24/7 IBM MQ Support with a 15-Minute Emergency SLA

IBM MQ support covers 24/7 emergency incident response with a 15-minute SLA, written root cause analysis on every P1, TLS and CHLAUTH configuration work, certificate lifecycle tracking, performance and log tuning, cluster and HA design review, and version upgrade support. Every ticket is handled by a named senior engineer assigned to your account, with no tier-1 triage layer and no per-incident charge.

Yes. We support IBM MQ on Linux, AIX, Windows, IBM i, and z/OS. The z/OS environment is genuinely different — page sets and buffer pools instead of queue files, queue-sharing groups backed by the Coupling Facility, and shared message data sets for large payloads. Vendors that treat z/OS as distributed MQ with different filenames get this wrong, and it shows during an incident.

P1 emergencies — queue manager down, channels refusing to start, messages stalled on a transmission queue — get a 15-minute first response with a senior engineer joining a live bridge. P2 critical issues are 1 hour, P3 high-priority 4 hours, and P4 standard questions next business day. These are contractual commitments, not best-effort targets.

Yes, and most of our IBM MQ customers keep both. IBM support handles product defects and supplies fixes. What it does not do is join your bridge at 3am to work out why your channel stopped after a firewall change, or tune your buffer pools against your workload. We handle the operational and configuration side and will drive a PMR with IBM on your behalf when a genuine product defect is involved.

Yes. We support versions past their IBM end-of-support date, including WebSphere MQ 7.x estates, with workarounds and mitigations where official fixes are no longer available. Regulated environments frequently cannot upgrade on the vendor's timeline. We will also give you an honest read on which specific risks that leaves open, so the decision to stay is a deliberate one.

Yes, and we will tell you honestly whether you should. We plan and execute migrations from IBM MQ to RabbitMQ or Kafka with zero message loss, including transactional semantics mapping, parallel-run validation, and phased cutover. We also regularly advise customers that their MQ estate is sound and a migration would cost far more than fixing what is actually wrong. The diagnosis comes first.

There are three support options. IBM Software Subscription and Support, bought through Passport Advantage, is the standard entitlement: fix packs, new versions and access to IBM support for a version that is inside its support window. IBM extended support is a paid extension for a version that has gone out of support, with a limited scope and a limited term. Third-party support, which is what AceMQ provides, covers operations, troubleshooting and incident response on any version of IBM MQ, IBM MQ Advanced, the IBM MQ Appliance and older WebSphere MQ, and runs alongside IBM or on its own. IBM also ships the product in two streams, Long Term Support and Continuous Delivery, and the support window differs between them, so check which one each queue manager is on.

End of support means IBM stops producing fixes for that version, including security fixes, and IBM support will no longer take a case on it unless you buy an extension. The software keeps running. The risks accumulate quietly: vulnerabilities in the MQ software, the bundled Java runtime and TLS components stay open, the operating system underneath eventually moves past what that MQ version is certified on, and auditors in regulated industries treat unsupported middleware as a finding. There are also licensing implications if entitlement lapses while the software is still installed. The practical answer is a dated plan: support in place for the version you run today, and a tested upgrade to the latest version on a Long Term Support release.

Yes. It is one product family with three names. MQSeries became WebSphere MQ, and WebSphere MQ was renamed IBM MQ at version 8.0 in 2014. Queue managers, channels and the programming interfaces carried through each rename, which is why estates that began on MQSeries still run today. We support all of them, including the platform-specific parts: multi-instance queue managers and clustering on distributed platforms, the architecture differences on z/OS, and the installation and configuration detail that changes between versions.

Yes. AceMQ works on IBM MQ in two ways: ad hoc engagements for a defined piece of work, such as a health check, an upgrade or an incident, or an annual partner engagement that covers 24/7 support, proactive reviews and named engineers. Many teams start ad hoc and move to an annual partnership once the first engagement is done.

Every AceMQ proposal is tailored to your requirements: your IBM MQ environment, the SLA you need, the hours of cover and the scope of work. Most contracts run $24,000–72,000 a year, depending on the SLA, the scope and how IBM MQ is deployed, with aggressive discounts when several technologies share one contract. Request a quote and AceMQ replies within 1 hour.