IBM MQ

The key benefits of IBM MQ include:

• Assured delivery of data – IBM MQ is the world leader in making sure data isn’t lost or duplicated when you don’t want it to be. Once-and-only-once message delivery guarantees that messages are not lost or duplicated during transmission, making it ideal for industries like banking and finance where transaction integrity is critical.
• Horizontally scalable – As the workload for a single queue manager increases, it is easy to add more queue managers to share tasks and distribute the messages across them.
  Asynchronous messaging – allowing non-time-dependent architecture meaning that applications can send and receive messages regardless of whether they are running simultaneously, improving system flexibility and resilience.
• Highly available – MQ ensures that message data is always highly available by giving you ways to replicate that data between systems.
• Cross-platform compatibility – IBM MQ supports a wide range of platforms, including z/OS, IBM i, UNIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows permitting seamless integration between diverse systems and applications across an enterprise.
• Security and encryption – IBM MQ provides robust security features, including SSL/TLS support for encrypted communication and authentication mechanisms. These features ensure that only authorised applications can access message queues, maintaining data integrity and confidentiality.
• Managed cloud – IBM MQ is available as a cloud-based service called IBM MQ on Cloud. This option allows organisations to leverage the power of IBM MQ without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure, enabling them to focus on application integration rather than system administration.

IBM MQ operates using the following components:

• Messages: Collections of data meaningful to participating applications
• Queues: Objects that store messages
• Queue Managers: System services that manage message queues and handle data transfer

Messages are placed on queues and transmitted between applications via channels. Queue managers ensure proper message routing, storage, and delivery.

IBM MQ comes with various tools and resources, including:

• Message editors and browsers – allowing users to view, edit, and manage the content of messages within queues, providing a user-friendly interface for interacting with message data.
• Message management tools – such as prioritising messages, setting time-to-live parameters, and handling dead-letter queues, ensuring efficient message processing.
• MQ administration utilities – facilitating the configuration and management of queue managers, channels, and queues, allowing administrators to monitor system performance and troubleshoot issues effectively.
• Monitoring tools – enabling real-time tracking of message flows, queue depths, and system health metrics, helping organisations maintain optimal performance and quickly identify bottlenecks.
• File transfer and SOAP support – allowing file transfer protocols and SOAP messaging, enabling seamless integration with web services and facilitating the exchange of files between applications across different platforms.
• Log handling utilities – manage log files generated by IBM MQ, so users can configure logging levels, rotate logs, and archive old logs for compliance and auditing purposes.
• Backup tools – helping to ensure data integrity by allowing you to create backups of queue managers and configuration settings, safeguarding against data loss during system failures.
• SSL setup assistance – enabling the simplification of the setup of SSL/TLS for encrypted communication between applications, ensuring that sensitive data remains protected during transmission.

IBM MQ is particularly useful for industries with complex IT environments. This includes:

• Banking
• Insurance
• Finance
• Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
• Telecommunications
• Retail
• Logistics
• Manufacturing & Distribution

IBM Websphere MQ can be deployed both on-premises and in the cloud. IBM also offers IBM MQ as a managed service on:

• IBM Cloud
• Amazon AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Other cloud platforms

IBM MQ as a Service is fully managed and hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is now available through IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Microsoft Azure marketplace. Two available license price plans are based on runtime compute capacity (the number of virtual processor core hours that are needed) or processor value units (PVUs – a cores rating).

Whilst IBM MQ pricing is provided on both marketplaces this reflects list price. By contacting your friendly business partner, such as DeeperThanBlue, more attractive and volume based pricing can be achieved for both Public clouds and on-premise/private clouds.