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IBM App Connect vs SAP Process Orchestration 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:
 

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)
SAP Process Orchestration
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (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.
Laxman  Molugu - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances operational efficiency with valuable prepackaged content and cost-effective pricing
For organizations that operate within an SAP ecosystem, SAP Process Orchestration is recommended due to its cost-effectiveness and the availability of valuable prepackaged content. It is important to consider the needs of your industry, as SAP Process Orchestration may not meet all requirements in consumer-oriented sectors. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is fast and supports Open UI 3.0 certification."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendliness of the application."
"Provides good security features."
"Very scalable, flexible, and user-friendly."
"I recommend IBM App Connect Enterprise to everyone."
"It's a powerful application for collaboration. It has many features for customization and integration."
"We use IBM App Connect for the integration between the applications."
"The solution provides very good and central logging systems. It offers high flexibility with vertical and horizontal extend capacity."
"It provides essential features such as continuous monitoring of all interfaces are crucial for our needs."
"The solution offers very good documentation and manuals to assist with understanding the solution."
"The initial setup is easy."
"With the latest version what I find to be the most valuable are the REST, SuccessFactors, and Ariba Network adapters."
"The main benefit is that the solution is low maintenance. Moreover, it's the license cost is very low because it's part of the package. The maintenance is standard maintenance. And the updates are regular. So there's a regular update and you can choose whether you want to do those updates or not."
"SAP Process Orchestration provides extensive integrations with external partners, supports B2B operations, and has prepackaged content that saves development time."
"t is a pretty stable solution. I have not seen any outages in the solution."
 

Cons

"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."
"The installation of containers could be simplified, as it currently requires a senior-level installer."
"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."
"The user interface of IBM App Connect can be a little bit more user-friendly, I would say because the first-time developer is onboarded while using IBM App Connect, he or she may get a little intimidated or daunted looking at all the options available or the pipelines, et cetera."
"IBM App Connect should improve security features."
"They reply in one or two hours at most, but they could be better."
"IBM App Connect is scalable. From the administration side, they need to improve the RBAC model, as well as the clustering of this product. It will be good if we can start up the cluster, via IBM Connect Console. Some other products like MuleSoft, are providing this type of administration. MuleSoft is easy to use and user friendly."
"The product should improve its support."
"Process Orchestration doesn't provide authentication for data sent to us, meaning we have to rely on client certificate-based or basic authentication."
"I think the main area that SAP PO should improve on is offering pre-delivered content like they do when you use SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI). SAP should not forget that they still have a lot of customers using Process Orchestration and they should focus more on providing pre-delivered content in SAP PO."
"The cloud capability features need improvement."
"The solution could improve by making it more user-friendly by limiting the code required. We have to add some code in some cases where we need complex logic or some other functions. If this was able to be done in a more simplified manner then it would save a lot of effort and time."
"It does not have all of the industry-standard solutions available in PO and it is not plug and play, so we have to do a lot of development."
"Data modeling is an area of concern in the product where improvements are required."
"The older version of the solution will no longer be supported."
"This is an on-premise platform and one area they can improve on is having the ability to work with SaaS solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very expensive if we want to scale."
"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."
"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."
"IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products."
"App Connect is not cheap."
"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."
"It's not an expensive solution."
"Normally, you will have to choose CPU-based licensing...I rate the tool price a five out of ten."
"The product is not a low-priced solution, but I can say that it is competitively priced in the market."
"Looking at market conditions, vendors nowadays are giving products at very low price levels. However, SAP Process Orchestration have not yet reduced their prices. The prices could be reduced a lot to stay competitive."
"We subscribe to annual licenses, and the competitive license cost is reasonable."
"The cost of SAP products is quite high but the quality is really good."
"The price of SAP Process Orchestration was reasonable."
"The solution is highly-priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

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 do you like most about SAP Process Orchestration?
It provides essential features such as continuous monitoring of all interfaces are crucial for our needs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Process Orchestration?
The main concern is the cost. If additional help is needed due to lack of skill, we have to pay for SAP support.
What needs improvement with SAP Process Orchestration?
There are two main areas for improvement: performance and cost. The cost is quite high, and if it were reduced, it might also improve the performance, potentially allowing us to access a more effic...
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
SAP NetWeaver Process Integration, NetWeaver Process Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
Lenovo, Dansk Supermarked A/S, Ego Pharmaceuticals Pty. Ltd, Kaeser Kompressoren
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. SAP Process Orchestration and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,772 professionals have used our research since 2012.