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IBM App Connect vs Informatica PowerExchange comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
IBM App Connect enhances ROI and operational efficiency with integration, requiring skilled personnel for optimal long-term benefits.
Sentiment score
7.7
Informatica PowerExchange improves decision-making and efficiency, offering quick ROI and significant cost savings with real-time data connectivity.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
IBM App Connect's customer support is mostly praised, with effective escalation, though first-tier and onsite assistance require improvement.
Sentiment score
7.1
Informatica PowerExchange support is generally good and reliable, but users cite concerns regarding response times and availability.
The technical support from IBM is good.
Their support aligns with what I have experienced with Informatica data quality teams, and it is quite effective.
The support was good enough, and they were able to resolve all the issues I raised in the past.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM App Connect is praised for scalability and flexibility, despite some challenges with Hypervisor Edition and XML payload sizes.
Sentiment score
7.0
Informatica PowerExchange is scalable and versatile, praised for cloud support but has limitations like multi-instance high availability.
I would rate the scalability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM App Connect is praised for stability, with rare issues quickly resolved, maintaining high user satisfaction and performance.
Sentiment score
7.7
Informatica PowerExchange is stable but version 10.5 has issues; improvements in reliability and troubleshooting are recommended.
Technical errors sometimes occur, such as network breakages at the source level, which breaks connectivity.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM App Connect needs better logging, support, connectors, UI, command line integration, and simpler installation to address user concerns.
Informatica PowerExchange needs enhanced integration, user interface, real-time processing, data support, affordability, installation ease, support, and scalability.
I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use.
One area that could be improved is performance, as PowerExchange sometimes has less performance compared to native connectors when dealing with a huge volume of data.
 

Setup Cost

IBM App Connect pricing is high, dependent on volume and status, yet offers flexibility and quality justifying its cost.
Informatica PowerExchange pricing includes annual fees and licensing costs, with cost-effectiveness varying by user needs and requirements.
The pricing and cost depend heavily on SAP's licensing structure, especially if using SAP integration services.
 

Valuable Features

IBM App Connect offers user-friendly integration with minimal coding, scalability, and security, supporting complex environments and efficient automation.
Informatica PowerExchange offers robust data transformation, real-time capabilities, and integration with diverse data sources, ensuring performance and scalability.
The features I find most valuable are message routing, message transformation, and protocol translation.
PowerExchange is one of the best software solutions to build integrations with non-Oracle or standard database services, especially for SAP and Hana products.
The primary advantage of Informatica PowerExchange is being able to extract data from source systems that Informatica does not natively support.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM App Connect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (11th)
Informatica PowerExchange
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (18th)
 

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.
Mohammad Faizan Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful in handling areas like complex data sources and data processing but needs improved support services
The major challenge with the tool stems from the fact that if you are implementing it in the cloud, then it has to be within the framework. Another challenge is the large volume of data. Informatica PowerExchange is a product through which we enable connectivity, so it is not an application product or a stand-alone tool, but Informatica's core systems or IICS uses it to connect to multiple systems. The major challenge associated with the tool is on the infrastructure side. The tool's features could be something faster with more connectors. A number of connectors can help connect to a wide variety of applications. The tool should focus on reducing the resilient time, like, if any network disconnectivity happens, then auto-reconnection and the retry method should be more robust so that manual intervention is not required. We communicate with the tool's support team as we need to raise our issues with them. I have already worked with Informatica and have a total experience of around eight to nine years; the one problem with the tool is its support team since they take a lot of time to address a particular issue. If one time you schedule a call and explain the situation to them about the issue, the support team will raise tickets and take notes. They will ask you to share the logs or screenshots of the errors, and you will get no resolution. The support team will randomly give you some documents and expect you to go through them, and if you get back to them with questions, a new person will be allocated, and you will have to start explaining everything again. I would not say it is a pleasant experience.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
10%
Government
7%
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Informatica PowerExchange?
The pricing and cost depend heavily on SAP's licensing structure, especially if using SAP integration services. Informatica is seen as broader in integrations.
What needs improvement with Informatica PowerExchange?
I have minimal exposure to PowerExchange at this point. I will start working with it midyear, so I do not have much experience to suggest improvements.
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
PowerExchange, Connectors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
ACH Food, BNSF Railway Company, Illinois State University
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. Informatica PowerExchange and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.