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IBM App Connect vs Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM App Connect
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Informatica Intelligent Dat...
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
181
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (3rd), Data Quality (1st), Business Process Management (BPM) (6th), Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), API Management (7th), Data Governance (2nd), Test Data Management (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (2nd), Data Masking (2nd), Metadata Management (1st), Test Data Management Services (4th), Product Information Management (PIM) (1st), Data Observability (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Raj Sethupathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers profiling and address standardization but can be complicated
Informatica Data Quality has its data warehouse, primarily using Oracle and some SQL databases. You need a database to host the data. The cleansed version of the data is stored in the data warehouse. It integrates with PowerCenter and other Informatica tools. The integration details can be complex, but a regional setup is involved in this process. Profiling smaller datasets, such as 10,000-50,000 records, worked fine. However, unexpected issues could arise with larger datasets, such as thousands of records or more, especially with tables containing many columns. Handling tables with fifty or more columns can be challenging, even in Excel. A mismatch in data types could cause the entire system to crash. Continual enhancements are being made to address these issues, which can be unique to specific industries like finance and healthcare.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a powerful application for collaboration. It has many features for customization and integration."
"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."
"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."
"It can handle API conversions with mapping and transformation rules, simplifying the development process."
"The solution is fast and supports Open UI 3.0 certification."
"Provides good security features."
"The solution is very fast-paced when it comes to making things right. We can quickly download what we need if we need any app migrations for our software business. We can download it plenty of times when we need to use it. It gives us very high speed for delivering any development."
"We use IBM App Connect for the integration between the applications."
"I like the number of options that are presented with Informatica, fuzzy matching, and your screen."
"The solution's technical support is pretty good, especially since the turnaround time is good."
"The way that the solution scans is very useful."
"I am impressed by the solution's interface."
"New tools are coming out that will enable you to achieve 90 percent of use cases with the out-of-the-box configuration, but I would like to keep Informatica tight here. Otherwise, you need a Java user edit course and other things to do multiple things that you cannot configure out of the box. They have to go through those use cases to do something if those can also be configured rather than coded."
"It's good for tool management, maintaining the golden record of customer status."
"The Mapping Designer allows for declarative ETL development (visual scripting) that leverages a wide array of different transformations."
"Seeing the data in the mapping itself is really nice."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to get some quality connectors."
"The interface could be better."
"The installation of containers could be simplified, as it currently requires a senior-level installer."
"IBM needs to enhance and have a stronger offering for the event streaming part because this is the future needed for the containerization and the new integration requirement."
"IBM App Connect should improve security features."
"I've been using IBM App Connect for about twenty-five years, and while I like it, there are some areas for improvement. The trace policy is ridiculous, and the biggest issue is the cost—it's expensive. People would use it much more if the price point weren't so high."
"Plugins for the repositories are difficult to find."
"Updates are constantly delayed."
"I would like to see better visuals for business users, such as a dashboard where they can precisely track where problems are."
"Error reporting and debugging need improvement."
"One area where Informatica Cloud Data Integration could improve is in providing more accelerators for certain functionalities."
"Informatica MDM's UI is not intuitive enough."
"From multiple masters that are there in Informatica MDM, we can improve the financials."
"The advertising makes promises about data analytics that it does not keep."
"Informatica MDM could be improved by adding drag and drop options, business data insights, and visualization reporting."
"Informatica MDM can improve the data catalog and data marketplace."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."
"The solution's pricing isn't cheap, but you can get good discounts based on your competitive deal."
"App Connect is not cheap."
"The cost depends upon the consumer."
"IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products."
"It is very expensive if we want to scale."
"Pricing is determined by the number of licensed users as well as the number of Core CPUs."
"Licensing is difficult to understand, but the team is always available to explain anything. They are very helpful."
"I'm not sure about the most recent pricing trends, but I don't believe it's significantly different from PowerCenter. I believe it is nearly the same."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is the lowest price and ten is the highest price."
"The solution is very expensive."
"My understanding is that Informatica is quite expensive compare to other tools that are available in the market."
"The product is not very pocket-friendly for small and medium-sized businesses, and it is understandable because of the kind of features the tool gives."
"It's offers value for money. They're more competitive with respect to pricing and offerings."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM App Connect?
IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products.
What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?
Our company has a big project for delivery and e-commerce sites. We use IBM App Connect to deliver information to our end users after they buy our products. We get information from many places, suc...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
What are the biggest benefits of using Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
When it comes to cloud data integration, this solution can provide you with multiple benefits, including: Overhead reduction by integrating data on any cloud in various ways Effective integration ...
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
ActiveVOS, Active Endpoints, BPM, Address Verification, Persistent Data Masking, Cloud Test Data Management, PIM, , Enterprise Data Catalog, Data Integration Hub, Cloud Data Integration, Data Quality, Cloud API and App Integration
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
The Travel Company, Carbonite
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.