IBM Event Streams vs. IBM MQ

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Event Streams
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
IBM Event Streams is a high-throughput, fault-tolerant, event streaming solution. Powered by Apache Kafka, it provides access to enterprise data through event streams, enabling businesses to unlock insights from historical data, and identify and take action on situations in real time and at scale.N/A
IBM MQ
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM MQ (formerly WebSphere MQ and MQSeries) is messaging middleware.
$5
per month
Pricing
IBM Event StreamsIBM MQ
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Event StreamsIBM MQ
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Event StreamsIBM MQ
Considered Both Products
IBM Event Streams
Chose IBM Event Streams
We've evaluated Confluent Kafka and the price point of Message Hub is excellent. The support has been great. Message Hub provides the same number of features that Apache Kafka provides which has been tremendous.
IBM MQ

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
IBM Event StreamsIBM MQ
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka
Score 8.2 out of 10
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka
Score 8.2 out of 10
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka
Score 8.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Event StreamsIBM MQ
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(14 ratings)
9.0
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.2
(5 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(30 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.1
(28 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.9
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Event StreamsIBM MQ
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
IBM Event Streams is well suited for companies developing event driven Microservices. One of the biggest challenger with microservices is that your data gets distributed into little silos - event streaming (or better known as event sourcing) allows you to get a central source of truth in your event store. We are taking this approach with IBM Event Streams and it is well suited for building an event streaming / sourcing architecture.
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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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Pros
IBM
  • It is adaptive and helps us create more engaging experiences on our platforms.
  • The Key metrics dashboard is rich with insights.
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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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Cons
IBM
  • Provide Capabilities to connect the Event Streams via REST Proxy.
  • Schema Registry to handle Avro Formats.
  • Provide Kafka Connect Sink & Source Connectors.
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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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Usability
IBM
The product was very user friendly and extremely easy to get started with. The documentation is excellent and the free tier makes it very easy to get started with without having to make deep or long term financial commitments.
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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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Reliability and Availability
IBM
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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Support Rating
IBM
I met with the support team and they have deep technical and development understanding of the needs and the problems which IBM Event Streams addresses. If you are looking for a product backed by a highly technical support team then IBM Event Streams is probably the best choice. I was specifically impressed by the level of technical understanding my support team demonstrated.
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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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Alternatives Considered
IBM
In Event Streams, applications send data by creating a message and sending it to a topic. To receive messages, applications subscribe to a topic. High availability and reliability. Event Streams offers a highly available and reliable Apache Kafka service running on IBM Cloud. Event Streams. Event Streams stores three replicas of your data to ensure the highest level of resilience across three availability zones.
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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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Return on Investment
IBM
  • In using downstreams, the minimal features and the rate of releases were slow, makes us feel that there's no upgrades and other than that there's poor marketing of the product.
  • The adoption around the service is low, requires focused marketing.
  • Lack of visibility into topic depth , Monitoring capabilities
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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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ScreenShots