We performed a comparison between IBM WebSphere Application Server and Windows Server AppFabric based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, F5, Apache and others in Application Infrastructure."As compared to other applications, it has tremendous support. We have built internal capability so that we use it extensively internally. It is also easier to use with the outside data. You can write in ESQL, Java, or any other technology that you want to use for development. So, it is a lot more flexible in the language that it supports."
"Starting with version 8, WAS provides a special folder called monitor deployment. Once you put the .war or .ear file in there, it is deployed automatically without human intervention. This greatly helps us in our continuous integration server. Once the deployment binary is ready, we write a script to copy it to that folder and then, voila! The application is up and running and accessible from its context root."
"Security: It is compatible with the latest Java 8 security features, supports FIPS 140-2 and NIST SP 800-53 with strong ciphers and cryptography keys, and supports TLS 1.2 completely. Also, configuring client and server certificates is relatively easy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Portal Virtualization."
"It does integrate well with the Tivoli Federated Identity Management system."
"The VPN service is quite useful."
"It has good stability of the application server in the long term compared to other solutions."
"The performance is good."
"It is very usable and easy to understand. Antivirus and VPN are the main features being used now. It allows my clients to access the network from home, which was very crucial because of the pandemic."
"The product's deployment phase was very easy."
"The most valuable feature is AppFabric's hosting solution, which is what we need for running workflows."
"The current trend is to move to Liberty because of the portability of its cloud and its Kubernetes, which containerize the application."
"The solution consumes hardware."
"WebSphere Application Server doesn't have an automated deployment option, forcing us to use third-party tools like Jenkins UCD and Palo Automated Deployment."
"When we run into memory or locking issues, we resort to using third-party tools. However, it would be preferable to have native tools for debugging this type of problem."
"When compared with WebLogic, Weblogic is lighter and consumes less memory."
"IBM WebSphere Application Server hasn't changed much. It's still a heavyweight for any company compared to what you get. Unless your code base is deeply linked with it, I don't think it's a great idea to go with this solution. The current trend is toward modularity and containerization, and given the product's requirements, containerization will be difficult. There is a memory requirement as well."
"Sometimes, I feel WebSphere runs a bit slow. It might be loading unnecessary libraries, impacting its performance compared to other application servers."
"The footprint could be reduced so that we can use a smaller virtual machine to run the application. We could also use more scripts. I would like this solution to be more script oriented, rather than GUI oriented."
"Microsoft will stop supporting the product next year, and we can't run unsupported programs in our systems."
"Its price and licensing policy can be improved. It could be a little cheaper. Licensing is sometimes confusing. There are so many different options. It is difficult to find out what to buy or what to choose for my necessity."
"The product is unable to connect with different cloud services."
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IBM WebSphere Application Server is ranked 5th in Application Infrastructure with 26 reviews while Windows Server AppFabric is ranked 18th in Application Infrastructure with 3 reviews. IBM WebSphere Application Server is rated 7.8, while Windows Server AppFabric is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM WebSphere Application Server writes "Compatible, stable, and scalable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Windows Server AppFabric writes "Offers good monitoring capabilities and ease of setup". IBM WebSphere Application Server is most compared with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss, Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic Server and IBM BPM, whereas Windows Server AppFabric is most compared with IIS.
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