Overview

Product video
IBM MQ is trusted by thousands of enterprises around the world to deliver billions of messages, representing trillions of dollars of business value, exactly once, every day. An IBM MQ network is typically composed of applications written in many languages, running on many platforms across a wide variety of data centres and multiple clouds.
Benefits - IBM MQ:
Helps business adapt to change - applications are de-coupled so that they can be changed independently of each other.
Helps Developers and ITOps to be more productive - further simplifying the development of integrations and management of the queue network in each product release.
Enables business agility by supporting the automation of application and integration operations with support for containers (Kubernetes and OpenShift) and advanced telemetry (OpenTelemetry).
Accelerates hybrid cloud for applications and infrastructure modernization projects by offering BYOL support for AWS and other hyperscalers as well as SaaS and the widest variety of on-prem deployment models from appliances, windows and UNIX servers and Z/OS.
Provides support for multiple messaging and integration architectures: point to point messaging with Store & Forward and Request & Response patterns, as well as Publish and Subscribe with dynamic topics and subscriptions. IBM MQ plays an important role as a transport and event source in many Kafka-based Event Driven Architectures.
Delivers business resilience. Across platforms IBM provides intelligence workload balancing, high availability and disaster recovery services from an individual node, right up to availability zone and regional levels.
Secures messages at rest and during transportation across the network, including end-to-end encryption and data confidentiality and integrity checking.
Highlights
- Note that this page is for a software product and not a SaaS offering, and purchasing this entitlement on AWS is purchasing entitlement to the IBM MQ or MQ Advanced software only. Details for how to deploy IBM MQ software on AWS are provided. IBM MQ is available in 2 editions to suit the needs of your business.
- IBM MQ is the standard offering providing the essential capabilities you need to securely and reliably connect applications, enable insights into events, and empower teams to innovate and deliver outstanding customer experiences.
- IBM MQ Advanced provides everything that is available in the standard offering plus additional capabilities providing state of the art data resiliency, broader connectivity options, and advanced security for end to end encryption and audit compliance. To upgrade from IBM MQ to IBM MQ Advanced, please contact us at AskMessaging@uk.ibm.com
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Pricing
Dimension | Description | Cost/12 months |
|---|---|---|
IBM MQ VPCs | Entitlement to IBM MQ VPCs | $3,528.00 |
IBM MQ Advanced VPCs | Entitlement to IBM MQ Advanced VPCs | $6,600.00 |
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No refunds without approval of IBM
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Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS delivers cloud-based software applications directly to customers over the internet. You can access these applications through a subscription model. You will pay recurring monthly usage fees through your AWS bill, while AWS handles deployment and infrastructure management, ensuring scalability, reliability, and seamless integration with other AWS services.
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Vendor support
IBM MQ is trusted by thousands of customers to provide assured once-only delivery of messages between applications in many of the most demanding business environments across Financial Services, Transport and Distribution, Healthcare, Retail and other sectors.
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AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.

Standard contract
Customer reviews
Asynchronous messaging has streamlined workflow triggers and supports reliable session rollbacks
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM MQÂ is its integration with APIs, and what we do is have a workflow system. In order to trigger the workflow, which is more of an asynchronous processing, we send a message to the workflow through IBM MQÂ , where the workflow listens to the IBM MQÂ message and then starts creating the case in the workflow system.
What is most valuable?
The best features IBM MQÂ offers are the topic and subscription, as well as the IBM MQ session and message rollbacks, especially for JMS integration. IBM MQ serves as the underlying foundation for our JMS messages.
IBM MQ has positively impacted my organization by enabling asynchronous processing, which means we do not need to wait for any responses from our downstream systems.
What needs improvement?
IBM MQ can be improved by having a feature where a message can be rolled back, especially if I want to go back to a particular message.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM MQ for around ten years, including five years and another five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM MQ is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM MQ's scalability is very good; we have clusters in place, so we are satisfied with its performance.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM MQ, I did not evaluate other options.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate IBM MQ a nine out of ten; it is an excellent product, but it requires more additional features similar to Kafka. I would advise others looking into using IBM MQ to consider it as the best product for asynchronous data communication between systems.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Has consistently delivered robust performance and seamless integration over the years
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for IBM WebSphere Application Server are mostly web-oriented, involving Servlets, core Servlets, and Beans, which includes my personal projects.
The use cases for IBM MQÂ in my context involve working in tandem with WebSphere, where data is taken based on events. I notice that people are increasingly moving towards Kafka, especially here, as it performs similar functions to IBM MQÂ .
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best features of the WebSphere Application Server make it the ultimate product. There is nothing higher than WebSphere. The market has Tomcat , JBoss, and other low-level application servers, but then there is WebSphere. I prefer WebSphere particularly on AIX because it's a very powerful engine. AIX is a powerful engine, and I don't think there is any UNIX system which is better than AIX. I'm 100% confident about that. I have been working with AIX since my time as an IBMer in Europe and also here in the Royal Bank, where we have a huge forest of AIX machines, running WebSphere on many of them. I also have experience with WebSphere in Windows, which is also very good; from an administrative and development point of view, it's transparent. There is not much worry about having WebSphere on AIX or Windows.
I would assess the integration of WebSphere with third-party tools and services in terms of modernizing the IT infrastructure as very good. I was involved in an application where I integrated WebSphere with Node.js and also with Blue Prism . I executed many REST applications because at my core I am a developer. Although my title is architect, I am still a geek and a developer, and I started as a developer, so I carry that passion with me.
At the Royal Bank, I have benefited from WebSphere's high availability and clustering because the overwhelming majority of our environments are clustered with IBM HTTP Server in front. We have clusters not just with two WebSphere engines; some of them even have four or six WebSphere engines, all managed under IBM HTTP Server. Everything is federated.
From my perspective on the best features of IBM MQÂ , if given the choice between Kafka and IBM MQÂ , I would choose IBM MQ as it is by far the best. However, people opt for Kafka because it is open source and comes at no cost. This conveys my mantra that the best solution doesn't always align with being the right one, highlighting the significant difference between the best and the right.
What needs improvement?
Regarding the improvement of the WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere is at version 9.0.5.23, and last month they released another fix because they periodically put out fixes. Previously, there were very frequent version increases, but now they maintain the focus on 9.0.5 and its different releases. Oracle announced that 2030 will be the last year when Java 1.8.x will be supported, which raises questions about the future of WebSphere since it is based on Java J2EE 7 and Java SDK 1.8. I wonder what the future holds for WebSphere after 2030 since I have never seen any communication from IBM detailing this trajectory.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have around eight years of experience with IBM products in general, as I was working with IBM Eastern Europe in Vienna before coming to Canada, and I worked with WebSphere, OS, even OS operating system, AS/400. At that time, it wasn't I5, I6; the name was AS/400. After coming to Canada in January 1998, I worked with IBM Canada in Steeles, Toronto, until 2002.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate the support from IBM for their WebSphere Application Server as very good, although I have only called IBM for support two or three times in my life. Most of the time, I figure things out myself, so I would rate it a 10, with 10 being the best.
For IBM MQ support, I have only contacted support once in my life, and the experience was very good, so I can't complain. I would rate it a 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
In my opinion, the initial setup of the WebSphere Application Server is not complex at all. I have been working with WebSphere since my time in Romania as part of IBM in Vienna, and now it is straightforward for me. While it might seem challenging at the beginning, once you get your hands on it, it becomes very straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of the WebSphere Application Server at the Royal Bank is influenced by our unique agreements with IBM, as it's a large establishment with numerous IBM products, including mainframes. I am not aware of the specific agreements, but it is similar to purchasing in bulk, where the pricing structure is not the same as buying a single item at a grocery store.
What other advice do I have?
I still use IBM WebSphere Application Server, specifically the latest version which is 9.0.5, and I work with IBM MQ and Rational as well.
I have not had any experience with AppScan or other testing tools; I am not utilizing any tools besides Rational.
I have used management tools with IBM MQ, and I find them beneficial for optimizing message flows. I utilize these tools, but often rely on my instinct, as IBM MQ is built on Java, which I have extensive experience with.
Regarding high availability with IBM MQ, we also have IBM MQ in clusters. Having IBM MQ in a cluster is useful since the cluster setup means we have some form of high availability.
I rate this solution 10 out of 10.
Rock-Solid Reliability with a Learning Curve
Reliable Messaging and Continuous Innovation with IBM MQ
Building event driven solutions
Has provided strong security, reliable integrations, and vendor-backed support for continuous data exchange
What is our primary use case?
The main use cases with IBM MQÂ recently would be more of a publish and subscribe mechanism where we have multiple subscribers for the same data which is getting published and that's where we have utilized it.
However, we are moving away from it because it has limited options for scaling up and down.
Additionally, the licensing was one of the factors since it was a licensed copy and it cost us whenever we needed to scale up and down. That's where we are moving to Apache-based services such as Kafka.
What is most valuable?
The best features of IBM MQÂ were stability and straightforward application functionality. It has vendor support, which was a significant advantage. In case of any production issues, we definitely get vendor support, whereas with Kafka and others, we have to rely on open community and our research.
We have utilized high availability with IBM MQÂ through clustering in place, which was in the cloud. It was always available for us and worked very effectively. The only issue we encountered was related to scaling up and down, which required installing additional servers from a hardware perspective.
Regarding IBM MQÂ 's transactional integrity and maintaining data consistency, it performs effectively and I never faced any issues with respect to transactions or data loss.
The management tools come along with Universal Messaging, so explicit implementation of other tools isn't necessary.
IBM MQ comes with all the necessary encryption options and security features that we need.
What needs improvement?
The main differences between these two products, both pros and cons, in my opinion, mainly concern the scale up and scale down capabilities, which are more impacting us.
Apart from that, I don't see any issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have dealt with this product, IBM MQ Universal Messaging, for close to four years now. Previously it was Software AG before being taken over by IBM.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has vendor support, which was a significant advantage. In case of any production issues, we definitely get vendor support, whereas with Kafka and others, we have to rely on open community and our research.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM MQ has limitations regarding scaling options. The licensing costs associated with scaling up and down were significant, which is why we are moving to Apache-based services such as Kafka.
The main differences between these two products primarily concern the scale up and scale down capabilities, which are more impacting us. Apart from that, I don't see any issues.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate their support as nine out of ten so far.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are moving away from it because it has limited options for scaling up and down. The licensing was one of the factors since it was a licensed copy and it cost us whenever we needed to scale up and down. That's where we are moving to Apache-based services such as Kafka.
What other advice do I have?
I work as an integration architect who helps integrate applications, handling data passing to SAP CRM , SaaS-based applications, databases, or Databricks applications. In integration, I am familiar with IBM MQ and Kafka. Regarding IBM MQ, it is IBM Universal Messaging tool, which is similar to what MQ is. I have rated this solution 9 out of 10.
