Apache Kafka vs. IBM MQ vs. TIBCO BusinessEvents

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Kafka
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Apache Kafka is an open-source stream processing platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala and Java. The Kafka event streaming platform is used by thousands of companies for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications.N/A
IBM MQ
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM MQ (formerly WebSphere MQ and MQSeries) is messaging middleware.N/A
TIBCO BusinessEvents
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
Enterprises are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of events that occur continuously. Hidden amongst them can be stalled business processes, opportunities for value creation, potential fraud, dissatisfied customers, failing equipment, and more. TIBCO BusinessEvents® proactively identifies these critical events, responds intelligently in real-time to navigate the fast-moving business environments and optimize outcomes. Decision-making in businesses requires a comprehensive…N/A
Pricing
Apache KafkaIBM MQTIBCO BusinessEvents
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache KafkaIBM MQTIBCO BusinessEvents
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache KafkaIBM MQTIBCO BusinessEvents
Considered Multiple Products
Apache Kafka
Chose Apache Kafka
Confluent Cloud is still based on Apache Kafka but it has a subscription fee so, from a long term perspective, it is wiser to deploy your own Kafka instance that spans public and private cloud. Amazon Kinesis, Google Cloud Pub/Sub do not do well for a very number of messages …
Chose Apache Kafka
Kafka is faster and more scalable, also "free" as opensource (albeit we deploy using a commercial distribution). Infrastructure tends to be cheaper. On the other hand, projects must adapt to Kafka APIs that sometimes change and BAU increases until a major 1.x version comes out …
IBM MQ
Chose IBM MQ
Apache Kafka may be a better option in comparison with IBM MQ its real-time data streaming and large data payload service. It depends upon the specific requirement and meets those needs. MuleSoft any point platform is very easy to connect to various other types of platforms in …
Chose IBM MQ
I've also used Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ. Compared to these, IBM MQ offers superior reliability and transactional integrity, making it a better choice for complex, mission-critical enterprise environments where message delivery and security are paramount. We chose IBM MQ for …
Chose IBM MQ
Kafka is renowned for its impressive throughput, fault tolerance, and real-time data streaming capabilities. Nonetheless, IBM MQ remains the preferred choice due to its unwavering commitment to guaranteed delivery and exceptional reliability. Fault-Tolerant Architectures of IBM …
Chose IBM MQ
Nothing like MQ . The backbone of the banking industry or any other area . however most of the rivals are light weight and integration is easy .
Chose IBM MQ
We found IBM MQ very easy to get started and quick to learn by the new users with a short learning curve and seamlessly integrates with IBM products, and quick to perform self-service analytics and make informed business decisions. IBM MQ is also very straightforward in …
Chose IBM MQ
IBM MQ is very stable and a proven product compared to other Messaging platforms available. Performance was better than WSO2 product and also the RabbitMQ. Though Kafka and IBM MQ is not directly comparable, Kafka is more suited for event based systems and also where there is …
Chose IBM MQ
IBM MQ is the product for inter-business communication for security, flexibility and scalability.
TIBCO BusinessEvents
Chose TIBCO BusinessEvents
BE has been a great tool. But our company is moving to AWS and not moving current TIBCO solutions to the cloud.
Best Alternatives
Apache KafkaIBM MQTIBCO BusinessEvents
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
IBM MQ
IBM MQ
Score 9.1 out of 10
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka
Score 8.6 out of 10
Confluent
Confluent
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM MQ
IBM MQ
Score 9.1 out of 10
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka
Score 8.6 out of 10
Spotfire Streaming
Spotfire Streaming
Score 5.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache KafkaIBM MQTIBCO BusinessEvents
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(19 ratings)
8.8
(47 ratings)
7.2
(13 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
7.8
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(29 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(4 ratings)
9.1
(27 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache KafkaIBM MQTIBCO BusinessEvents
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Apache Kafka is well-suited for most data-streaming use cases. Amazon Kinesis and Azure EventHubs, unless you have a specific use case where using those cloud PaAS for your data lakes, once set up well, Apache Kafka will take care of everything else in the background. Azure EventHubs, is good for cross-cloud use cases, and Amazon Kinesis - I have no real-world experience. But I believe it is the same.
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IBM
In the context of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, IBM MQ plays a pivotal role in managing the substantial data streams emanating from interconnected devices. Its primary function is to guarantee the dependable transmission and processing of data, catering to a diverse range of IoT use cases, including but not limited to smart city initiatives, healthcare monitoring systems, and industrial automation solutions. In the telecommunications sector, IBM MQ is employed for message routing, call detail record (CDR) processing, and network management to ensure real-time data exchange and fault tolerance. When managing the supply chain and logistics, IBM MQ is used to ensure timely and accurate communication between different entities, including suppliers, warehouses, and transportation providers. IBM MQ can be cost-prohibitive for smaller organizations due to licensing and maintenance costs. In such cases, open-source or lightweight messaging solutions may be more appropriate. For scenarios requiring extremely low-latency, real-time data exchange, and high throughput, other messaging technologies, like Apache Kafka, may be more suitable due to their specialized design for such use cases.
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TIBCO Software Inc.
TIBCO BusinessEvents is part of the CEP (Complex Event Processing) family, this means that it fits perfectly in all those scenarios where a correlation between incoming events is required. Where a stateful process is necessary. It does not fit well for a kind of Process Orchestrator scope, where simple events are coming in, and there is a well-defined behavior the system, would have on incoming request, and no particular reason to use a rule engine and its complexity. Anyway, there are particular cases where BusinessEvents would be a good actor in orchestrating a portion of CEP solutions activities
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Pros
Apache
  • Really easy to configure. I've used other message brokers such as RabbitMQ and compared to them, Kafka's configurations are very easy to understand and tweak.
  • Very scalable: easily configured to run on multiple nodes allowing for ease of parallelism (assuming your queues/topics don't have to be consumed in the exact same order the messages were delivered)
  • Not exactly a feature, but I trust Kafka will be around for at least another decade because active development has continued to be strong and there's a lot of financial backing from Confluent and LinkedIn, and probably many other companies who are using it (which, anecdotally, is many).
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IBM
  • The documentation is very clear,It is understandable and the support helps to configure it in the best way.
  • Server guidelines make it possible to get the most out of work management. It's broad, we can work with different operating systems, I really recommend using linux.
  • It is highly compatible with systems, brockers, applications, and data accumulation programs, it is possible to configure everything so that after the installation of programs, they can communicate with each other and then throw data to an external program that accumulates it and represents in clear details of steps to follow and make business decisions.
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TIBCO Software Inc.
  • It allows us to build rule-based model-driven application, to collect, filter, analyze, correlate various business events in our real-time event flow
  • It makes various business applications/components easy to integrate (loosely decoupled but chained via the events flow) together
  • Its distributed rule engine and embedded in-memory data grid (ActiveSpace) gives us a lot of flexibility and room to play with a large amount of rules and data with high performance
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Cons
Apache
  • Sometimes it becomes difficult to monitor our Kafka deployments. We've been able to overcome it largely using AWS MSK, a managed service for Apache Kafka, but a separate monitoring dashboard would have been great.
  • Simplify the process for local deployment of Kafka and provide a user interface to get visibility into the different topics and the messages being processed.
  • Learning curve around creation of broker and topics could be simplified
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IBM
  • There is limitation on number of svrconn connections you can have to MQ on the mainframe which has been an major issue for us. This has been an issue for us for over 4 years and still no fix although I am aware IBM have been working on a solution over the last year.
  • When upgrading to MQ V9.3 on our MQ appliances there is no fall-back option. This was the same for MQ V9.2 upgrade from MQ V9.0. For production upgrades this I believe is not acceptable.
  • AMS is not supplied as part of the standard mainframe MQ licence. You need an extra licence. IBM tell customers how important security and protecting data is yet they still want to charge for this software. The cost of MQ on the mainframe is not cheap so I would expect AMS to be part of the base product.
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TIBCO Software Inc.
  • Better integration with R versions and better debug for R-scripts in Spotfire. There are inconsistencies in syntactic expressions accepted by R-studio and not accepted in Spotfire. Accelerating the debug would be awesome. Having a command like View (data frame) that directly output in the dashboard would be a great accelerator.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet
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IBM
No answers on this topic
TIBCO Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Usability
Apache
Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file
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IBM
I give it a nine because it has significantly improved my team's data reliability and operational efficiency. Its great security features give us peace of mind, knowing our sensitive data is well protected. While the setup might initially be complex, I believe the long-term benefits far outweigh this hurdle.
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TIBCO Software Inc.
TIBCO Business Events is one of the best in business and very well suitable for organization like ours where there are large volumes of data that need to be processed on daily basis. It helps in real time monitoring of data and supports writing complex rules which makes it easier to get the work done. It also helps in fraud detection by identifying suspicious activities and integrate with other systems for a comprehensive view.
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Reliability and Availability
Apache
No answers on this topic
IBM
The messages are delivered instantly with this software and it integrates with our technology stack, in terms of availability we only had one failure when we were doing some testing and integration with third parties, the features of this software make it always available and its deployment is easy for the company, it does not generate expenses due to failures
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TIBCO Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Apache
Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.
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IBM
There are very specific things that must be elevated to more specialized areas of support, but the common support is very agile when receiving questions or when we leave concerns in real time. I recommend the support of the program in this regard.
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TIBCO Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Apache
I used other messaging/queue solutions that are a lot more basic than Confluent Kafka, as well as another solution that is no longer in the market called Xively, which was bought and "buried" by Google. In comparison, these solutions offer way fewer functionalities and respond to other needs.
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IBM
We found IBM MQ very easy to get started and quick to learn by the new users with a short learning curve and seamlessly integrates with IBM products, and quick to perform self-service analytics and make informed business decisions. IBM MQ is also very straightforward in creating simple and best reports, which are very profitable and productive.
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TIBCO Software Inc.
I was not part of evaluation of the products in this space in my organization. But I feel BE is better in terms of RIO if compared with some commercial products from Orcle, IBM and SAP. I strongly feel difficulty in using cloud native features is one big shortcoming in current product offering. This will tend customer like us to explore options that are well suited with ur cloud first vision.
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • Positive: Get a quick and reliable pub/sub model implemented - data across components flows easily.
  • Positive: it's scalable so we can develop small and scale for real-world scenarios
  • Negative: it's easy to get into a confusing situation if you are not experienced yet or something strange has happened (rare, but it does). Troubleshooting such situations can take time and effort.
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IBM
  • Positive- Message Reliability and Reduced downtime, increases the ROI many times.
  • Positive- Increased stability and enhanced customer experience
  • Negative- cost is very high - Both licensing and integration cost
  • Negative- Learning and training cost of IBM MQ is high as its complex to use and integrate
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TIBCO Software Inc.
  • Positive : Real-time event stream processing helps handle transactions very efficiently.
  • Negative : Earlier versions of BE (5.0 & 5.1) had major issues in data handling in cache that impacted the data integrity of the application.
  • Positive : Decision Tables are a huge plus in TIBCO BE.
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