IBM MQ - The most reliable MQ solution which stood test of time
September 23, 2021

IBM MQ - The most reliable MQ solution which stood test of time

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM MQ

As HSBC is a financial organization there are a lot of Applications that talk to each other. The messages which are transferred through different APIs are done through IBM MQ. And this solution is used throughout the Application due to its reliability. Also, IBM MQ is used to transfer all financial transactions.

Pros

  • Transfer messages between different Applications (Frontend to Backend)
  • Financial messages like MT101 between different Applications need to communicate asynchronously.
  • Used as PubSub where applications need to communicate in Many-to-many, One-to-many or Many-to-one architecture.
  • When a financial organization needs to communicate with another without sharing infrastructure

Cons

  • They need to improve their Cloud migration as it lags behind.
  • There are much better options being provided by Cloud providers. IBM Cloud is a solution but it doesn't integrate well with AWS or GCP.
  • For now scalability in IBM MQ means you need multiple servers. It should have native support for containerizing
  • Monitoring tools from IBM for MQ are very hard to use. Especially IBM Tivoli Monitoring. Needs a UI upgrade.
  • There is no UI for MQ where you can centrally manage all the queues.
  • Pub-Sub
  • Transfer of Financial message
  • Communication of different Applications or API interfaces with each other
  • The maintenance cost is very low. And it rarely fails to deliver
  • The LTS cost for support from IBM is quiet expensive so keeping the servers updated with latest version can be easier
  • The time to market to set up new customers is relatively easy

Do you think IBM MQ delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with IBM MQ's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM MQ live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of IBM MQ go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM MQ again?

Yes

When you need a reliable solution for Message queueing i.e. asynchronous transfer of messages, IBM MQ is the best solution out there. But it lacks a lot of modern features. Most of the solutions provided by Cloud providers have at least once approach to send messages. But the messages from IBM MQ are never lost. Also the Dead-Letter-Queueing helps to find issues why messages are not reaching their intended destination.

Comments

  • Amy McCormick | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Hello, thanks for your review! It's great that you would recommend IBM MQ. There have been a number of advancements with IBM MQ and these should address the 'cons' listed above. "There are much better options being provided by Cloud providers. IBM Cloud is a solution but it doesn't integrate well with AWS or GCP." Many customers deploy IBM MQ to public clouds (a full list of supported clouds is here: https://www.ibm.com/software/passportadvantage/eligible_public_cloud_BYOSL_policy.html) and quick starts are available to deploy a best-practice implementation of IBM MQ such as: https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/ibm-mq/ "For now scalability in IBM MQ means you need multiple servers. It should have native support for containerizing IBM MQ has a number of features for scaling, for instance Uniform Clusters" https://www.ibm.com/docs/SSFKSJ_9.2.0/com.ibm.mq.con.doc/q132725_.html and there are multiple options for using IBM® MQ in containers: you can choose to use the IBM MQ Operator, which uses pre-packaged container images, or you can build your own images and deployment code. - for more information please see: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ibm-mq/9.2?topic=mq-in-containers-cloud-pak-integration "Monitoring tools from IBM for MQ are very hard to use. Especially IBM Tivoli Monitoring. Needs a UI upgrade." A number of monitoring techniques are available in IBM MQ to obtain statistics and other specific information about how your queue manager network is running. Monitoring information and guidance is provided to help improve the performance of your queue manager network. There is a lot of work going on in this space to continue to make it easier for customers to monitor their MQ estate so please check the IBM Community for updates: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/integration/communities/community-home?CommunityKey=183ec850-4947-49c8-9a2e-8e7c7fc46c64 "There is no UI for MQ where you can centrally manage all the queues." IBM MQ added visibility and management of remote queues in version 9.2.3. Administrators can see IBM MQ queues that are running as software in a private data center (including on z/OS or MQ Appliance) and in public clouds and in the MQ on Cloud managed SaaS. More information can be found here: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/integration/blogs/callum-jackson1/2021/07/23/ibm-mq-923-support-for-remote-queue-managers-in-th

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