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Equalum vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Equalum
Ranking in Data Integration
54th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Replication (16th), Cloud Data Integration (27th)
IBM Cloud Pak for Data
Ranking in Data Integration
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Equalum is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1525674 - PeerSpot reviewer
Frees staff to focus on data workflow and on what can be done with data, and away from the details of the technology
There are areas they can do better in, like most software companies that are still relatively young. They need to expand their capabilities in some of the targets, as well as source connectors, and native connectors for a number of large data sources and databases. That's a huge challenge for every company in this area, not just Equalum. If I had the wherewithal to create a tool that could allow for all that connectivity, it would be massive, out-of-the-box. There are all the updates every month. An open source changes constantly, so compatibility for these sources or targets is not easy. And a lot of targets are proprietary and they actually don't want you to connect with them in real time. They want to keep that connectivity for their own competitive tool. What happens is that a customer will say, "Okay, I've got Oracle, and I've got MariaDB, and I've got SQL Server over here, and I've got something else over there. And I want to aggregate that, and put it into Google Cloud Platform." Having connectors to all of those is extremely difficult, as is maintaining them. So there are major challenges to keeping connectivity to those data sources, especially at a CDC level, because you've got to maintain your connectors. And every change that's made with a new version that comes out means they've got to upgrade their version of the connector. It's a real challenge in the industry. But one good thing about Equalum is that they're up for the challenge. If there's a customer opportunity, they will develop and make sure that they update a connector to meet the needs of the customer. They'll also look at custom development of connectors, based on the customer opportunity. It's a work in progress. Everybody in the space is in the same boat. And it's not just ETL tools. It's everybody in the Big Data space. It's a challenge. The other area for improvement, for Equalum, is their documentation of the product. But that comes with being a certain size and having a marketing team of 30 or 40 people and growing as an organization. They're getting there and I believe they know what the deficiencies are. Maintaining and driving a channel business, like Equalum is doing, is really quite a different business model than the direct-sales model. It requires a tremendous amount of documentation, marketing information, and educational information. It's not easy.
Michelle Leslie - PeerSpot reviewer
Starts strong with data management capabilities but needs a demo database
What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated. There are so many components to data management, and more often than not, people understand one thing really well. They may understand DataStage and how to move data around, but they do not see the impact of moving data incorrectly. They also do not see the impact of everyone understanding a piece of data in the same way. I would love Cloud Pak to come with a demo database that illustrates the different components of data management in a logical way, so I can see the whole picture instead of just the area I'm specializing in. It would be great if Cloud Pak, from a data modeling point of view, allowed us to import our PDMs, for example. It would be ideal to import and create business terms in Cloud Pak. The PEA would be great to create the technical data. The association between the business and the technical metadata could then be automated by pulling it through from your ACE models. The data modeling component is available in Cloud Pak. Additionally, when it comes to Cloud Pak, even though it has the NextGen DataStage built into it, there is Cloud Pak for data integration as well. Currently, I do not think we have a full enough understanding of how CP4D and CP4I can enhance each other.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Equalum is real-time. If you are moving from an overnight process to a real-time process, there is always a difference in what reports and analytics show compared to what our operational system shows. Some of our organizations, especially finance, don't want those differences to be shown. Therefore, going to a real-time environment makes the data in one place match the data in another place. Data accuracy is almost instantaneous with this tool."
"Equalum has resulted in system performance improvements in our organization. Now, I am ingressing data off of multiple S3 sources, doing data processing, and formatting a schema. This would usually take me a couple of days, but now it takes me hours."
"The main impact for Oracle LogMiner is the performance. Performance is drastically reduced if you use the solution’s Oracle Binary Log Parser. So, if we have 60 million records, initially it used to take a minute. Now, it takes a second to do synchronization from the source and target tables."
"It's a really powerful platform in terms of the combination of technologies they've developed and integrated together, out-of-the-box. The combination of Kafka and Spark is, we believe, quite unique, combined with CDC capabilities. And then, of course, there are the performance aspects. As an overall package, it's a very powerful data integration, migration, and replication tool."
"I found two features in Equalum that I consider the most valuable. One is that Equalum is a no-code tool. You can do your activities on its graphical interface, which doesn't require complex knowledge of extracting, changing, or loading data. Another feature of Equalum that I like the most is that it monitors the data transfers and tells you if there's any issue so that you can quickly check and correct it. Equalum also tells you where the problem lies, for example, if it's a hardware or communication issue."
"It's got it all, from end-to-end. It's the glue. There are a lot of other products out there, good products, but there's always a little bit of something missing from the other products. Equalum did its research well and understood the requirements of large enterprise and governments in terms of one tool to rule them all, from a data migration integration perspective."
"Equalum provides a single platform for core architectural use cases, including CDC replication, streaming ETL, and batch ETL. That is important to our clients because there is no other single-focus product that covers these areas in that much detail, and with this many features on the platform. The fact that they are single-minded and focused on CDC and ETL makes this such a rich solution. Other solutions cover these things a little bit in their multi-function products, but they don't go as deep."
"All our architectural use cases are on a single platform, not multiple platforms. You don't have to dump into different modules because it is the same module everywhere."
"The most valuable features are data virtualization and reporting."
"You can model the data there, connect the data models with the business processes and create data lineage processes."
"What I found most helpful in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is containerization, which means it's easy to shift and leave in terms of moving to other clouds. That's an advantage of IBM Cloud Pak for Data."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten."
"One of Cloud Pak's best features is the Watson Knowledge Catalog, which helps you implement data governance."
"Cloud Pak's most valuable features are IBM MQ, IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect, and ISPF."
"I love the way that I can start at a very basic level with my data management journey by capturing my policies, justifying my data, and putting them into different categories to say this is data relating to individuals, for example, or data relating to geography."
"Cloud Pak is a very, very, very good system."
 

Cons

"The deployment of their flows needs improvement. It doesn't work with a typical Git branching and CI/CD deployment strategy."
"I should be able to see only my project versus somebody else's garbage. That is something that would be good in future. Right now, the security is by tenants, but I would like to have it by project, e.g., this project has this source and flows in these streams, and I have access to this on this site."
"There is not enough proven integration with other vendors. That is what needs to be worked on. Equalum hasn't tested anything between vendors, which worries our clients. We need more proven vendor integration. It is an expensive product and it needs to support a multi-vendor approach."
"They need to expand their capabilities in some of the targets, as well as source connectors, and native connectors for a number of large data sources and databases. That's a huge challenge for every company in this area, not just Equalum."
"Their UI could use some work. Also, they could make it just a little faster to get around their user interface. It could be a bit more intuitive with things like keyboard shortcuts."
"Right now, they have a good notification system, but it is in bulk. For example, if I have five projects running and I put a notification, the notification comes back to me for all five projects. I would like the notification to come back only for one project."
"If you need to use the basic features of Equalum, for example, you don't even need data integration, then many competitors in the market can give you basic features. For instance, if you need batch ETL, you can pick among solutions in the market that have been around longer than Equalum. What needs improvement in Equalum is replication, as it could be faster. Equalum also needs better integration with specific databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server."
"The technical support could be a little better."
"Cloud Pak would be improved with integration with cloud service providers like Cloudera."
"The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem."
"One challenge I'm facing with IBM Cloud Pak for Data is native features have been decommissioned, such as XML input and output. Too many changes have been made, and my company has around one hundred thousand mappings, so my team has been putting more effort into alternative ways to do things. Another area for improvement in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is that it's more complicated to shift from on-premise to the cloud. Other vendors provide secure agents that easily connect with your existing setup. Still, with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, you have to perform connection migration steps, upgrade to the latest version, etc., which makes it more complicated, especially as my company has XML-based mappings. Still, the XML input and output capabilities of IBM Cloud Pak for Data have been discontinued, so I'd like IBM to bring that back."
"One thing that bugs me is how much infrastructure Cloud Pak requires for the initial deployment. It doesn't allow you to start small. The smallest permitted deployment is too big. It's a huge problem that prevents us from implementing the solution in many scenarios."
"The product must improve its performance."
"What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated."
"The solution could have more connectors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Equalum licensing costs vary, but I won't be able to give information on its fees."
"Equalum was reasonably priced. It is not like those million dollar tools, such as Informatica."
"They have a very simple approach to licensing. They don't get tied up with different types of connectivity to different databases. If you need more connectors or if you need more CPU, you just add on. It's component-based pricing."
"Equalum is rather expensive compared to its competitors. So, you have to make up that cost in time savings, and we usually do that. If we are saving money, it is because we are reducing our development time."
"As soon as you have more than six users, Equalum is lower in cost [than Talend] and if the group gets bigger, it's quite a big delta. If more users want to use it, you don't end up with an increase in licensing costs, so that makes it very easy. And if you need more licenses or more sources, it's a very simple upgrade methodology."
"I think that this product is too expensive for smaller companies."
"The solution's pricing is competitive with that of other vendors."
"Cloud Pak's cost is a little high."
"IBM Cloud Pak for Data is expensive. If we include the training time and the machine learning, it's expensive. The cost of the execution is more reasonable."
"It's quite expensive."
"I don't have the exact licensing cost for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, as my company is still finalizing requirements, including monthly, yearly, and three-year licensing fees. Still, on a scale of one to five, I'd rate it a three because, compared to other vendors, it's more complicated."
"For the licensing of the solution, there is a yearly payment that needs to be made. Also, since it is expensive, cost-wise, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Why should I use Equalum instead of LogMiner?
You'd want to use the Equalium Oracle Binary Log Parser because it's just better than the LogMiner. Sure, LogMiner is made by Oracle and probably the team knows some insight to make it efficient th...
Is Equalum compatible with all databases?
I'm using Equalum's data replication software for Oracle because that's the one database it's designed for. While it may sound limiting, when you find out how many solutions it can provide for you ...
Can I use Equalum for free?
No, it's not free but you can benefit from a free trial, though. There's an option to try their platform for a limited amount of time, so that may be useful to help you decide if you want to contin...
What do you like most about IBM Cloud Pak for Data?
DataStage allows me to connect to different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?
The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem.
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Data?
What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated. There are so many components to data...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloud Pak for Data
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SIEMENS, GSK, Wal-Mart, T Systems
Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival
Find out what your peers are saying about Equalum vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Data and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.