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AWS Glue vs IBM InfoSphere Information Server 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

AWS Glue
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (1st)
IBM InfoSphere Information ...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (34th), Metadata Management (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

SC
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
Efficient data integration reduces operational time and enhances metadata management
For the initial setup with AWS Glue, I find it easy to set up the data catalog and create Glue jobs using the visual editor or the visual code. Setting permission sets via IAM rules can be a bit tricky at the start, but we ensure Glue has access to AWS S3, Redshift, and other services. Once the role is configured, it runs smoothly. For advanced configurations, connecting to VPCs and setting up connections with JDBC sources takes more time compared to my cloud experience, but overall, for someone with cloud and ETL experience, the setup is manageable and well done.
MI
Senior Data Engineer at Mohammed Mansour Alrumiah
Faced challenges with customer support and documentation but have benefited from reliable data integration over the years
As for utilizing the platform's metadata management feature, I have not worked on that feature yet, but personally, I have done that. To evaluate the effectiveness of IBM InfoSphere Information Server's data integration capabilities, if IBM is providing all the solutions we are using, then it is definitely a helpful thing. Mostly, the other thing is that it is a big area including data governance, data lineage, data management, and metadata, but every customer is not putting that much effort and money on that. They mostly migrate the data, use it, and forget it, but slowly things are changing. I am working in Saudi Arabia, so here also data governance, data management, and those kinds of things are getting attention. Regarding how scalable IBM InfoSphere Information Server is, I need to learn how to tune performance and scalability on the cloud. I am familiar with localized hardware, but on the cloud, I still have to do the work around it. In the beginning, we estimate the load and based on that, we put the hardware, but if there is continuous increase, I believe IBM also faces problems. Scalability needs to be improved because once the demand comes, you should be able to improve it, but for that, documentation on how to add hardware or resources to the software needs to be proper. I do not have much hands-on experience with that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's fairly straightforward as a product; it's not very complicated."
"It's very good to manage."
"The facility to integrate with S3 and the possibility to use Jupyter Notebook inside the pipeline are the most valuable features."
"One aspect that I would like to highlight is the Glue Crawler, which we utilize when working with large datasets to ensure the schema updates seamlessly without requiring end-team knowledge."
"AWS Glue is very quick to start without cold starts, unlike AWS Lambda."
"One of the best features of the solution is its ability to easily integrate with other AWS services."
"The solution integrates well with other AWS products or services."
"The solution is serverless so it allows us to transform data while optimizing the cost and performance of Spark jobs."
"The initial IBM InfoSphere Information Server is straightforward and you can choose what type of installation you want, such as a customized installation, with clear-cut documentation that, if followed, works fine and the installation has not given us issues."
"Deploying the solution is straightforward for me."
"Data connections, data partitioning, flexibility, and performance are the most valuable features."
"Over the years of working with IBM InfoSphere Information Server, I see basically the strength of the tool, capability, and load balancing, which I see is really good."
"This solution has reduced the time it takes for ETL. We took an existing Teradata ETL application from three days to eight minutes."
"Reduces the loading and development time for Datawarehouse ETL."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable."
 

Cons

"The drawbacks associated with the product stem from the fact that, based on the data volume, it can become very costly."
"I would like to see stable libraries at the moment they are not there."
"The start-up time is really high right now. For instance, when you start up a new job, you have to wait for five or eight minutes before it starts. If the start-up time is reduced to one or two minutes, it will be great. It will be better to have a direct linkage to Redshift in AWS. If we can use data catalogs from Redshift, it will be so easy to create some data catalogs. Currently, we can only use data catalogs from S3."
"Improvements in the UI are needed, as it is challenging to understand some functionalities."
"Setting up pipelines is challenging, especially with version control and testing requirements."
"The mapping area and the use of the data catalog from Glue could be better."
"AWS Glue is more costly compared to other tools like Airflow."
"In terms of performance, if they can further optimize the execution time for serverless jobs, it would be a welcome improvement."
"Heavy use of scratch disk which sometimes leads to failure."
"Unlike other tools, IBM tools do not provide much help from the internet, so additional support should be available."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server should be more scalable. It should have the option to change the configuration to run on a single, non-multiple node, or multi-threading processing."
"Customer Service: It's poor."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required."
"We have decided to decrease the usage of metadata management because we did not see any significant advantages."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."
"AWS Glue is a paid service that doesn't come under the free trial of AWS."
"AWS Glue uses a pay-as-you-go approach which is helpful. The price of the overall solution is low and is a great advantage."
"Technical support is a paid service, and which subscription you have is dependent on that. You must pay one of them, and it ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per year."
"AWS Glue is a high-priced solution that bills the client $150,000 to $250,000 annually."
"This solution is affordable and there is an option to pay for the solution based on your usage."
"I rate the tool an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is expensive."
"I rate pricing an eight out of ten."
"The licensing cost of IBM InfoSphere Information Server depends on how many users there are."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?
AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...
What needs improvement with IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
We are using the on-premises version of IBM InfoSphere Information Server, but we feel that all new development is mainly for the cloud. We receive corrections of errors, but we do not see new func...
What is your primary use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
My usual use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server is ETL, where we take data from one source to another data warehouse solution.
What advice do you have for others considering IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
We are about to change our platform from IBM AIX to SUSE Linux, as our whole platform is changing, so everyone should change from IBM to SUSE Linux. It would be very difficult for us to have a diff...
 

Also Known As

No data available
InfoSphere Information Server, IBM Information Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Canadian National Railway Company, Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce, Swedish Armed Forces, BG RCI, Janata Sahakari Bank Ltd., University of Arizona, Biogrid Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Informatica, Palantir and others in Cloud Data Integration. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.