I have been using IBM App Connect for application integration.

The features I find most valuable are message routing, message transformation, and protocol translation. IBM App Connect is a market leader and has been migrated to the cloud, allowing it to run efficiently in that environment.

I don't see any necessary improvements as IBM App Connect has been a market leader for many years. I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use. Any major improvements have been addressed with App Connect Enterprise. Perhaps more tutorials for the training of new people who want to learn IBM App Connect would be beneficial.

I have been working with IBM App Connect for eleven years.

I would rate the stability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten. It has options to scale up integrations as required, especially when the traffic to the application is higher.

The technical support from IBM is good. I have worked with the IBM team on several products, and overall, it is satisfactory.

Positive

The initial setup of IBM App Connect is not tough. It's relatively easy and just requires installing the software.

Competitors to IBM App Connect include MuleSoft. However, I have never worked on Mule ESB, so I can't offer a comparison.

I recommend IBM App Connect Enterprise to everyone. It is suitable for all company sizes, from small domestic banks to large corporations in various industries such as banking, insurance, and airlines. I would rate the overall solution as eight or nine.

I am a developer specializing in IBM App Connect. We have a customer interested in comparing ESB tools, such as webMethods, which was previously owned by Software AG company before IBM acquired the product.

We work with the on-premises version because in Turkiye, our customers cannot use cloud platforms due to data privacy policies. They must use on-premises solutions.

We primarily work with banking and insurance company solutions. At the bank where I work, our company provides support to other companies. Their developers are not highly experienced, so they contact our company for assistance. We help with direct connection to their services and solve problems when IBM App Connect encounters issues.

The transformation capabilities in IBM App Connect are particularly beneficial. When consuming SAP data, converting data fields is straightforward. File operations are simple to execute, and converting between XML to JSON formats is effortless with IBM App Connect.

The mapping node functionality for data transformation enhances the integration workflow significantly. Users can utilize mapping nodes or SQL, though the mapping node provides a more streamlined approach for transformations. Additionally, containerizing applications is very straightforward with this solution.

The transition between version 12 and version 13 presents some challenges. While version 12 had approximately 10 features, version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility. The learning curve for developers moving from version 12 to 13 could be smoother.

When using new components, better context explanations would be beneficial. In version 13, accessing new features requires connecting through a web browser, which can be challenging to understand. The explanation of new features could be more user-friendly.

I have been using IBM App Connect for nearly five years.

The deployment process is straightforward, but there is one significant challenge: the license cost is very expensive compared to other tools.

Configuration time varies depending on the implementation. For insurance companies requiring JDBC connections, the setup is relatively simple when deploying bar files to the server. However, some companies require multiple configurations, including ODBC connections, JDBC connections, different BI databases, main databases, and replication servers. IBM App Connect occasionally crashes for various reasons, requiring problem-solving intervention.

IBM App Connect demonstrates good scalability. With version 11, services can be developed and prepared as Docker zip files for use with Kubernetes platform. The product, formerly known as Integration bus, evolved through versions 10, 11, 12, and 13 to become IBM App Connect Enterprise.

Global IBM support is excellent. When we encounter problems in Turkiye with banking customers, the local IBM partner sometimes struggles to resolve issues. However, when opening a ticket with the global team, problems are resolved promptly and effectively.

The official IBM support in Turkiye, while functional, is not as experienced as the global team in problem-solving capabilities.

Positive

I have compared IBM App Connect to webMethods. The system occasionally crashes for various reasons, requiring resolution.

The basic installation process takes approximately 5 minutes, involving a download and setup wizard. However, additional configuration time is required for implementing IBM MQ, ODBC, JDBC, and other tools. The complete setup process, including all configurations, typically takes around two weeks.

We provide integration services to other companies, particularly in the banking and insurance sectors. These companies often require assistance with deploying and configuring IBM App Connect due to their lack of expertise. We support them by addressing issues and facilitating direct connections to their services.

Moreover, in cases involving IBM App Connect crashes or technical challenges, I liaise with the global IBM support for effective solutions, as local support in Turkiye occasionally lacks the necessary experience. Our team serves as a reliable resource, sharing expertise to enhance their capabilities and ensure smooth operations with IBM App Connect.

The system has demonstrated its value by efficiently handling the transfer of services to ESB IBM App Connect, managing large service volumes effectively.

Configuration time varies by implementation. For insurance companies with simple JDBC connections, the process is straightforward. However, companies requiring multiple configurations for ODBC, JDBC connections, BI databases, main databases, and replication servers require more extensive setup time. The exact duration depends on specific requirements and cannot be precisely specified.

As an IBM App Connect developer, we have customers interested in comparing other ESB tools, particularly webMethods, which was previously owned by Software AG company before IBM acquired the product.

The global technical support rates a nine out of ten, while the Turkiye support receives a seven out of ten. The product itself is good, rating an eight out of ten for pricing, though this is influenced by country-specific exchange rates. Overall, I would rate IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.

I'm part of a significant communication company in Europe, and we primarily use IBM App Connect to integrate our CRM system.

One of the most beneficial features is the ability to handle multiple communication technologies, like integrating Kafka flows, which is helpful as other teams heavily use it. Regarding error handling, I initially wrote most of the handling myself. While built-in features for error handling are built-in, it largely depends on the developer. We use a custom solution that catches all exceptions, logs them in a database, and replays them as needed. It has been effective for us for over twenty years.

I've been using IBM App Connect for about twenty-five years, and while I like it, there are some areas for improvement. The trace policy is ridiculous, and the biggest issue is the cost—it's expensive. People would use it much more if the price point weren't so high.

I've used IBM App Connect since around 1999 or 2000 when the solution was called MQSI. I've been using it for approximately twenty-five years now.

App Connect has been incredibly stable over the twenty-five years we've used it. Any incidents were usually related to other components like databases rather than the App Connect broker.

I haven't explored scalability much as we operate on a stable platform and haven't delved into containers or cloud setups yet.

I found IBM's tech support surprisingly good. They responded promptly and delivered a patch within a week for the most recent issue we faced.

Positive

Regarding similar products, occasionally, we've had proposals for other products, but I find IBM App Connect to be the most compatible and reliable for our needs. When comparing it to Kafka, for example, I prefer IBM App Connect because of its ease of deployment, control, and stability.

For IBM App Connect, deployment and installation are straightforward for us. We use Jenkins scripts for automated functionality, making the process easy. It typically takes around forty-five minutes to complete all the steps, including dropping the existing broker version, installing the code, setting up links, restarting with new code, creating a new broker, and deploying.

One engineer is enough to handle the deployment process, as it's automated with Jenkins. Maintenance is minimal, and upgrades are usually straightforward. We encountered a bug with the MQTT model in version twelve, but IBM provided a patch and a script to test it, and the team completed the upgrade in fifteen minutes. Overall, maintenance and upgrades are relatively easy with App Connect.

As for new features, I haven't explored all of them yet, but I appreciate the plug-and-play nature of App Connect with different interfaces.

Overall, I would rate IBM App Connect as nine out of ten, but with the disclaimer that I haven't tested all features extensively. The usual explanation for any drawbacks relates to the pricing and justification for the cost.

Our company has a big project for delivery and e-commerce sites. We use IBM App Connect to deliver information to our end users after they buy our products. We get information from many places, such as enterprise solutions and other applications. We send information and gather information from them to use in our web applications. We give our end users updates on the status of the products they bought from us.

The solution is very fast-paced when it comes to making things right. We can quickly download what we need if we need any app migrations for our software business. We can download it plenty of times when we need to use it. It gives us very high speed for delivering any development. 

The tool's automation capabilities have given us great automation abilities, especially on the factory side. We have many integrations, creating value by using this capability. We're canceling many manual processes and migrating them to IBM App Connect automation. This is improving and helping our way of working and developing many integrations.

We can handle many complex integrations that were difficult with other solutions. In other tools, we often needed to do a lot of coding and write many things from scratch. But with the solution, many things are already ready in the platform. This gives us high confidence and saves time, especially for complex integrations.

For simple tasks, the difference between products might not be obvious. However, IBM App Connect makes it easy in complex environments where we take data from many different applications, send it to another app, and apply algorithms. It's useful for these more complicated integrations. The solution is also more mature than other products. 

Finding developers for the product is difficult since it is a niche solution. I know the OpenShift environment is running well for the microservice environment. We had some issues with the other environment we tried to implement. It can be easily implemented internally, but we have some problems in practice.

I have been working with the product for three years. 

The solution is generally stable from an application perspective. If regular maintenance, such as patching and upgrading to the latest enterprise versions, is done on time, you should be on the safe side with minimal issues. However, neglecting updates on the web server could lead to problems.

The tool is scalable. However, there are considerations regarding tool licensing and costs. Companies worldwide are focusing on cost reductions, which can impact scalability. While the current licensing might be sufficient for existing applications and APIs, adding new APIs and developments could increase usage statistics, necessitating additional licenses. This would mean extra costs, which might bring about different considerations from management. My company has 100 users. 

If you have experience with other similar systems, the tool's deployment is straightforward; I can say that. But if you're new to it, it can be difficult to understand which menu you must download, what kind of files you need, and many other things. It's not easy to understand at first. However, after one or two installations, it becomes very straightforward to do further implementations and installations.

Our deployment strategy for IBM App Connect is part of our larger plan to move all applications to the cloud. However, we face some challenges, especially in Europe due to GDPR and in Turkey due to local laws like KVKK. These regulations make moving to global cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud difficult.

Deploying to some local providers isn't easy, and this is a major consideration in our strategy for installing IBM App Connect or any other applications in the cloud. We must consider this and arrange all other steps for solutions accordingly.

Deployment is usually easier with global cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure because their service management works well with App Connect. As I mentioned before, App Connect Enterprise supports OpenShift very well, which is powerful.

However, in some cases, we need to expand the environment for our applications. This is another point to consider when planning our cloud deployment strategies. The deployment process can be completed in two weeks, depending on the environment we're working with. If we're working with a local cloud provider, it can get more complex. This is because local cloud providers often don't have experts familiar with OpenShift, so we need more parties involved in installing IBM App Connect in the cloud.

However, if we work with a global cloud provider like AWS, we can install with a smaller team. Maintaining the tool isn't difficult if it runs on a stable infrastructure. The maintenance process is straightforward in a secure and stable environment. However, maintenance becomes more complex if the infrastructure is unstable or insecure.

It's worth to work with the product in the long term. 

IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products. 

If you're not missing any business opportunities, IBM App Connect is a great tool to work with as an enterprise service for managing many tasks. It is excellent for developing APIs, integrating various services, and simplifying development processes. It offers easy development and integration capabilities, making it a highly recommended tool. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.