find them good, but not excellent. They aren't very quick to respond.

We were using WebLogic BL as our stack. Now we use an IBM Stack. It was about eight years ago when we switched, so we've been using IBM for a while now.

Depending on which platform you are on, the initial setup isn't too complex.

Currently, it is all straightforward, but it should be where the next generation of container-based, docker-based is and it's not there yet. Everyone wants that type of compatibility.

Deployment takes about two to three hours.

We have our in-house team who are trained in the deployment of IBM WebSphere Application Servers, so we didn't need outside assistance. 

The solution is very expensive compared to an open-source stack.

The solution is deployed in the UX operating system.

Although the solution is good, open-source options keep getting better and better, so I'd recommend others to look into that. This solution is expensive. So is Oracle. I find open-source more innovative and they often have a good community around them that offers helpful support.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. I'd rate it higher, but there are basic features that have minimum capabilities that can be very dissatisfying. Apart from that, they provide good support, offer a good clustering model that's reliable, and it's properly tested with certified code.

I am a specialist in content management solutions, especially IBM and other open-source products. I am the director of my team, and we specialize in this solution.

We use this in many areas including banking, insurance, and public administration.

The most valuable feature of this solution is Portal Virtualization.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for the Arabic language.

Better and easier integration with other solutions, such as DB2, would be an improvement. 

This solution is very good in terms of stability. It is one of the stablest solutions that exist.

The IBM technical support for this solution is good. I have had experience with them going back to 2003-2004, and they are reactive.

The initial setup of this solution is easy.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use IBM WAS Developer Edition in our development machines for free.

There is an Eclipse Plugin provided by IBM, so no need to buy IBM Rational Application Developer or Rational Software Architect tools.

Starting with version 8, WAS provides a special folder called monitor deployment. Once you put the .war or .ear file in there, it is deployed automatically without human intervention. This greatly helps us in our continuous integration server. Once the deployment binary is ready, we write a script to copy it to that folder and then, voila! The application is up and running and accessible from its context root.

• Stability: Once you deploy your application, it will be very stable with no issues at all.
• Ease of administration: It has an Integrated Solutions Console, what we call the administrative console, with very detailed configurations and Help pages for each configurable item.
• Up to date: Once a security vulnerability has been discovered, IBM patches it quickly, and later includes it in a bigger fix or update.
• Security: It is compatible with the latest Java 8 security features, supports FIPS 140-2 and NIST SP 800-53 with strong ciphers and cryptography keys, and supports TLS 1.2 completely. Also, configuring client and server certificates is relatively easy.

IBM needs to pay attention to market changes more quickly. We now have Java 9 and very soon Java EE8. We do not want to wait for two or three years after their release until they are supported by the new version, say WAS 10 in our case.

Installing or configuring a WAS server instance as a Windows Service causes a lot of problems, especially when the server needs credentials to stop.

No stability issues at all.

No scalability issues at all.

Very good.

I used Oracle GlassFish and Apache Tomcat but found them good only for small applications. Also, they need a lot of XML configuration and are not really production-ready.

The initial setup is straightforward and, thanks to Java and its platform independency, it requires almost the same steps in all operating systems.

You just have to install IBM Installation Manager, define your repositories, and click Install or Update.

If your application is just a web app that does not need to scale big, you can obtain a single core license of WAS Express edition, which has almost the same features with limited processing cores.

If you manage a very big application farm (i.e. need to run 10 or more WAS servers) it is better to get IBM WAS Hypervisor Edition.

I evaluated Red Hat JBoss EAP, but since we need to integrate with IBM MQ and the IBM Integration Bus, all in a mixed Windows/AIX environment, we found that IBM WAS was the winner.

IBM products, in general, need a lot of experience. They are very similar, have much in common, but to avoid getting into trouble and strange issues, it's important to read within the IBM Knowledge Center before starting. Also, do not skip any step in the installation/migration/configuration section, as it may stop you later, even without your knowing it.

IBM WAS is the backbone for our enterprise content management suite which delivers the primary processes for our customers. Without a good application server, it would be hard to provide a secure layer of midddleware upon which the other applications run. IBM WAS improves the stability of the entire solution and provides a high quality platform for running web-based solutions.

The Admin Console is most valuable to us since we have to use it to configure the application server for using it as middleware for our IBM FileNet, IBM Content Navigator and IBM Case Manager software stack. Without the Admin Console it would be very hard to configure JVM settings, JDBC datasources, mail session settings, and security providers.

IBM WAS is a stable product. No issues encountered.

IBM WAS is extremely scalable. It is easy to add additional servers and to divide the load over servers in all kinds of ways. If you want true scalability with persistence of EJB sessions then you have to purchase IBM WAS ND which can be more expensive than most companies are willing to pay for.

I have never had a need to file a PMR (Problem Management Record) for IBM WAS, so I have no experience with technical support for this product.

We used BEA WebLogic before using IBM WAS. The reason we switched was because of the licensing. BEA WebLogic has to be purchased separately, while IBM WAS base is part of the deal when you purchase IBM FileNet P8 Content Engine. Both products work fine by the way.

Initial setup is very simple. Just use the IBM Installation Manager and add the packages. The install wizard takes care of the rest. The only thing that can be difficult is to find the right packages on the IBM website, because of all the changes that IBM does on its website(s).

Room for improvement would only be in the licensing. As with all IBM products the licensing can be complex and expensive. Bargain well and try to get as much discount as possible. Discounts of 85% are possible. Without the discount, I think the product is overrated.

We have evaluated other products, like BEA WebLogic and JBoss. 

Get a good feeling for how many users your system has and work out a system architecture before starting to implement IBM WAS. It is a product that can be implemented in many ways. Making a wrong choice in implementation can cause a lot of headaches later on.

It's scalable and very reliable.

The incredible support that we get from IBM is of primary importance, that I see, because anytime we have a problem, help is just a phone call away.

I'd like to see the ability to build clusters made a little bit easier. It is kind of a manual process right now and this would just help save time and reduce resources.

The process is only partially automated and still requires significant manual effort to complete the configuration of an operational WebSphere cluster.

We have yet to max out the IBM MQ cluster. We have not been able to find the limits of the scalability yet.

We have used the technical support several times, successfully. It was great.

This solution was already in place when I was hired, so I didn't have a choice.

It wasn't easy, but nothing in IT is. The setup was pretty straightforward and any problems that I had, I was able to find the answers on the IBM Website.

It's an awesome solution. Compared to everything else that's out there in the market right now, IBM MQ is hands down the best solution available and that's based on 40 years of IT experience.

Invest in training. It's a complex product, but once you learn how it works, it's fantastic.

Reliability and the use of cutting-edge technology are important factors while selecting a vendor. Everything that's already in IBM MQ is state-of-the-art technology.

We use it for a web application related to insurance.

The VPN service is quite useful. Our main application runs on a close integration with Jira platforms. To access it remotely, we need WebSphere and a VPN server.  

Sometimes, I feel WebSphere runs a bit slow. It might be loading unnecessary libraries, impacting its performance compared to other application servers.

So, better performance is my main request.

My company has been using this solution for five to six years.

Once it's up and running, it's quite stable.

It is a scalable product. However, the IT team responsible for installation should have some knowledge of Unix operating systems since the platform runs on a Unix and Linux system.

The initial setup is relatively easy. The complete deployment time depends on the application. Some might take as little as eight hours, while others require more time.

We usually have a team of two or three people handling it. 

The pricing is a little expensive. I would rate the pricing a four out of ten. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.