Lead Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Based on your requirements, there are various size levels, similar to t-shirt sizing
Pros and Cons
  • "When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the install was seamless with no issues."
  • "We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, is the ease of use there?"

What is our primary use case?

One of our use cases at our global company went live recently. We have a lot of goods that move via sea routes. While there are other modes of transport, particularly for the sea route, we wanted to track our shipments, their location, and that type of information and generate some reports. Also, there are multiple applications which need this data.

With Solace, we are bringing information in every minute (almost real-time) from our logistic partners and putting it on Solace. Then, from Solace, the applications that want to consume the information can take it. E.g., we are generating some dashboards in Power BI using this information. We are also pushing this information into our data lakes where more reporting plus slicing and dicing is available. In future, if more subscribers want this information, they will also be able to take it. 

We have both our private cloud and a version completely hosted on SaaS by Solace. 

How has it helped my organization?

The base use case is that we wanted the shipment tracking information in multiple applications, like Power BI and data lake, for the more reporting, etc. If we would not have got Solace, then we need to extract this information multiple times from source application. Now, we pull this information only once and then put it on Solace. Anybody can take it from Solace because the information is readily available. We are generating the data only once. 

Every organisation has exposure of their data with their devices being interconnected. We don't want to transfer the same data multiple times. Solutions like Solace can help us in publishing data only once, then anybody can pick it from there. This reduces costs of data transfer. It reduces the load on data sources, because we aren't asking them to generate the same data multiple times.

Our company is an SAP centred company. A lot of our key applications are using the SAP product suite. When we talk about transaction data and master data, that is where the real complexity comes into play. There are a couple of use cases that we have discussed with Solace for topic hierarchy. E.g., a product master might be sold by multiple channels, produced in multiple factories, and sold in multiple geographies, so creating a topic hierarchy for these could be challenging. When we started, we discussed this complexity with Solace. They helped us arrive at an initial topic hierarchy based on some similar use cases which have been implemented for other customers, sharing their insights.

Another point is their overall approach to topic building. They have very good documentation. It will be our own internal complexity that will drive the topic hierarchy. We are currently in the early stages, and so far journey has been good. Right now, we are comfortable with information and help we are getting from Solace along with the overall approach recommended for topic building. However, time will tell, especially after we generate very complex cases with Solace, how this topic hierarchy functions.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable thing for us is being able to publish a message, then have the ability to subscribe it on the fly. We want to democratize the usage of this going forward.

We are currently using the basic platform, and as we become more mature, I am particularly excited about using the Event Catalog. This was launched recently. There are certain features like event visualisation and event discovery which we want to see in action. It will take some time for us to make more events published on Solace. 

The software has been very good because:

  1. You can spin off a Solace instance very quickly. 
  2. Based on your requirements, there are various size levels, similar to t-shirt sizing. 
  3. When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the installation was seamless with no issues. 

After publishing, we have seen the solution’s topic filtering go into approximately six levels, which is quite granular. These many levels are good enough. Also, the business payload lookup is supported.

What needs improvement?

We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and can be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, ease of use etc.?

The second challenge is about skills and not related to product directly. Resource availability can be a challenge, e.g. if we have a lot of use cases for this and insufficient manpower, which comes from our partner companies and other IT companies, that will slow us down. This is an area that if Solace could do something, it would be good. If they could add some training or certification, that will be good. From a product perspective, so far in journey, it looks okay but time only will tell once we have put lot of volume and use cases on it.

The topic catalog was actually a gap in the product about a year and a half ago when we started. It was not available in the basic platform, and we said, "This will become a challenge." Now, they have recently launched the Event Catalog and event visualization, where you can do an impact assessment if you change something, e.g., you can see the whole visual of impact. If you are publishing an event, you can see who are the subscribers, etc. It does look good, but we are in a very early stage. Therefore, we want to see it in action for a broader base and more use cases, before we say, "Yes, from administration perspective, this makes sense."

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For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution close to a year. Our use case recently went live. Now, we are working on a couple more projects.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, we haven't seen any downtime or issues. We are in our initial journey, but we don't see any such challenges of instability at all. In fact, during the platform setup or during initial test cases, we never encountered any issues of services not working or downtime etc. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As far as the SaaS solution is concerned, this solution is available in the t-shirt sizes. On the fly, it can be added to the existing subscription. Scalability should not be a challenge.

We keep on looking at our usage and approach. When we reach 70 percent usage, thats an indication of need of further scaling up. By the time we reach 85 or 90 percent, we would have already added capacity to your solution.

Our users are IT teams, not business users. Our use case originates from the supply chain, then the integration team manages Solace. We have around five to six IT users who interact with the platform to develop the solution. Once it has gone live, they support it in the production environment.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support helped us in all the aspects. So far, there are no complaints. We got really fantastic support from them. Their leadership is also very much committed. Their senior VP joins us in weekly review, which is the kind of commitment coming from them since their leadership is involved. Their technical teams are definitely involved and fully committed to our success.

A year and a half ago, the Event Portal was not available when we started our journey. This is a strong feature that they added based on feedback that they heard from us. This would not had been something that we could have requested with an open source, like Kafka. We would have had to outsource it to a partner for them to build it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Solace is a new product for us that changes the way we approach towards architecture. Solace is helping us to add some workarounds which will convert messages into event enabled messages. That is how we are using Solace right now. However, before this solution, we did not have anything.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

The deployment took four to five weeks. When we got the first use case, we started understanding the requirements pretty well, then built the solution, did the testing, and made it live. After the solution is live, if anyone else needs data, that can be done very quickly. It won't take a couple weeks like first time. You can just connect, pull the data, and test it. 

From implementation strategy perspective, we wanted a simple use case, e.g., just publish and subscribe. The easiest case could be a point-to-point where there is only one publisher and one subscriber. Things that are non-business critical, we wanted to put them first on Solace and see the performance, learn how they worked, their challenges, and dos and don'ts.

Later, we gradually wanted to move into business critical cases. The next set of our use cases, which are running on other middleware, we are trying replicating them on Solace. However, we will not be jumping to Solace directly. Rather, it is like a parallel solution, which is being built on the Solace layer. We want to see whether it is working fine. Gradually, we'll start switching from those scenarios which are running on other middleware to the Solace layer.

During this journey, we have also been targeting our topic building mechanism/approach, which will get firmly established. That is how we are approaching Solace overall. At the same time, we have also brought in our partners of other middleware - MuleSoft, Dell EMC, and SAP. These are some of our strategic partners. It is not just a big product which you take, then you forget. It's ability of that tool and how well it fits into your ecosystem as well. Solace can be a very good tool, but if other applications are not able to communicate with it, then it will be not of use to us. Therefore, we are also seeing that how Solace with Dell EMC, MuleSoft or SAP could create value for us. That's another thing which we are doing from a strategic perspective.

What about the implementation team?

The technical support partnered in creating the initial use cases and setting up the platform. Our IT team and infra network team from the back-end worked to install Solace on our private cloud.

When we did the first project, we worked with the Solace team. They were good people who helped us go into the smallest level of detail for the project requirements. 

Our staff resources customize whatever work has to be done on the Solace piece. Once it goes live, they do regular monitoring. For a new onboarding project, we rely on these staff resources.

What was our ROI?

We have just started. The journey for us is new; we are not mature yet.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Go for the best deal that you can get from Solace. Primarily, the licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey.

I don't think it makes any difference if somebody gives us a free version. That would be very small from a capacity perspective. For an enterprise organization that would not be sufficient, so we are not looking for freeware. 

We are looking for something that will add value and be fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Our journey to Solace was not very long. We started interacting with Solace leadership probably about a year and a half year back. That was the first time that we spoke with them about this concept and product. There were a few things that we asked for as part of product roadmap. Then, we moved to the product evaluation where we also brought in a couple of other competition tools. Finally, we selected Solace.

The challenge with open source is they give you a basic flavor, which is decent enough. However, when you look at enterprise level, you need the following: 

  • A good support mechanism available
  • Reporting 
  • Administration
  • A distributed license, since there is talk about how to decentralize usage.

These are the challenges that come with an open source product. They do the basic thing well, but if you need to make the solution fit for purpose, you need to maintain the custom solution on your own. This becomes a problem from a resource and investment perspective, as technologies keep on changing.

If we talk about Solace, you see the value-add layer. I can say that Solace is a basic Kafka. But on top of that Kafka layer, they have added their own layer. That is really good, as this is where it adds value and why we went for it.

There are a lot of good things that made us decide to go for Solace. Looking at Kafka, the value-added monitoring, Event Catalogs, and visualization are not there. When we talk about Solace's competitors on certain aspects, we rank them a little lower. Overall, when ranking them, Solace was the one who has scored highest, so we went for it. 

We do not use other competitor products, so we don't have direct experience with their ease of design. We also evaluated:

  • A Microsoft solution: This solution was the closest to Solace.
  • OpenText
  • Kafka (open source)
  • Confluent
  • Also, two data stream solutions for high volume data.

The challenge with Kafka is you have to think of everything on your own. You have to build the complete service part of the solution on Kafka. Solace compared to Kafka was a no-brainer. Solace distinguished itself with topic building and scalabilty. When in cloud, you can quickly scale up.

With Kafka, the challenge comes when you design a solution that has topic management. How do you make a topic discoverable? How do you define the dependencies between one topic and a subscriber?

From a monitoring perspective, I also feel Solace has a better product. More than that, there are commitments which comes from the Solace product, such as improvements. They are open to hear what we were saying. If there are certain things which are not available, they said that they will try to plug those gaps.

What other advice do I have?

Start with the simplest use case. Learn how Solace operates and about the ways it will work in your own internal organization. You will have to come up with standard guidelines, best practices, ways of working, etc. Once you understand all of these things, then start picking more use cases at the next level of complexity.

Before you put anything directly into production, do a pilot run. Once you are pretty comfortable with this new technology, only then switch over to new technologies.

We want to use the solution's event mesh feature, but we are not there yet. Currently, we have two instances of Solace that are connected in a small mesh, but this is a very basic thing.

We have the software but did not go for the hardware part of the solution.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10).

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Websphere MQ Specialist at a maritime company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good support, very stable, and easy to replicate information and send it to several subscribers
Pros and Cons
  • "The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it."
  • "It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."

What is most valuable?

The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it.

What needs improvement?

It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for several years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a very stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We have a couple of hundred users.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We just used MQ before this. We found out about PubSub, and we started using it as well for its benefits.

How was the initial setup?

It is a bit complex, but you get instructions. Once you know what to do, it is fairly straightforward. The installation takes about 30 minutes, but configuration takes a long time. After you gather all your data, it could sometimes take a day or two.

What about the implementation team?

I have done it myself. We have around 50 people for maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

What other advice do I have?

It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use, so you need a deep understanding. There is good information. They have thought of everything and noticed what the customers tell them. In every release, there is something better in it. I would definitely recommend this solution to others.

I would rate PubSub+ Event Broker a nine out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
Message Queue (MQ) Software
March 2024
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Head of Enterprise Architecture & Digital Innovation Lab at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Can add multiple subscribers seamlessly to topics and queues using different formats and protocols
Pros and Cons
  • "This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker."
  • "I would like them to design topic and queue schemas, mapping them to the enterprise data structure."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Event Broker to publish data across the enterprise, then share the transaction data updates in real-time across the enterprise, and also in some cases the telemetry data.

We do use event mesh, but our use is limited. The reason for that is we have our publishers and consumers on-prem while have our applications on AWS, Azure, and SaaS. It's a multicloud hybrid infrastructure, but the majority are still on-prem. We are slowly moving to AWS, Azure, and SaaS. As we expand to AWS and Azure, then event mesh will be a key feature that we would like to leverage.

We are using the latest version.

How has it helped my organization?

When publishing a product, it updates across the enterprise. We have 100 to 200 consumers, which are basically the applications interested in product changes in real-time. We could publish these product changes to Solace Event Broker with one update. Then, all 100 to 200 consumers could be listening to this topic or queue. Any time a change happens, it's pushed to this topic. They have access to it and can take whatever actions based on those changes. This all happens in real-time.

We used more point-to-point integration in the past. This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker.

With the event mesh feature dynamic message routing across the enterprise, you could have an event getting published from on-prem and consumers in the AWS public cloud. The publisher doesn't have to know where the consumers are. The publisher will publish it to the event broker, which could be on-prem, and the broker will have the intelligence to route the events to wherever these consumers are, whether it's AWS or a broker. If there's another broker in agile, then it will have the intelligence to route it dynamically so the publisher doesn't need to know where the consumers are. Event mesh's ability to have brokers installed across a diverse multicloud on-prem infrastructure gives us the flexibility to support applications across our enterprise. That has a big advantage.

If you just have one broker trying to do all this routing of events to different subscribers across different infrastructures, it will have a huge impact on performance. With Solace, events are routed based on the load of the broker. It can dynamically adjust the burst capacity and scale based on the events being pushed as well as events that aren't getting consumed. The logic about how to manage the routing and scaling happens dynamically between brokers. 

What is most valuable?

  • The ability to publish data events in real-time to the broker.
  • The ability to add multiple subscribers seamlessly to topics and queues using different formats and protocols.
  • The Solace Admin Utility is pretty intuitive and flexible.

E.g., if you have to configure these manually, then the publisher of each event would have to manually configure these events to the topics, provide access, and do monitoring. All these activities would have to be done manually without a Solace Admin. The Solace Admin provides you a UI where any publisher with appropriate access can create their own topics and queues. It can also provide access to subscribers so they can administer their own events.

There is another feature where subscribers can easily discover different topics to consume. If they can find it, then they can, get access to it through the workflow in the Solace.

An advantage of Solace is the way they define their topic hierarchy. With the whole filtering on the topic, we are able to publish data to multiple systems without creating new topics fragments. For instance, if you didn't have that flexibility of the topic hierarchy and ability to do filtering, then you would have to create new topics for a different combination of data sets. This filtering ability creates a lot of flexibility in creating generic topics, where subscribers can just do a filter and consume whatever data they need. That's a powerful feature.

It's very granular. If you can define your topic schema with some order, then you can pretty much do whatever data set at the lowest level. It does provide a lot of flexibility that way without making any changes upstream.

The solution’s topic filtering, in terms of the ease of application design and maintenance, provides us flexibility. The solution makes it easier to consume data on same topic but also change the logic or filtering. E.g., if you want column one, two, and five from a topic schema today, but then you may decide the next day that you need column four and seven.

The solution's event mesh has the ability to make a network of brokers look/seem like a single broker. E.g., if you have consumers in on-prem, AWS, and Azure, along with some SaaS providers, external customers, or partners, you could have brokers deployed for AWS, Azure, and outside for external customers, respectively. If the publisher is publishing an event from on-prem, then they just publish the one event to the broker deployed on-prem. The on-prem broker will route the request to the AWS broker, Azure broker, and the external broker seamlessly. This is transparent to the publisher and consumers, which is a positive feature.

What needs improvement?

The discovery part needs improvement. E.g., if I have a topic or queue, I want a common place to look at all the different subscribers who are using them. I think they have added this to the Event Portal, but it's not live yet. If they could have the ability to discover events and the relationship between publisher and subscriber for each topic, that would be a very powerful feature. 

I would like them to design topic and queue schemas, mapping them to the enterprise data structure. We have recommended this feature to Solace. 

For how long have I used the solution?

About eight months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. There's high availability. The architecture is pretty robust and can fade over. It's pretty much a NonStop platform as long as it's architected the right way. 

We have a small team who is responsible for monitoring the alerts. However, they're not dedicated to Solace as they also look at other platforms. The maintenance is low because you can pretty much automate all the alerts. In a lot of cases, you can also resolve them systematically. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

You can scale it across multiple instances seamlessly. You can add instances without really disrupting operations. It's obviously not on multiple environments so you can easily add hardware or resources as required. It's very robust in that sense.

We have about eight people using the solution. Their roles are mostly cloud architects and integration architects, as well as some integration developers. 

Right now, we have about 25 applications using Solace, but we anticipate this to increase significantly as we onboard more data sets. By the end of this year, there should potentially be about 100 applications using Solace.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have used their technical support as well as their professional services. 

  • They have a very strong support team. 
  • Some improvement is required with Solace professional services. The professional services really needs to drive the solutions for the customers and share best practices. They also need to guide the teams through the right things.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We use Apache Kafka, which is more of an API gateway. For us, events is a new concept. We do more request/reply, API-based integration patents. We also have typical event-driven architecture. This is still a new concept for us that we are trying to evolve.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. One of the good features about Solace is their documentation and onboarding scripts are very intuitive, easy, and simple to follow.

The broker took three to four hours to deploy.

We had an implementation strategy before we actually deployed it. In terms of:

  • How are we going to create this event mesh across the organization? 
  • Where are we going to deploy this broker? 
  • Which applications are going to onboard as a publisher, or which events? 
  • Defining the topic schema. 

We did spend some time planning for that process in terms of how we were going to do the maintenance of the platform.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI because we started with the free version. Even now, we have a basic enterprise license and are getting the business value from its cost.

We have seen at least a 50 percent increase in productivity (compared to using Kafka) when using Solace for the following use cases:

  • Sharing changes in real-time.
  • Onboarding new subscribers.
  • Modifying data sets.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing and licensing are painless. Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version.

For simple use cases, the free version works. Because we wanted the maintenance and access to the technical support, we went with the enterprise license which is pretty cost-efficient compared to other commercial products. Licensing-wise, it's pretty much free if you want to start off with the basic version, then you can expand to other additional features as you feel comfortable and confident. You have that flexibility from a licensing perspective.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Once we decided to go with Solace, we then evaluated Kafka and also looked at RabbitMQ. However, this was mostly to ensure we were making the right decision.

Some of Solace's key differentiators versus Kafka and RabbitMQ are its free version with the ability to deploy and try the product. It's very easy to implement the broker and create the topics and queues. It also has helpful documentation and videos.

Kafka has some admin features, but not like Solace Admin or Solace Portal. It has limited UI features, as most of it is through a CLI. The key difference would be that you need a specialized skill set to be able to administer and maintain an event broker, if you are using an open source.

This solution has increased application design productivity compared with competitive or open-source alternatives. The key is it's a concept that is not obvious. Event-driven architecture is still evolving, as people are still comfortable with the traditional way of designing these products. If you purely compare it with open source, this solution has a lot of advantages. In our case, the adoption is still slow. Primarily, that is because of the skill set and maturity of our architecture.

The solution management productivity increased by 50 percent when compared to using Kafka.

Compared to Kafka, with our internal use cases, Solace is definitely the right solution now. If we use the telemetry IoT use cases, such as real-time streaming and analytics, then Kafka would probably have an edge. However, for our use cases and the volume that we have, Solace is good for us.

What other advice do I have?

It would be good to think through your event-driven architecture, roadmap and design.

It is very easy for architects and developers to extend their design and development investment to new applications using this solution. Compared to the legacy integration pattern, there has been mindset shift because the changes are coming in real-time. The solution has the ability to consume those events in real time, then process them. While there is a learning curve there, it's pretty easy to consume changes. 

Biggest lesson learnt: Think through the whole event-driven architecture and involve other stakeholders. Prepare a good business case and have a good MOC before getting started.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10).

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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SAP Integration Architect
Real User
Top 10
A scalable and stable solution with a user-friendly portal
Pros and Cons
  • "The event portal and the diversity of deployment options in a hybrid landscape are the most valuable features."
  • "The licensing and the cost are the major pitfalls."

What is our primary use case?

An enterprise-grade event broker for mediation of events produced by a heterogeneous hybrid landscape of SAP and non-SAP systems at scale.

An event registry/catalogue and a user-friendly visualization of event flow.

What is most valuable?

The event portal and the diversity of deployment options in a hybrid landscape are the most valuable features.

What needs improvement?

The licensing and the cost are the major pitfalls.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for almost two years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a very scalable and robust solution. I rate it a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Head of Infrastructure at Grasshopper
Real User
Guaranteed Messaging allows for us to transport messages between on-prem and the cloud without any loss of data
Pros and Cons
  • "Guaranteed Messaging allows for us to transport messages between on-prem and the cloud without any loss of data."
  • "The ease of management could be approved. The GUI is very good, but to configure and manage these devices programmatically in the software version is not easy. For example, if I would like to spin up a new software broker, then I could in theory use the API, but it would require a considerable amount of development effort to do so. There should be a tool, or something that Solace supports, that we could use for this, e.g., a platform like Terraform where we could use infrastructure as code to configure our source appliances."

What is our primary use case?

We use it as a central message bus to interconnect all our applications as well as for the transportation of market data.

We're using the 3560s for the hardware appliances and version 9.3 for the software.

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped a lot in the unified way of how we develop software. Having a common message processing protocol has helped a lot with maintainability and how software has been designed. It also removes the worries that the message bus is not performing well, e.g., the throughput rates are so high that it works very well.

The solution has increased application design productivity.

It is easy for architects and developers to extend their design and development investment to new applications using this solution. That's never been a roadblock.

What is most valuable?

PubSub+ capabilities make it all work. 

Guaranteed Messaging allows for us to transport messages between on-prem and the cloud without any loss of data.

The solution’s topic hierarchy is pretty flexible and works well. It does require some engineering thought in the beginning to ensure that the hierarchy works and you don't shoot yourself in the foot. But if that is architected well, it allows for very nice filtering and subscription based on what you are interested in. 

The topic hierarchy's application design and maintenance works very well.

What needs improvement?

The ease of management could be approved. The GUI is very good, but to configure and manage these devices programmatically in the software version is not easy. For example, if I would like to spin up a new software broker, then I could in theory use the API, but it would require a considerable amount of development effort to do so. There should be a tool, or something that Solace supports, that we could use for this, e.g., a platform like Terraform where we could use infrastructure as code to configure our source appliances.

Monitoring needs improvement. There is no way to get useful systems to test out the machine without having to implement our own monitoring solution.

I would like to see improvement in the message promotion rate for software-based brokers.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is extremely stable. The amount of hardware-based interruptions that we have had from the Solace products are less than 10 in the last seven to eight years. It has extremely high reliability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Since it is a hardware-based solution, what you buy is what you get. You can then upgrade it, but we have never had a need to upgrade and scale the solution.

It is used for all our applications. The whole company is using it, including traders, developers, and risk.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very good. Our questions have always been answered and resolved in a very good way. They seem very knowledgeable about their product and can go into depth about how and why we should implement it in certain ways.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

The deployment was part of a larger rollout. For just the physical deployment, it took a day per site.

What about the implementation team?

We had good support Solace during the deployment and the architecture phase of designing how we would use the product.

What was our ROI?

It has provided us with a return on our investment. It has enabled us to do what we do now.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager.

There was no free version when we evaluated it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We compared a few messages bus solutions, like TIBCO. At that point, Solace came out ahead, both in throughput and probably cost.

We haven't really used any competitors. I don't think there are many on the market still. I don't think the solution really compares that well with any of the open source solutions. Maybe the setup ease with MQ is similar to Solace, but then to keep it operational, Solace is much easier. It's a hardware appliance that you can install in a data center, which just keeps working. That is amazing. It is something that software or open source solutions don't offer.

What other advice do I have?

It is a product that is more like a switch or router, where you install it, then it keeps on working. The operational maintenance is extremely low.

Read the documentation. Talk to Solace about any questions that you might have to find out the best implementation for whatever it is you need to solve.

I would rate the product as an eight (out of 10).

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Google
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Manager, IT at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Makes information flow very seamless; templates and naming conventions make it easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The topic hierarchy is pretty flexible. Once you have the subject defined just about anybody who knows Java can come onboard. The APIs are all there."
  • "The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary."

What is our primary use case?

We use it as a message bus for our different systems to connect to Solace on a pub/sub basis. We have about 10 systems interfacing with it. It is used for our critical payment systems which are mostly online payment transactions. There are also messages for streaming and data warehouse info.

We are using the Solace PubSub+ 3530 appliance, and the AMI (Amazon Machine Image) version. We have a mixture of an on-premise deployment and a cloud deployment. The cloud part is more the AMI.

How has it helped my organization?

Because we use it as a message broker, it makes information flow very seamless.

When we do the setup we establish the naming conventions. So all we need to do is to tell our stakeholders who are interested in using Solace to follow the naming convention. That way, everybody can implement things according to their own timing and schedule. We decouple implementation from the various systems. We just publish things and whoever is ready to consume does so.

From an application design perspective, it is quite easy for them to interface with it and they don't need a lot of rules. Solace has increased application design productivity. It has reduced dependency. Anybody can work with it based on their own timeline so, to a certain extent, there's no bottleneck when they use it.

We have also seen an increase in productivity when it comes to solution management, by about 30 percent.

It's very easy for architects and developers to extend their design and development investment to new applications using solace because it's quite standardized, as long as they follow the template when they do the design. They just have to publish according to the particular template. There is no need to redesign.

What is most valuable?

  • Everything is good in this solution. We only use the PubSub feature. We use a minimum of topics to publish and they are consumed through the Solace message broker.
  • We have a standard template for any new configuration, so it's very easy to manage.
  • The topic hierarchy is pretty flexible. Once you have the subject defined just about anybody who knows Java can come onboard. The APIs are all there.
  • Topic filtering is easy to use and easy to maintain. Sometimes we go into a lot of detail on the content and it can be affected at a higher level. So it's very flexible.

What needs improvement?

The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary. It doesn't allow third-party agents to be installed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Solace PubSub+ Event Broker for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is pretty stable. Since the time we set it up, there has been no need for us to reboot the appliance. We have had zero downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's quite easy to scale. We just have to build in another set.

We have plans to extend it into our warehousing systems — those are portals — so that the information can be shared.

How are customer service and technical support?

They are very knowledgeable and their responses are pretty fast.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not have a previous solution. We went with it because we liked the features that Solace provides and, to date, it has delivered.

The free version allows people to do a proof of concept easily. It helps people when they want to see how easy it is to use. The free version helped us to decide to go with the solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Solace was straightforward. We just had to buy the product, install it, have a few templates, and that was it. We were already good to go.

Our deployment took about a week or so. After that, we did integration testing. Once that was okay we had to come out with a template for people to follow. The learning curve is quite small.

To administer Solace we only need two people. That's because it has role segregation.

What was our ROI?

In terms of dollar value we have not seen ROI, but in terms of availability, we have, because the product is very stable.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

So far, we are okay with the pricing and the licensing.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't compare Solace with competing solutions. 

What other advice do I have?

It's a good product to go with if you are interested in uptime and availability, and ease of implementation.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Solace is that once you get the design correct, everything flows very seamlessly.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Namrata G - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Technology Consultant - Financial Softwares at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
Easy to set up and implement but needs better security
Pros and Cons
  • "As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using."
  • "If you create one event in the past, you cannot resend it."

What is our primary use case?

We are generating stock calls and then those are given to various other processes.

What is most valuable?

As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using.

It was easy to set up and implement. 

What needs improvement?

As of now, it is satisfying all my requirements. There is nothing much that I am looking for or missing in the product. They could focus on the speed, or maybe something like error handling or resending those requests.

If you create one event in the past, you cannot resend it. You need to create it from the beginning.

They could always improve security.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for three or four years. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have three teams using the solution right now. There are about ten people per team using it. We have about 30 licenses. 

It's used on a daily basis. 

How are customer service and support?

I can't speak to technical support. I've never reached out to them at all. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We're also familiar with RabbitMQ. If you compare PubSub Event Broker and RabbitMQ, PubSub is more reliable. RabbitMQ requires a line to be installed, and it was a bit of a tedious process to get it installed. After that, it was smooth enough. My use case, whichever I use, is satisfied. I haven't explored either very deep beyond my own use cases. 

How was the initial setup?

The solution is very easy to set up. It's straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was set up in-house. We didn't need any integrator or consultant support. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not aware of the exact pricing. 

What other advice do I have?

I'd recommend the solution to other users, so long as it aligns with their use case. This product is more suited to a small to medium-sized company.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If it was faster and perhaps had some security enhancements, I would rate it higher. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Message Queue (MQ) Software Report and find out what your peers are saying about Solace, Apache, VMware, and more!
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Message Queue (MQ) Software Report and find out what your peers are saying about Solace, Apache, VMware, and more!