IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs StreamSets comparison

IBM Cloud Pak for Data and StreamSets are both solutions in the Data Integration category. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.2, while StreamSets is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.4. IBM Cloud Pak for Data holds a 1.8% mindshare in DI, compared to StreamSets’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM Cloud Pak for Data users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StreamSets users who would recommend it.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Read 13 IBM Cloud Pak for Data reviews

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1,932 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

StreamSets

Read 21 StreamSets reviews

2,378 Views
1,645 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

StreamSets

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

StreamSets and IBM Cloud Pak for Data are prominent competitors in the data integration and management category. StreamSets has an edge in user-friendliness and flexibility, whereas IBM Cloud Pak excels in data governance and AI integration.

Features: StreamSets offers a user-friendly interface, supporting both batch and streaming processes, with tools like Data Collector and Control Hub that simplify data integration and are accessible to users without deep technical skills. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is distinguished by its data governance capabilities, integration with AI using tools like Watson Studio, and comprehensive data preparation features that are vital for regulatory compliance.

Room for Improvement: StreamSets could enhance integration beyond Java, improve logging, and bolster security features, along with user interface enhancements and SAP HANA connectivity. IBM Cloud Pak for Data would benefit from reduced infrastructure demands, smoother feature transitions, better performance, and improved cloud service integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StreamSets allows flexible deployment across various environments, though users prefer community support over costly direct services. IBM Cloud Pak for Data also offers flexible deployment but relies heavily on documentation and community support, with users often facing prolonged support response times.

Pricing and ROI: StreamSets provides an open-source option but can be costly for advanced features in small businesses, yet users report significant ROI due to reduced workload. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is pricey, especially for smaller firms, but justifies the cost with robust features benefiting larger enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. StreamSets Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. StreamSets

April 2025

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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 Cloud Pak for Data

Ranking in Data Integration

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (3rd)

StreamSets

Ranking in Data Integration

15th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StreamSets is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

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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Karthik Rajamani

Principal Engineer at Tata Consultancy Services

Integrates with different enterprise systems and enables us to easily build data pipelines without knowing how to code

There are a few things that can be better. We create pipelines or jobs in StreamSets Control Hub. It is a great feature, but if there is a way to have a folder structure or organize the pipelines and jobs in Control Hub, it would be great. I submitted a ticket for this some time back. There are certain features that are only available at certain stages. For example, HTTP Client has some great features when it is used as a processor, but those features are not available in HTTP Client as a destination. There could be some improvements on the group side. Currently, if I want to know which users are a part of certain groups, it is not straightforward to see. You have to go to each and every user and check the groups he or she is a part of. They could improve it in that direction. Currently, we have to put in a manual effort. In case something goes wrong, we have to go to each and every user account to check whether he or she is a part of a certain group or not.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cloud Pak for Data are the Watson Studio, where we can initiate more groups and write code. Additionally, Watson Machine Learning is available with many other services, such as APIs which you can plug the machine learning models."

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

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

"One of Cloud Pak's best features is the Watson Knowledge Catalog, which helps you implement data governance."

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

"Its data preparation capabilities are highly valuable."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data pros

"The best feature that I really like is the integration."

"What I love the most is that StreamSets is very light. It's a containerized application. It's easy to use with Docker. If you are a large organization, it's very easy to use Kubernetes."

"I really appreciate the numerous ready connectors available on both the source and target sides, the support for various media file formats, and the ease of configuring and managing pipelines centrally."

"It is really easy to set up and the interface is easy to use."

"The entire user interface is very simple and the simplicity of creating pipelines is something that I like very much about it. The design experience is very smooth."

"The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customize it to do what you need. Many other tools have started to use features similar to those introduced by StreamSets, like automated workflows that are easy to set up."

"StreamSets’ data drift resilience has reduced the time it takes us to fix data drift breakages. For example, in our previous Hadoop scenario, when we were creating the Sqoop-based processes to move data from source to destinations, we were getting the job done. That took approximately an hour to an hour and a half when we did it with Hadoop. However, with the StreamSets, since it works on a data collector-based mechanism, it completes the same process in 15 minutes of time. Therefore, it has saved us around 45 minutes per data pipeline or table that we migrate. Thus, it reduced the data transfer, including the drift part, by 45 minutes."

"The scheduling within the data engineering pipeline is very much appreciated, and it has a wide range of connectors for connecting to any data sources like SQL Server, AWS, Azure, etc. We have used it with Kafka, Hadoop, and Azure Data Factory Datasets. Connecting to these systems with StreamSets is very easy."

More StreamSets pros

Cons

"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 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."

"The interface could improve because sometimes it becomes slow. Sometimes there is a delay between clicks when using the software, which can make the development process slow. It can take a few seconds to complete one action, and then a few more seconds to do the next one."

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

"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."

"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."

"The product must improve its performance."

"Cloud Pak would be improved with integration with cloud service providers like Cloudera."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data cons

"I would like to see it integrate with other kinds of platforms, other than Java. We're going to have a lot of applications using .NET and other languages or frameworks. StreamSets is very helpful for the old Java platform but it's hard to integrate with the other platforms and frameworks."

"In terms of the product, I don't think there is any room for improvement because it is very good. One small area of improvement that is very much needed is on the knowledge base side. Sometimes, it is not very clear how to set up a certain process or a certain node for a person who's using the platform for the first time."

"The software is very good overall. Areas for improvement are the error logging and the version history. I would like to see better, more detailed error logging information."

"Currently, we can only use the query to read data from SAP HANA. What we would like to see, as soon as possible, is the ability to read from multiple tables from SAP HANA. That would be a really good thing that we could use immediately. For example, if you have 100 tables in SQL Server or Oracle, then you could just point it to the schema or the 100 tables and ingestion information. However, you can't do that in SAP HANA since StreamSets currently is lacking in this. They do not have a multi-table feature for SAP HANA. Therefore, a multi-table origin for SAP HANA would be helpful."

"We create pipelines or jobs in StreamSets Control Hub. It is a great feature, but if there is a way to have a folder structure or organize the pipelines and jobs in Control Hub, it would be great. I submitted a ticket for this some time back."

"The monitoring visualization is not that user-friendly. It should include other features to visualize things, like how many records were streamed from a source to a destination on a particular date."

"They need to improve their customer care services. Sometimes it has taken more than 48 hours to resolve an issue. That should be reduced. They are aware of small or generic issues, but not the more technical or deep issues. For those, they require some time, generally 48 to 72 hours to respond. That should be improved."

"StreamSets should provide a mechanism to be able to perform data quality assessment when the data is being moved from one source to the target."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"It's quite expensive."

"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."

"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."

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

"The solution is expensive."

"It has a CPU core-based licensing, which works for us and is quite good."

"There are different versions of the product. One is the corporate license version, and the other one is the open-source or free version. I have been using the corporate license version, but they have recently launched a new open-source version so that anybody can create an account and use it. The licensing cost varies from customer to customer. I don't have a lot of input on that. It is taken care of by PMO, and they seem fine with its pricing model. It is being used enterprise-wide. They seem to have got a good deal for StreamSets."

"I believe the pricing is not equitable."

"The overall cost is very flexible so it is not a burden for our organization... However, the cost should be improved. For small and mid-size organizations it might be a challenge."

"StreamSets is an expensive solution."

"We use the free version. It's great for a public, free release. Our stance is that the paid support model is too expensive to get into. They should honestly reevaluate that."

"The licensing is expensive, and there are other costs involved too. I know from using the software that you have to buy new features whenever there are new updates, which I don't really like. But initially, it was very good."

"It's not so favorable for small companies."

More StreamSets pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

What do you like most about StreamSets?

The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customiz...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StreamSets?

We often faced problems, especially with SAP ERP. We struggled because many columns weren't integers or primary keys, which StreamSets couldn't handle. We had to restructure our data tables, which ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StreamSets?

StreamSets is used for data transformation rather than ETL processes. It focuses on transforming data directly from sources without handling the extraction part of the process. The transformed data...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 42% of the time

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

Compared 18% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 12% of the time

Denodo vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 11% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data Competitors

Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets

Compared 14% of the time

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs StreamSets

Compared 12% of the time

webMethods.io vs StreamSets

Compared 9% of the time

Fivetran vs StreamSets

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs StreamSets

Compared 7% of the time

More StreamSets Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

April 2025

Download IBM Cloud Pak for Data product report

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets

March 2025

Download StreamSets product report

Also Known As

Cloud Pak for Data

No data available

Overview

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

StreamSets is a data integration platform that enables organizations to efficiently move and process data across various systems. It offers a user-friendly interface for designing, deploying, and managing data pipelines, allowing users to easily connect to various data sources and destinations. StreamSets also provides real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities, ensuring that data is flowing smoothly and any issues are quickly addressed.

IBM

Sample Customers

Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival

Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. StreamSets

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. StreamSets

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. StreamSets and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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