Confluent and IBM Streams compete in the data streaming sphere, with Confluent often excelling in pricing and support, while IBM Streams is preferred for its advanced features, making it a more robust choice for complex data operations.
Features: Confluent is known for its integration capabilities, flexible support for multiple data sources, and a streamlined experience focusing on data consistency and scalability. IBM Streams is distinguished by its complex event processing, real-time data analysis, and impressive scalability.
Room for Improvement: Confluent users seek enhanced real-time analytics and deeper event-driven architecture integrations, while IBM Streams could improve on cloud-based deployment options and user-friendly interfaces. Both could benefit from simplified pricing structures, making them more accessible to small enterprises.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Confluent offers a simplified, cloud-first deployment model with continuous support, providing agility and quick startup. IBM Streams, while comprehensive in resources, involves a more hands-on deployment with a steeper learning curve but offers professional support services.
Pricing and ROI: Confluent provides competitive pricing with subscription models catering to various business sizes, ensuring cost efficiency and solid ROI. IBM Streams, while potentially requiring a higher initial setup cost, offers substantial returns when utilized for advanced data functionalities, appealing to those prioritizing feature-rich solutions.
Confluent is an enterprise-ready, full-scale streaming platform that enhances Apache Kafka.
Confluent has integrated cutting-edge features that are designed to enhance these tasks:
Confluent is a more complete distribution of Kafka in that it enhances the integration possibilities of Kafka by introducing tools for managing and optimizing Kafka clusters while providing methods for making sure the streams are secure. Confluent supports publish-and-subscribe as well as the storing and processing of data within the streams. Kafka is easier to operate and build thanks to Confluent.
Confluent's software is available in three different varieties:
Confluent Advantage Features
Confluent has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
Reviews from Real Users
Confluent stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust enterprise support and its open source option. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:
Ravi B., a solutions architect at a tech services company, writes of the solution, “KSQL is a valuable feature, as is the Kafka Connect framework for connecting to the various source systems where you need not write the code. We get great support from Confluent because we're using the enterprise version and whenever there's a problem, they support us with fine-tuning and finding the root cause.”
Amit S., an IT consultant, notes, “The biggest benefit is that it is open source. You have the flexibility of opting or not opting for enterprise support, even though the tool itself is open source.” He adds, “The second benefit is it's very modern and built on Java and Scala. You can extend the features very well, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to do so.”
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