IBM MQ vs PubSub+ Event Broker comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM MQ and PubSub+ Event Broker based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM MQ vs. PubSub+ Event Broker Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The scalability of IBM MQ is good.""Overall the solution operates well and has good integration.""We have implemented business to business transactions over MQ messaging. The guaranteed and once only delivery ensures business integrity.""Assists with our apps and has great message processing.""I haven't seen any severe issues related to it. Most of the time it's running. That is the advantage of IBM MQ.""Secure, safe, and very fast.""The solution can scale well.""IBM MQ is robust compared to other products in the market. It also gives you support from the IBM team."

More IBM MQ Pros →

"We've built a lot of products into it and it's been quite easy to feed market data onto the systems and put entitlements and controls around that. That was a big win for us when we were consolidating our platforms down. Trying to have one event bus, one messaging bus, for the whole globe, and consolidate everything over time, has been key for us. We've been able to do that through one API, even if it's across the different languages.""We like the seamless flexibility in protocol exchange offering without writing a code.""One of the main reasons for using PubSub+ is that it is a proper event manager that can handle events in a reactive way.""The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live.""Going from something where we had outages and capacity issues constantly to a system that was able to scale with the massive market data and messaging spikes that happened during the initial stages of the COVID crisis in March, we were able to scale with 40 plus percent growth in our platform over the course of days.""This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker.""When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the install was seamless with no issues.""The most useful features has been the WAN optimization and probably the HybridEdge, which requires some third-party adapters or plugins. The idea that we can position Solace as a protocol-agnostic message transport fabric is key to our company having all manners of asynchronous messaging protocols from MQ, Kafka, JMS, etc. I really like the WAN optimization: Send once over a WAN, then distribute locally as many times as there are subscribers."

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Cons
"The solution should offer a freeware version, free vouchers, or certifications for learning purposes and building knowledge base.""The scalability is the one area where IBM has fallen behind. As much as it is used, there is a limit to the number of people who are skilled in MQ. That is definitely an issue. Places have kept their MQ-skilled people and other places have really struggled to get MQ skills. It's not a widely-known skillset.""It would be nice if we could use the cluster facilities because we are doing active/passive configuration use.""We need to have a better administration console and better monitoring features. Right now, they are not good and could be a lot better.""IBM MQ's pricing is higher than its competitors'.""There are many complications with IBM MQ servers.""It could always be more stable and secure.""I would like the ability to connect with some of the more recent offerings, such as API Connect; being able to publish our MQ endpoints, the queues, the messaging infrastructure as IT assets."

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"A challenge we currently have is Solace's ability to integrate with single sign-on in our Active Directory and other single sign-on tools and platforms that any company would have. It's important for the platforms to work. Typically, they support only LDAP-based connectivity to our SQL Servers.""The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary.""The licensing and the cost are the major pitfalls.""If you create one event in the past, you cannot resend it.""The integrations could improve in PubSub+ Event Broker.""Some of the feature's gaps with some of the open-source vendors have been closed in a lot of ways. Being more agile and addressing those earlier could be an area for improvement.""It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use.""The deployment process is complex."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs. But, IBM is IBM, so I guess we'll pay for it."
  • "IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
  • "Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."
  • "I think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."
  • "Pricing could be better, as with all IBM products. But their performance in production, along with security and scalability, will pay returns in the long run."
  • "99.999 percent availability for less than a penny per message over the past 25 years. IBM MQ is the cheapest software in the IBM software portfolio, and it is one of the best."
  • "IBM MQ appliance has pricing options, but they are costly."
  • "In terms of cost, IBM MQ is slightly on the higher side."
  • More IBM MQ Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "There are different tiers where you can choose what would work for you. As a customer, you need to know roughly how many messages a month you will use."
  • "We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."
  • "Having a free version is critical for our technology operations use case. This is primarily because our technology operations team is a cost center in our company. They are not profit drivers and having a free version for installation will probably meet our needs. Even for production, it'll support up to a 100,000 messages per second. I don't think in technology operations that we have that many events and alerts from our detection tools. Even if I have 20 or 30 event detection products out there, they're only going to publish the things which are critical or warnings. I don't think we'll ever reach a 100,000 messages per second."
  • "Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."
  • "The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager."
  • "We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."
  • "The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."
  • "It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • More PubSub+ Event Broker Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each… more »
    Top Answer:Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of users… more »
    Top Answer:IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocols… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live.
    Top Answer:The section on observability pertains to understanding the functioning of an event crash. Instead of focusing on how the crash occurs, attention is given to the observable aspects, such as a memory… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    15,403
    Comparisons
    10,350
    Reviews
    20
    Average Words per Review
    424
    Rating
    8.6
    Views
    3,726
    Comparisons
    2,901
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    1,620
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    WebSphere MQ
    Solace Virtual Message Router, Solace Cloud, Solace Message Router Appliance
    Learn More
    Overview

      IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

      IBM MQ can be deployed:

      • On-premises
      • In the cloud
      • Hybrid cloud

      IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

      • MQI (Message Queue Interface)
      • REST
      • .NET
      • MQTT
      • JMS
      • IBM MQ Light


      IBM MQ Features

      Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

      • High availability
      • Stability and scalability
      • Flexible deployment options
      • Uniform clusters
      • Automated and intelligent workload balancing
      • Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
      • Administrative features that simplify messaging management
      • Open standards development tools
      • Simple management tools

      IBM MQ Benefits

      Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

      • Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.

      • Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.

      • Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.

      • Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.

      • Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.

      • Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.

      • Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

      Reviews from Real Users

      Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

      PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

      Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

      The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

      In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

    Solace PubSub+ Event Broker is a serverless, scalable technology that efficiently streams events throughout all sorts of environments: within the cloud, on-premises, and IoT. The technology is based on the publish/subscribe model of communication. The “+” in the solution’s name alludes to its support of a wide spectrum of message exchange patterns beyond the publish/subscribe model; it supports queueing, streaming, and request/reply. The “+” also alludes to the fact that the solution supports a range of different qualities of service. PubSub+ Event Broker can be managed and monitored with a single administration interface.

    PubSub+ Event Broker uses robust, battle-tested, and reliable event broker technology. It allows users to tie their architectures together to benefit from the best of all technologies, including legacy ESBs/messaging, DB system of record on-prem, cloud-native services, and Kafka clusters as endpoints.

    PubSub+ Event Broker lets you connect event brokers to form an event mesh (an architecture layer) which allows you to route events in a dynamic way between applications, regardless of where those applications are deployed (for example, from public-cloud, private-cloud, or no-cloud).

    PubSub+ Event Broker Benefits

    PubSub+ Event Broker is the only unified event broker technology available as software, hardware, and a managed service. All options offer the same functionality and management experience.

    • Software: Simple to use in clouds, containers and iPaaS/PaaS.
    • Hardware: A turnkey appliance with low TCO that gives you robust performance and capacity.
    • Managed service: Cloud based version is managed by Solace, allowing you to accomplish event broker services in minutes and scale to any level.

    PubSub+ Event Broker Capabilities

    • Orchestrates and connects microservices
    • Pushes events from on-premises systems of record to cloud services
    • Enables digital transformation across LoBs and IoT

    PubSub+ Event Broker Features

    • Federated architecture: Routing across geographically distributed cloud and on-premises environments, self-learning routing, bandwidth-efficient routing over wide area networks.
    • APIs and protocols: Native support for AMQP, Node.js, WebSocket, MQTT, JMS, Paho, Qpid,numerous messaging APIs and free open-source Kafka connectors.
    • Advanced messaging capabilities: Message caching, replay, prioritization, and dead message queues.
    • Management and governance: Centralized administration, automated disaster recovery, authentication, authorization and encryption of information, built-in high availability, and proactive monitoring, including integration with existing monitoring tools.
    • Capacity and performance: High-capacity throughput persistent and non-persistent messaging in fanout scenarios, optimized for low latency, and numerous concurrent IoT connections.

    Reviews from Real Users

    PubSub+ Event Broker stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to communicate with numerous subscribers and its scalability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Jitendra J., a websphere MQ specialist at a maritime company, notes, “The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it.”

    The head of enterprise architecture and digital innovation at a tech vendor writes, “This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement.”

    Another PeerSpot user, who is a senior project manager at a financial services firm, describes, "Going from something where we had outages and capacity issues constantly to a system that was able to scale with the massive market data and messaging spikes that happened during the initial stages of the COVID crisis in March, we were able to scale with 40 plus percent growth in our platform over the course of days."

    Sample Customers
    Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
    FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet 
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm39%
    Retailer10%
    Insurance Company9%
    Computer Software Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm37%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    Government4%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm60%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Pharma/Biotech Company10%
    Maritime Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm34%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Retailer6%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise82%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise76%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise71%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise74%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM MQ vs. PubSub+ Event Broker
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. PubSub+ Event Broker and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM MQ is ranked 2nd in Message Queue (MQ) Software with 156 reviews while PubSub+ Event Broker is ranked 6th in Message Queue (MQ) Software with 15 reviews. IBM MQ is rated 8.4, while PubSub+ Event Broker is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IBM MQ writes "Reliable and stable solution that includes support from the IBM technical team". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PubSub+ Event Broker writes "Event life cycle management changes the way a designer or architect will design a topic and discover what is available". IBM MQ is most compared with Apache Kafka, ActiveMQ, VMware RabbitMQ, Amazon SQS and Amazon MQ, whereas PubSub+ Event Broker is most compared with Apache Kafka, VMware RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, Confluent and Amazon EventBridge. See our IBM MQ vs. PubSub+ Event Broker report.

    See our list of best Message Queue (MQ) Software vendors and best Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) vendors.

    We monitor all Message Queue (MQ) Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.