Apache Kafka vs. IBM webMethods

For brokering messages, Confluent Kafka is well suited since it offers a managed solution ready to use. Scenarios where the solution is not very well suited are for example, where pricing is an issue. The solution costs quite a lot for basic usage (for example: for 3 clusters, pricing is above 100k$ a year).

Incentivized

With its world-class proven technology, the IBM webMethods products are best suited for solving integration needs, including application connectivity, data aggregation, and data synchronization. The business use cases expand across Healthcare, Aviation, Banking, Insurance, etc., and many other mission-critical systems. Though I feel there is room for improvement where webMethods products are utilized in a containerized platform, especially with the API Management suite of products.

Incentivized

• Apache Kafka is able to handle a large number of I/Os (writes) using 3-4 cheap servers.
• It scales very well over large workloads and can handle extreme-scale deployments (eg. Linkedin with 300 billion user events each day).
• The same Kafka setup can be used as a messaging bus, storage system or a log aggregator making it easy to maintain as one system feeding multiple applications.

Incentivized

• Translate the data into required format based on system
• Handles good amount of load and tranefer data into chunks and very much accurate
• Administration is very easy and easily understable and it has goos secuity features
• Schedulers works well for pub/sub message pulling and pushing

Incentivized

• The Kafka Tool is a community-made Java application that looks and feels from the past century.
• Logging can be confusing. This certainly shows when we have to do troubleshooting.
• Hybrid scenarios - pub/sub, but there are services in and outside a Kubernetes cluster. Then there are a ~3 options, but only 2 (the harder ones) are production-safe.

Incentivized

• Clarifying the ongoing and near future roadmap developments in terms of capabilities and architecture
• Merging features, patterns and platform tooling with the rest of the Cloud Pak for integration toolkit
• Adding additional support for AI-driven development, low-/no-code features, and code assistant features

Incentivized

Kafka has suited our use case very well so far. Going forward we are planning to expand our platform manifold so the load on Kafka and our reliance on Kafka is going to increase only.

The webMethods platform is a fantastic tool for modernizing information systems. It's easy to use and delivers rapid results.The platform is focused on innovation and is accelerating its improvement with the acquisition by IBM.

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file

Incentivized

The webMethods product has a very user-friendly and easy-to-use interface.A weak point is the My webMethods Server portal (administration and monitoring portal for the on-premise platform). This weakness has been addressed thanks to the control plane on the hybrid version of the product. This version should be highlighted and used to ensure a very fluid and functional interface.

Incentivized

The webMethods platform is very stable and does not cause incidents: if it is well configured and tailored at the base. Infrastructure incidents represent 20% of incidents (full disk, memory peaks, etc.) 80% of incidents come from the implementation of the code in the platform. If a code is not optimized and a high volume is observed in production, this can cause incidents. Similarly, if all error cases or conditions are not handled in the code, this can cause errors. Finally, there can be common errors if the applications connected to the platform do not return quality data or are unavailable.

Incentivized

The webMethods platform is designed to handle a high volume of small messages. It's a tool for continuous processing.The incidents I've seen involving application performance declines are caused by: - ​​Code optimization issues - File size issues or fragmentation of the transmitted file - Misuse of the platform (batch processing) - Monitoring data was not purged, and the user was working with millions of data points

Incentivized

Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.

Incentivized

In the majority of the tickets I've created, support has been very responsive and provided the right solutions or solutions.Resolving a ticket also depends on the information provided by the creator. It's important to provide the technical context and information about the environment, as well as information to help the support team reproduce the incident.

Incentivized

We received in-person training from the webMethods team. We received standard training from the vendor and custom training on specific security topics.The training sessions went well but remained very standard and did not adapt to the client's specific business. In-person training is more suitable for rapid skill development. It is necessary to practice for a few weeks to ensure familiarity with the tool.

Incentivized

I found clear and easy-to-follow training with realistic use cases for quick understanding and a 360° view of the features. The lesson format allows you to progress and learn by breaking down the allocated time.The technical courses are described step by step, allowing you to quickly get to grips with the products

Incentivized

When implementing webMethods, it's essential to have the right support and guidance.It's important to map out the interactions, document them, prepare test cases, and implement them while making maximum use of the product's native features.Additional tools must also be planned to automate deployments, visualize logs, and monitor the platform.

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is built for scale. From high throughput and real-time data streaming, it has a strong advantage over RabbitMQ with its low latency. This put Apache Kafka at the forefront as the platform of choice for large datasets messaging and ensuring scalability when data scale up tremendously. RabbitMQ however has its strengths in traditional messaging. Routing and message delivery reliability are the bedrock of RabbitMQ and this is where RabbitMQ excels. In my previous workplace, RabbitMQ was of choice as reliability matters more than scale. In two words. Apache Kafka for scale, RabbitMQ for reliability. And for cloud deployment and large dataset messaging in what I am doing now, Apache Kafka is the default choice.

The two branches of the IBM integration portfolio are coming together nicely, and it's more a question of fully mapping the specific implementation requirements to the respective platform of choice when selecting between IBM Cloud Pak for Integration and IBM webMethods. Pricing and licensing model, cloud strategy, and level of distributed responsibilities and ownership of integration in the organisation can be deciding factors.

Incentivized

I don't know this product

Incentivized

• Positive: bursts of traffic on special holidays are easy to handle because Kafka can absorb and buffer all the messages we need to process long enough to let an understaffed set of back-end services catch up on processing. Hard to put a number to it but we probably save $5k a month having fewer machines running.
• Positive: makes decoupling the web and API services from the deeper back-end services easier by providing topics as an interface. This allowed us to split up our teams and have them develop independently of each other, speeding up software development.
• Negative: our engineers have made mistakes such as accidentally dropping a few thousand messages due to the CLI being confusing to use, and as a result a customer lost some of their precious data. I'd say that was more our fault than Kafka's though.

Incentivized

• webMethods.io Integration is a cost effective approach to integration in isolation
• webMethods.io Integration as a supplement to on-premises integration is pointless and redundant and just adds complexity to the environment and additional costs
• webMethods.io Integration is a tough sell for organizations using Microsoft Azure integration products such as Logic Apps
• webMethods.io Integration has a faster time to market where the use case means standard provided adapters can be used

Incentivized