IBM Integration Bus vs. SAP NetWeaver BPM vs. TIBCO ActiveSpaces

Routing, protocol transformation, message transformation and service aggregation are very well performed by WebSphere Message Broker (WMB). It is not very suitable for integration with databases.

Incentivized

It is well suited when we need to integrate business processes with SAP ERP and SAP CRM - the solution can be integrated with business rules/procedures defined in SAP ERP/CRM and NetWeaver can be used to monitor the rules and flag off exceptions. When there are multiple workflows running, it tends to slow down running of these processes. Also, it entirely depends on SAP portal for it to run efficiently.

Incentivized

TIBCO ActiveSpaces is useful for storing in memory data which enables fetching data quickly and efficiently. We can make use of TIBCO ActiveSpaces APIs for storing and retrieving data. In our organization, we store user session details in TIBCO ActiveSpaces and this session detail is used for authentication and authorizing user. We have integration TIBCO ActiveSpaces with React UI and TIBCO Business Works.

Incentivized

• Graphical data mapper
• Support for different programming languages
• Integration with MQ
• Support for different parsers

Incentivized

• Virtual paper trail. Iterations of process and current documentation are all stored as "artifacts", leaving a great trail.
• Configuration of users. BPM somewhat magically determines which users will be impacted and automates rules.
• A pro (that is also a con) is the design interface. If you know what you are doing, it is incredibly powerful and malleable.

• Like all other IMDG solutions, Tibco ActiveSpaces provides a scalable and distributed cache solution, which is supposed to have high throughput and high availability.
• As it is under the Tibco umbrella, it is seamlessly integrated with other Tibco products.
• It breaks the traditional "local cache" boundary and limitation, instead unifies many "local physical memory" to create one huge "In-Memory Data Grid", and serves the data provider/consumer application logically as one "Memory Cloud."
• A lot of non-frequently updated data can be cached in this IMDG, to allow fast access, which saves the I/O latency caused by many traditional file system-backed storage solutions.

Incentivized

• Logging
• Debugging
• Code quality tools
• Feature specific installation

Incentivized

• Live readings would be nice.
• Easier to maneuver
• Work with all systems with the press of one keystroke

Incentivized

• ActiveSpaces 3.2 is not compatible with the latest version of TIBCO Business Event 5.x. And ActiveSpaces 2.x is not compatible with ActiveSpaces 3.x hence there is a big difference in the BusinessEvents supported version of AS and the latest.
• ActiveSpaces takes more disc space and TIBCO does not offer data compression logic out of the box. Developers need to do extra coding to use java snippets to compress and decompress the payload. Although the data compression gives must better performance and speed to the system.
• The compression and decompression API are not offered by TIBCO out of the box, which is a shame. These are so easy and simple to implement, still TIBCOdoes not provide them as an option out of the box.

Incentivized

As a big fan of SAP in general, the BPM solution fits right in with all the other things SAP does well, and does it with incredible efficiency

TIBCO ActiveSpaces is easy to install and integrate with other product suites. It is easy to understand and implement as well. TIBCO ActiveSpaces supports multiple databases for storing the data(we are using Oracle Database). All the master data related to the users is being stored using TIBCO ActiveSpaces which keeps the data in memory and help to retrieve it quickly. It has helped to prevent concurrent login sessions by the same user as session details are stored in TIBCO ActiveSpaces and we override the existing user session with the new session details.

Incentivized

We have our own tech support for systems, I would say they probably could use more training on it, I don't really think it's anything regarding the SAP system, but more the knowledge they have on the system itself. It seems to take longer for them to fix any issues we may come across.

Incentivized

Websphere message broker supports a lot more protocols than any other similar tool.

Incentivized

I found the initial setup of NetWeaver is much simpler than other products especially in an SAP environment where we have SAP ERP/HRM/CRM as it can be well integrated with other SAP products. The only drawback is the need/dependency on SAP Portal. It is better suited in an environment where SAP ERP is running.

Incentivized

Actually, we are gradually replacing the Tibco ActiveSpaces with Redis (for caching purpose only) or Hazelcast (for embedded mode and also for in-memory distributed computation purpose + in-memory distributed IPC purpose).

Incentivized

• It helped us in improving the speed to market for our services/APIs.
• Learning curve is quite long

Incentivized

• Helped us harness integrated benefit from having SAP ERP/CRM by leveraging NetWeaver to define business processes/rules and monitor exceptions
• Did not have any negative experience except for the fact that at times when multiple rules run, it can be somewhat slow

Incentivized

• Developers with basic knowledge of TIBCO and general data knowledge can easily design and develop an ActiveSpaces based cached solution. As the ActiveSpaces concepts are very simple and easy to understand.
• Some business areas can predict the high influx of a service usage during a certain period. Business will be highly rewarded if they can identify these business areas and provide a cached solution using TIBCO AS.
• Again, this is not a TIBCO ActiveSpaces only advantage and this is true for any/all caching products.
• Some examples for the previous points are
• a. telecom company pre-loading (eager load) customer's usage for the last month, right before releasing/issuing the bills to the customers.
• b. Airline industry loading the customer's itinerary a week before his travel start date. Hence the last minute scrambling to fetch the customer's itinerary travel plans can be avoided.

Incentivized