IBM App Connect vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data comparison

The compared IBM App Connect and IBM Cloud Pak for Data solutions aren't in the same category. IBM App Connect is ranked #11 in CDI , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 4.7% mindshare in the category. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is ranked #3 in DV , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 19.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM App Connect users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM Cloud Pak for Data users who would recommend it.

IBM App Connect

Read 24 IBM App Connect reviews

1,711 Views
980 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Read 13 IBM Cloud Pak for Data reviews

266 Views
187 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

IBM App Connect

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM App Connect and IBM Cloud Pak for Data based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Data Integration solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM App Connect vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Data Report (Updated: May 2023).

Buyer's Guide

IBM App Connect vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Data

May 2023

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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

IBM App Connect

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Integration (11th)

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (16th), Data Virtualization (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Data Integration and Access solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM App Connect is designed for Cloud Data Integration and holds a mindshare of 4.7%, up 3.3% compared to last year.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data, on the other hand, focuses on Data Virtualization, holds 19.4% mindshare, up 14.9% since last year.

Cloud Data Integration

Data Virtualization

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Offers flexible adapters, good scalability but logging can be difficult at times

There is room for improvement in the logging messages. Sometimes, if you put someone new into App Connect, they can abandon it the same day. The logging is really painful. However, IBM has made efforts to integrate with Elasticsearch for logging, so that's an improvement. Overall, the logging can be difficult at times. One more important point is that if IBM improves its CI/CD capabilities, it will make a big difference. Right now, I have to create my own CI/CD setup from scratch for every client, which is inefficient. Back in 2013, I worked with Sonic ESB, and even then, it had CI/CD with Maven. With App Connect, you need to build everything yourself when using tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, or CircleCI. IBM really needs to provide official support for this.

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Michelle Leslie

Data asset management engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has different type of interfaces that can integrate with companies."

"Technical support is good."

"I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's likely an adapter for that."

"I recommend IBM App Connect Enterprise to everyone."

"It's a powerful application for collaboration. It has many features for customization and integration."

"There is a friendly interface for configuration, and integration is made easy."

"One of the most beneficial features is the ability to handle multiple communication technologies, like integrating Kafka flows, which is helpful as other teams heavily use it. Regarding error handling, I initially wrote most of the handling myself. While built-in features for error handling are built-in, it largely depends on the developer. We use a custom solution that catches all exceptions, logs them in a database, and replays them as needed. It has been effective for us for over twenty years."

"It can handle API conversions with mapping and transformation rules, simplifying the development process."

More IBM App Connect pros

"You can model the data there, connect the data models with the business processes and create data lineage processes."

"Cloud Pak's most valuable features are IBM MQ, IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect, and ISPF."

"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."

"The most valuable features are data virtualization and reporting."

"Cloud Pak is a very, very, very good system."

"Its data preparation capabilities are highly valuable."

"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."

"It is a scalable solution, and we have had no issues with its scalability in our company. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data pros

Cons

"Finding developers for the product is difficult since it is a niche solution. I know the OpenShift environment is running well for the microservice environment. We had some issues with the other environment we tried to implement. It can be easily implemented internally, but we have some problems in practice."

"IBM App Connect should improve security features."

"More connectors could be available for the product as some of the third-party software doesn't have default connectors."

"The addition of string functionality would be a benefit, particularly in the ESQL space that IBM already uses internally."

"The setup time for App Connect could be improved."

"It is not easy to deploy. It requires someone with a high level of knowledge in the solution to deploy it, not just anyone can do it."

"Plugins for the repositories are difficult to find."

"The product should improve its support."

More IBM App Connect cons

"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."

"The solution could have more connectors."

"The technical support could be a little better."

"The tool depends on the control plane, an OpenShift container platform utilized as an orchestration layer...So, we have communicated this issue to IBM and asked if it is feasible to adapt the solution to work on a Kubernetes platform that we support."

"The solution's user experience is an area that has room for improvement."

"The product must improve its performance."

"There is a solution that is part of IBM Cloud Pak for Data called Watson OpenScale. It is used to monitor the deployed models for the quality and fairness of the results. This is one area that needs a lot of improvement."

"The product is trying to be more maturity in terms of connectors. That, I believe, is an area where Cloud Pak can improve."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends upon the consumer."

"The solution's pricing isn't cheap, but you can get good discounts based on your competitive deal."

"The price could be better."

"Initially, App Connect was quite expensive because the cost was based on the number of processors we used. However, it's now based on containers, which means we can be more specific about our consumption and get a better price."

"It is very expensive if we want to scale."

"IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products."

"App Connect is not cheap."

"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is competitive with that of other vendors."

"I think that this product is too expensive for smaller companies."

"Cloud Pak's cost is a little high."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

49%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM App Connect?

I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's like...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM App Connect?

IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?

I have been using IBM App Connect for application integration.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

DataStage allows me to connect to different data sources.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

See all answers

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Compared 10% of the time

SAP Process Orchestration vs IBM App Connect

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 41% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 16% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM App Connect

April 2025

Download IBM App Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

April 2025

Download IBM Cloud Pak for Data product report

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron

Cloud Pak for Data

Overview

Rapidly connect public clouds, private clouds and on-premises application

App Connect Professional is IBM’s cloud integration offering which delivers an integration solution
• With ease-of-use, flexibility and increased responsiveness to the evolving business needs, while removing the daunting complexities of integration.
• Provides the powerful combination of a ‘simple integration experience’ for business users looking to automate how their applications talk to each other; coupled with a ‘configuration based integration’ approach for IT.
• App Connect Professional is for the teams and integration developers who need to solve more complex problems and need powerful tooling for integration scenarios

IBM

IBM Cloud Pak® for Data is a fully-integrated data and AI platform that modernizes how businesses collect, organize and analyze data to infuse AI throughout their organizations. Cloud-native by design, the platform unifies market-leading services spanning the entire analytics lifecycle. From data management, DataOps, governance, business analytics and automated AI, IBM Cloud Pak for Data helps eliminate the need for costly, and often competing, point solutions while providing the information architecture you need to implement AI successfully.

Building on the streamlined hybrid-cloud foundation of Red Hat® OpenShift®, IBM Cloud Pak for Data takes advantage of the underlying resource and infrastructure optimization and management. The solution fully supports multicloud environments such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud™ and private cloud deployments. Find out how IBM Cloud Pak for Data can lower your total cost of ownership and accelerate innovation.

IBM

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.

Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival

Buyer's Guide

IBM App Connect vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Data

May 2023

Free Report: IBM App Connect vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Data and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.

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