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 MQ 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 MQ.
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 MQ, if given the choice between Kafka and IBM MQ, 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?
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
What do you like best about the product?
With over 10 years of experience working with MQ, I can confidently say that its greatest strength is its reliability and the guarantee of exactly-once message delivery.
What do you dislike about the product?
This product is quite complex and does require some time to learn. There is definitely a learning curve involved.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The product guarantees message delivery even during system outages, which helps maintain reliability. this ensures not a lot of error handling and providing support is required.
IBM MQ - Business Guaranteed Delivery
What do you like best about the product?
IBM MQ has provided our business with a stable and resilient integration backbone, ensuring that transactions are never lost. It has played a key role in safely modernizing our legacy systems while maintaining compliance in regulated environments. As a result, we have seen a reduction in risk and an increase in customer confidence, especially within our payment and core banking processes.IBM MQ combines enterprise-grade reliability with surprising ease of use once deployed.
What do you dislike about the product?
Setting up and managing queue managers, as well as configuring high availability, disaster recovery, and clustering, can be quite complex and demands specialized expertise, which increases operational overhead. Additionally, while native observability features are robust at the infrastructure level, they are less effective for end-to-end business transaction tracing, often necessitating additional tools to achieve comprehensive visibility.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It guarantees the one-time delivery of transactions, eliminating the risk of duplicate payments or lost instructions and giving us greater confidence in our business processes. MQ’s capacity to absorb traffic spikes and manage unreliable networks helps ensure business continuity, even during periods of peak load or unexpected outages.
Incorporation of New MQ Appliance StandAlone in production
What do you like best about the product?
Provide solutions for the different needs of the clients, such as Customer Support and Ease of Implementation.
What do you dislike about the product?
For the moment, I am pleased with the projects worked on together.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It has helped us in communication from Host to distributed, the benefits are a centralized solution.
Stong messaging solution
What do you like best about the product?
Guarantees exactly-once message delivery
Handles heavy traffic with minimal delay
Supports channel auth with ssl/tls, secure messaging is supported
Easy to create and maintain environment
Cloud Native HA is a very nice solution!
What do you dislike about the product?
The ui feels a bit outdated, could do with a refresher
channel tls setup is not always easy, other clients often have difficulty with setting it up
mq queue security doesn't feel intuitive at first, could be easier to start
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Transaction coordinator for middleware integrations
Messaging platform
Persistent message storage
Ensured transaction security and reliability over fifteen years
What is our primary use case?
We deal with financial and non-financial transactions, and most of the financial transactions that interact with backend vendor systems are done via
IBM MQ. It is manager-to-manager communication, and the transaction load is huge. That is one aspect where we need
IBM MQ to communicate with backends.
What is most valuable?
With the setup that we have, financial transaction messages are not lost. We are primarily looking for a 100% quality of service in terms of non-repeating the message and message delivery. These are financial transactions, so we do not want to lose the message at any cost. That was the main reason why we have IBM
MQ. Additionally, when dealing with posting financial messages to backend vendor systems, most of the revenue gets generated.
What needs improvement?
I extensively worked on IBM
MQ some time back, but not at this point in time. We are dealing with IBM MQ client applications mostly, so I don't see any enhancements needed for the IBM MQ layer.
For how long have I used the solution?
I never used
ActiveMQ or
Amazon MQ. I have been using IBM MQ for the past fifteen years. It was my first message-oriented middleware, and I have been using the same middleware. I did not get an opportunity to explore other message-oriented middleware available in the market.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No mentions of deployment issues in the transcript.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
MQ is just a message staging engine and not a processing engine. Usually, processing engines would be either DataPower, API Gateway, API Connect, or ESB. The transaction is always guaranteed with IBM MQ, which is the main reason I have been working with it for fifteen years while dealing with financial transactions or messages. The message availability is always guaranteed.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The implementation utilizes multi-instance managers. As it is a container version, we can vertically scale it. In our environment, we do not have horizontal scaling for IBM MQ, but as demand increases, we would just vertically scale it.
How are customer service and support?
Right now, I am not working on IBM MQ extensively, and we do not delve into any of its PMRs, so the support should be good. With containerized flavors of these products, we are having a tough time dealing with PMRs because the versions are new to IBM. However, for non-containerized flavors running on blade, VMware, or appliances, they are pretty good. I would give them a rating of eight for their overall service.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The setup is very straightforward, and it's not complex, even with container flavors. It's very easy with the advent of OCP operators shipped with CP4I. You can create a manager in less than a minute's time. It's not challenging at all.
What about the implementation team?
We have a huge team that maintains the infrastructure of the entire stack and manages applications deployed on top of IBM MQ and other solutions. But just for infrastructure, even for a production-ready data center, it shouldn't require more than a couple of resources.
What was our ROI?
The kind of workload we have deals with posting financial messages to backend vendor systems, and most of the revenue gets generated. There are definite cost savings and return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
IBM MQ is pretty reasonable when compared to IBM ESB. We do not take advanced security licensing for our transactions.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the solution ten out of ten because I have been working on it for the past fifteen years. The message availability and transaction guarantee with IBM MQ is the main reason. I would rate it a ten overall.
High-performance integration solution
What do you like best about the product?
It is a high-performance integration solution with various tools that further enhance the management and processing capacity of messages and scalability.
What do you dislike about the product?
I believe that many commands and tools available within the CLI could be available through the MQ Explore tools, allowing for easier management, considering the evolution of IT solutions that limit direct access to servers.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The MQ helps us in processing multiple messages and solution bus integrations through the use of channels and remote transmission queues without the need for an intermediary architecture.
Used in financial market
What do you like best about the product?
Reliability and durability, cross-platform compability, security and transaction management.
What do you dislike about the product?
Complex setup and maintance, cost, performance overhead.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Reliability in message delivery, decoupling of aplicativo components, secure and transactiom messaging.
Middleware for the Z
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use, robustness and versatility.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would love to see a new age web based UI for administration on Z.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
MQ is our main messaging broker between business portals, external services to mainframe where core services run
MQ experience review
What do you like best about the product?
It is a robust product dominating in the area of Enterprise Messaging providing a variety if APIs for client application integration along with ehnanced mechanisms in message security and integrity, as well as, strong authentication and autohrization capabilities.
What do you dislike about the product?
The overall experience by using IBM MQ is positive. I would prefer more enhancements on message tracking in order to facilitate investigation on cases where messages are lost, jeopardizing transactions integrity especally when client applications are not capable of capturing or logging message delivery or consumption.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The most severe issues i have faced while using IBM MQ, are related to long running transactions which consume IBM MQ (QM's) transaction log space and lead to transaction hang if not roll back.
The way IBM MQ treats application with long running transactions, leads application vendors (i.e. GPP, ..) to optimize their code resulting to better appliation performance.
Furthermore, IBM MQ (QM) logging mechanism contributes on problem investigation and root cause analysis, applying on several OSI layers such as OS, networking, application, etc.
