How to Choose the Right Middleware

Selecting the right middleware for your company can be one of the most important decisions that you can make at the outset of a software project, as this will determine how well your business performs going forward. We look at some of the key features from the major integration software providers below.

Factors to Consider when Choosing Middleware

The main factors to consider when choosing which middleware is right for you and your company are the level of security provided, as well as performance factors such as the extent to which reliability can be ensured.

Other factors are the communication protocols that are used, as these can obviously affect which integrations may or may not work well with the product. You want your Middleware to grow with you so scalability is another essential consideration.

Last, but not least, the price of the software, including support, and the number of licenses that will be provided can be major factors in helping to decide which solution is best for your company.

Middleware Providers

Some of the biggest names in middleware provision are IBM MQ, Apache Kafka, Solace PubSub+, TIBCO EMS, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, DataPower and App Connect Enterprise.

Key Features:

IBM MQ: Flexible messaging integration providing a singular messaging backbone for ever-changing heterogeneous environments. Message transmission can be asynchronous for guaranteed delivery and can include various security features.

High-performance message transmission and throughput improve speed while modes including point-to-point, publish/subscribe and file transfer reliably and efficiently move information.

Apache Kafka: A fast system that guarantees no downtime or data loss. Kafka routinely handles large volumes of data streaming and is particularly fault-tolerant and durable due to the nature of its distribution.

An open-source message broker and high-throughput pub-sub messaging service with excellent security features.

Solace PubSub+: The “+” in PubSub+ is intended to indicate that it supports a wide range of message exchange patterns beyond publish/subscribe. These include request/reply, streaming and replay, as well as different qualities of service. For example, best effort and guaranteed delivery. PubSub+ is available as an appliance, software, and a service.

TIBCO EMS: A standards-based messaging solution that serves as the backbone of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by utilizing Java Message Service (JMS) compliant communications which work with a range of software platforms and application technologies. EMS supports seamless integration for heterogeneous platforms as well as reducing system bottlenecks and supporting increased scalability.

RabbitMQ: Supporting messaging over a wide variety of different protocols, RabbitMQ offers a range of features that allow for the prioritising of reliability vs system performance with variable settings. Flexible routing of messages ensures high deliverability and asynchronous messaging and pub-sub options allow for any system interruptions to be factored in. HTTP-API support is also included as well as an intuitive User Interface for managing RabbitMQ.

ActiveMQ: Designed for high-performance clustering, client-server, peer-based communication and featuring support for very fast persistence using JDBC, ActiveMQ makes use of the REST API to provide technology agnostic and language-neutral web-based messaging. Able to make use of many different transport protocols including in-Virtual-Machine TCP, SSL, NIO, UDP and JXTA transports, among others.

IBM DataPower: Using enterprise-grade security from the company that introduced Message Queuing, IBM DataPower provides message level throttling to provide maximum performance and throughput while optimizing for reliability. Near real-time visibility of transactions helps to allow for timely troubleshooting and resolution.

IBM AppConnect Enterprise: Amongst the many features provided, IBM AppConnect Enterprise supports a wide range of protocols and allows for the connection of disparate applications, regardless of the messaging formats used in each. This allows the applications to exchange data in a number of ways which can enhance integration and negate the need for coding.