In our experience, the product performs really well when interfacing systems with ERP's through SQL server database tables, but we've even made some interfaces with the web service functionality included with the magic xpi integration platform. Also, we've made some SAP Business One - SAP Business One interfaces, for copying information from one company to another.
If the environment has many different protocols for data exchange between partners and most of the protocols follow some standards like EDI X12, TIBCO BusinessConnect should be a good tool to take care this business use case. If the environment has a few simple protocols for data exchange, e.g. SFTP, FTPS or emails, some lighter weight tools will be enough and TIBCO BusinessConnect may be an overkill tool.
Although the scenarios may be online, the main service usually freezes and the processes can't transact any data. With a single restart of the service, the processes will be functioning again.
The support for more applications would be nice, even though there is a nice number of them.
The licensing for the software may be a little confusing.
When a new version is released, its better to test it thoroughly before letting customers apply the release in their real time environment. There were missing functionalities from the previous versions which were not identified ahead of time.
Honestly, we have only used and evaluated magic xpi platform because of the recommendation of our SAP Business One main supplier, who has previously used the platform for their developments. So far, we have no regrets with the acquisition of the platform and we are very happy with it's performance until now.
The main reason TIBCO BusinessConnect was selected is because of the overall solution it provides with the different TIBCO products. Since TIBCO BusinessWorks and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service are already in place and the canonical model is already built and integrated into the Information Bus, TIBCO BusinessConnect is the best tool to work with them.
The implementation time for this kind of projects has been greatly reduced.
Certifying an In-House resource in the Magix xpi platform is probably the best option, considering all of the projects that can be developed in the future without the need of an external consultant.
The processes that have been automatized with the Magic xpi platform helped reduced human error and the time those processes took to finish.