Equalum vs Quest SharePlex comparison

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"The core features of the solution we like are the reliability of the data transfer and the accuracy of data read and write. The stability of the solution is also excellent."

"Because of the volume of the transactions, we heavily use a feature that allows SharePlex to replicate thousands of transactions. It's called PEP, Post Enhancement Performance, and that has helped us scale tremendously."

"I like SharePlex's Compare and Repair tool."

"There are some capabilities within SharePlex where you can see how the data is migrating and if it still maintains good data integrity. For example, if there are some tables that get out of sync, there are ways to find them and fix the problem on the spot. Since these are very common issues, we can easily fix these types of problems using utilities, like compare and repair. So, if you find something is out of sync, then you can just repair that table. It basically syncs that table from source to target to see if there are any differences. It will then replicate those differences to the target."

"The core replication and its performance. Performance is crucial, and SharePlex is by far the fastest. The way it handles replication to multiple targets along with basic filtering, as well as from multiple sources to a single target, is very efficient."

"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."

"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."

"The deployment of their flows needs improvement. It doesn't work with a typical Git branching and CI/CD deployment strategy."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"For its function in relation to replication (i.e. filtering), I'd give it a six or seven out of 10. GoldenGate has much more functionality by comparison."

"I would like more ability to automate installation and configuration in line with some of the DevOps processes that are more mature in the market. That would be a considerable improvement."

"I don't know how easy it would be to change the architecture in an already implemented replication. For example, if we have a certain way of architecting for a particular database migration and want to change that during a period of time, is that an easy or difficult change? There was a need for us to change the architecture in-between the migration, but we didn't do it. We thought, "This is possibly complicated. Let's not change it in the middle because we were approaching our cutover date." That was one thing that we should have checked with support about for training."

"The reporting features need improvement. It would be very good for users to have a clear understanding of the status of replication."

"I would like the solution to have some kind of machine learning and AI capabilities. Often, if we want to improve the performance of posting, we have to bump up a parameter. That means we need to stop the process, come up with a figure that we want to bump the parameter up to, and then start SharePlex. Machine learning and AI capabilities for these kinds of improvement would tremendously help boost productivity for us."

"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."

"Equalum was reasonably priced. It is not like those million dollar tools, such as Informatica."

"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."

"Equalum licensing costs vary, but I won't be able to give information on its fees."

"It is not as expensive as Oracle GoldenGate and has worked really well within our budgets."

"It's really good value for the money. There are some things they could improve on, but in terms of the pricing, features, and support, as a holistic package, we are not thinking of anything else at this point in time."