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Azure Service Bus

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IBM MQ

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Azure Service Bus vs IBM MQ: What are the differences?

Azure Service Bus and IBM MQ are both messaging middleware solutions that enable reliable and secure communication between application components. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Message Protocol Support: Azure Service Bus primarily supports the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and HTTP/REST protocols, while IBM MQ supports multiple protocols including MQI, JMS, HTTP, and TCP/IP. This difference in protocol support allows users to choose the protocol that best suits their requirements and seamlessly integrate with existing systems.

  2. Cloud Integration: Azure Service Bus is a fully managed cloud-based messaging service offered by Microsoft, designed to integrate seamlessly with other Azure services. On the other hand, IBM MQ is a standalone product that can be deployed on-premises or in various cloud environments. This difference in deployment options gives users the flexibility to choose the most suitable environment based on their specific needs and infrastructure.

  3. Message Durability: Azure Service Bus provides built-in message durability and automatic retry mechanisms, ensuring reliable message delivery in the event of failures. IBM MQ also offers message durability, but it requires additional configuration and setup to ensure message persistence. This difference makes Azure Service Bus more convenient and user-friendly for developers.

  4. Message Transformation: Azure Service Bus offers a feature called message transformations, which allows users to modify or convert message formats during message routing. This can be useful for scenarios where message data needs to be transformed before reaching the receiving application. IBM MQ, on the other hand, does not provide built-in message transformation capabilities. This difference makes Azure Service Bus a more flexible choice for message processing and routing.

  5. Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Azure Service Bus offers SLAs for availability, ensuring a certain level of uptime and reliability. IBM MQ does not provide explicit SLAs and its availability and reliability depend on the underlying infrastructure and configuration. This difference makes Azure Service Bus a more reliable choice for mission-critical applications that require guaranteed service levels.

  6. Integration with Native Messaging Systems: IBM MQ has been around for a long time and has strong integration capabilities with various native messaging systems, making it a popular choice for enterprises with diverse messaging requirements. Azure Service Bus, being a relatively newer offering, may have limited integration options with some non-Microsoft messaging systems. This difference should be considered when choosing a messaging middleware solution based on existing messaging infrastructure.

In summary, Azure Service Bus is a cloud-based messaging service offered by Microsoft Azure, providing scalability and integration with other Azure services, while IBM MQ is an on-premises or cloud-based messaging middleware solution known for its robustness and reliability, particularly in mission-critical environments.

Advice on Azure Service Bus and IBM MQ
André Almeida
Technology Manager at GS1 Portugal - Codipor · | 5 upvotes · 411.2K views
Needs advice
on
Azure Service BusAzure Service Bus
and
RabbitMQRabbitMQ

Hello dear developers, our company is starting a new project for a new Web App, and we are currently designing the Architecture (we will be using .NET Core). We want to embark on something new, so we are thinking about migrating from a monolithic perspective to a microservices perspective. We wish to containerize those microservices and make them independent from each other. Is it the best way for microservices to communicate with each other via ESB, or is there a new way of doing this? Maybe complementing with an API Gateway? Can you recommend something else different than the two tools I provided?

We want something good for Cost/Benefit; performance should be high too (but not the primary constraint).

Thank you very much in advance :)

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Replies (2)

A Pro of Azure Service Bus is reliability and persistence: you can send message when receiver is offline; receiver can read it when it back online. A Cons is costs and message size. You can consider also SignalR

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There are many different messaging frameworks available for IPC use. It's not really a question of how "new" the technology is, but what you need it to do. Azure Service Bus can be a great service to use, but it can also take a lot of effort to administrate and maintain that can make it costly to use unless you need the more advanced features it offers for routing, sequencing, delivery, etc. I would recommend checking out this link to get a basic idea of different messaging architectures. These only cover Azure services, but there are many other solutions that use similar architectural models.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/event-grid/compare-messaging-services

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Pros of Azure Service Bus
Pros of IBM MQ
  • 4
    Easy Integration with .Net
  • 2
    Cloud Native
  • 1
    Use while high messaging need
  • 3
    Reliable for banking transactions
  • 3
    Useful for big enteprises
  • 2
    Secure
  • 1
    Broader connectivity - more protocols, APIs, Files etc
  • 1
    Many deployment options (containers, cloud, VM etc)
  • 1
    High Availability

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Cons of Azure Service Bus
Cons of IBM MQ
  • 1
    Limited features in Basic tier
  • 1
    Skills can only be used in Azure - vendor lock-in
  • 1
    Lacking in JMS support
  • 1
    Observability of messages in the queue is lacking
  • 2
    Cost

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What is Azure Service Bus?

It is a cloud messaging system for connecting apps and devices across public and private clouds. You can depend on it when you need highly-reliable cloud messaging service between applications and services, even when one or more is offline.

What is IBM MQ?

It is a messaging middleware that simplifies and accelerates the integration of diverse applications and business data across multiple platforms. It offers proven, enterprise-grade messaging capabilities that skillfully and safely move information.

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What companies use Azure Service Bus?
What companies use IBM MQ?
See which teams inside your own company are using Azure Service Bus or IBM MQ.
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What tools integrate with Azure Service Bus?
What tools integrate with IBM MQ?
What are some alternatives to Azure Service Bus and IBM MQ?
NServiceBus
Performance, scalability, pub/sub, reliable integration, workflow orchestration, and everything else you could possibly want in a service bus.
RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ gives your applications a common platform to send and receive messages, and your messages a safe place to live until received.
Kafka
Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design.
MSMQ
This technology enables applications running at different times to communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily offline. Applications send messages to queues and read messages from queues.
Amazon SQS
Transmit any volume of data, at any level of throughput, without losing messages or requiring other services to be always available. With SQS, you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available messaging cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.
See all alternatives