Why HiveMQ is More Than an MQTT Broker
In our conversations with prospects looking for connectivity solutions, we often hear, “Wait… aren’t you guys just an MQTT broker?” That’s like saying an electric car is just a fancy battery on wheels.
Let’s bust this myth: HiveMQ is a complete MQTT platform, delivering a suite of enterprise-grade capabilities that address the complex challenges of modern IoT deployments.
Beyond Basic MQTT Message Brokering
While HiveMQ delivers robust MQTT features—publish/subscribe messaging, QoS levels, retained messages, and more—it is designed to address the complex needs of modern IoT systems with enterprise-grade capabilities.
Yes, HiveMQ delivers on the fundamentals of MQTT:
It supports the publish/subscribe messaging pattern.
It enables features like QoS levels, retained messages, and last-will messages.
It handles MQTT-based communication between devices and applications.
But that’s where the similarities to a basic MQTT broker end. HiveMQ’s platform extends far beyond basic message brokering, offering tools that enable real-time data movement, scalable deployments, and reliable edge-to-cloud integrations.
As IoT systems grow in scale and complexity, enterprise-grade features become essential. HiveMQ rises to this challenge, delivering unparalleled flexibility, observability, reliability, scalability, and security.
Seamless Data Streaming and Integration
Imagine a world where your data flows seamlessly across your entire tech stack. With HiveMQ, that’s a reality.
With its ability to integrate MQTT with Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, Google Pub/Sub, Snowflake and more, HiveMQ empowers you to stream data and integrate with popular services your way with the help of HiveMQ Extensions. No black box or vendor lock-in! Integrate the way you want.
HiveMQ’s extensible plug-in architecture, embodied in its Enterprise Extensions, enables deep integration with leading streaming and analytics platforms, ensuring that your data gets where it needs to go, in real-time. To learn more, read our blog Connector Framework vs. Plug-in Architecture in MQTT-Based IoT Architectures.
Data Streaming Platforms
HiveMQ Extensions integrate with leading data streaming and cloud platforms, including the following, to enable real-time data processing, analysis, storage, and more.
Amazon Kinesis: Effortlessly transfer bi-directional MQTT data between devices and AWS services such as Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for IoT data analytics.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Ingest MQTT data directly from the Google Cloud platform to Google Big Query and other Google services.
Kafka: Transfer bidirectional MQTT data between devices and Kafka clusters.
Databases and Data Lakes
HiveMQ also simplifies database integration, offering seamless connectivity to popular platforms:
Data Lake: Integrate MQTT data with a cloud-based data lake on Databricks, Snowflake, or AWS via Amazon S3.
Snowflake: Integrate MQTT data between IoT/IIoT devices and the Snowflake Data Cloud.
MongoDB: Ingest MQTT data into MongoDB to get real-time analytics, predictive analytics, and more.
Microsoft SQL: Forward MQTT messages directly into SQL Server or Azure SQL, without additional middleware or infrastructure.
MySQL: Forward MQTT messages from IoT devices to one or more MySQL databases.
PostgreSQL: Integrate MQTT data into PostgreSQL for efficient data querying and quick analysis.
TimescaleDB: Integrate MQTT data with TimescaleDB to analyze time-stamped data and enhance operational efficiency in energy, manufacturing, and more.
Do you need something custom? The HiveMQ Java SDK allows you to build extensions tailored to your unique requirements, transforming HiveMQ into a flexible, adaptable IoT solution.
Data Quality to Ensure Accurate and Reliable Data
In IoT, maintaining data quality is crucial. HiveMQ Data Hub features an integrated policy engine that validates, enforces, and transforms data as it moves through the system. This ensures that only accurate and reliable data flows through your IoT infrastructure, creating a strong foundation for informed decision-making and cost-efficient data management.
Edge-to-Cloud Connectivity
Modern IoT solutions don’t stop at the cloud—they start at the edge. HiveMQ Edge bridges this gap, providing a software-based MQTT gateway and protocol converter that processes data locally at the edge while seamlessly streaming relevant data to the cloud.
HiveMQ Edge delivers powerful OT protocol support, enabling seamless integration of legacy systems with protocols like Modbus, OPC-UA, Siemens S7, and Beckhoff ADS. It ensures data quality enforcement to maintain high standards of data integrity at the edge and prevents data loss with offline buffering through store-and-forward capabilities during connection failures. HiveMQ Edge also simplifies edge-to-cloud integration with Unified Namespace (UNS), creating a centralized and seamless data hub to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.
Unparalleled Observability
Leveraging the Distributed Tracing Extension, HiveMQ is the first MQTT broker to integrate OpenTelemetry support, enabling complete transparency into every message's journey through complex systems. This advanced capability provides a high-level overview of events across multiple systems, making it invaluable for managing and optimizing intricate workflows.
Combined with real-time KPI dashboards and over 2,000 monitoring metrics, HiveMQ ensures unmatched observability, empowering industries ranging from IoT and IIoT to healthcare, finance, and beyond to achieve peak performance and reliability.
Enterprise-Grade Reliability and Scalability
At the core of the HiveMQ platform is its clustered MQTT broker, a shared-nothing distributed system with a masterless architecture. This innovative design enables HiveMQ to meet enterprise-grade availability standards, ensuring uninterrupted operations even during infrastructure failures, thereby guaranteeing reliability.
Moreover, HiveMQ’s masterless cluster architecture, combined with features like automatic data balancing and intelligent message distribution, provides effortless scalability—from small proof-of-concepts to large-scale deployments supporting millions of connected devices. HiveMQ has successfully benchmarked support for 200 million concurrent connections.
In mission-critical applications, where data integrity and reliability are paramount, HiveMQ ensures zero message loss through a combination of advanced features designed to safeguard every piece of information.
Quality of Service (QoS) 2: HiveMQ supports the highest MQTT QoS level, guaranteeing that each message is delivered exactly once, eliminating the risk of duplication or loss during transmission.
Persistent Messaging: Messages are stored persistently to ensure they are not lost, even in the event of network disruptions, system failures, or client disconnections. This reliability is critical for maintaining data continuity in environments where downtime is not an option.
Distributed Architecture: HiveMQ’s distributed architecture ensures that all messages are securely replicated across the broker cluster. This redundancy provides an additional layer of protection, enabling seamless recovery and uninterrupted data flow even during infrastructure failures.
With these features, HiveMQ delivers enterprise-grade reliability, ensuring that every critical message reaches its intended destination, making it the trusted choice for IoT and non-IoT applications alike.
Enterprise-Grade Security
HiveMQ is engineered from the ground up with a strong emphasis on security, ensuring it meets the rigorous demands of mission-critical applications. Its advanced security features provide the flexibility to tailor configurations to the unique requirements of your specific use case.
The HiveMQ Enterprise Security Extension (ESE) enhances the platform's role, user, and permission-management capabilities for both Enterprise and Professional editions. ESE supports the integration of external authentication and authorization sources, enabling robust, secure client authentication and access control for MQTT clients. With ESE, you can define realms to partition your server into isolated, protected areas, each with its own dedicated authentication and authorization schemes, ensuring granular and highly secure management of your IoT ecosystem.
Conclusion
HiveMQ is not just an MQTT broker—it’s a powerful, enterprise-grade platform designed to act as the central nervous system for IoT. From seamless data integrations and edge-to-cloud connectivity to unmatched scalability and observability, HiveMQ empowers organizations to build reliable, high-performance IoT solutions.
The next time someone says HiveMQ is “just an MQTT broker,” show them this blog. Or better yet, send them our way. We’ll turn them into believers faster than you can say, “connectivity.” Let’s build the future of connectivity together.
Jayashree Hegde
Jayashree Hegde is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at HiveMQ. She drives HiveMQ’s content strategy and content marketing initiatives while guiding efforts to help organizations uncover solutions that effectively address their challenges. She’s passionate about marketing and specializes in simplifying complex technologies like MQTT and IoT into impactful narratives that drive results.
