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BMC AMI DevX vs Confluent 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

BMC AMI DevX
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Debugging (9th), Database Development and Management (19th), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (6th), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (6th), AI Software Development (200th)
Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC AMI DevX and Confluent aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC AMI DevX is designed for Test Data Management and holds a mindshare of 11.1%, up 3.6% compared to last year.
Confluent, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 6.9% mindshare, down 8.6% since last year.
Test Data Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC AMI DevX11.1%
Perforce Delphix20.4%
Broadcom Test Data Manager13.3%
Other55.2%
Test Data Management
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.9%
Apache Flink10.9%
Databricks9.0%
Other73.2%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

PM
Developer at Selfemployed
Good for large amounts of data and has a variety of use cases but can be complex to use
It's a very complicated tool. Sometimes the customer wants better, faster transaction times. They want the solution to move as fast as possible. We're trying to scale and grow our application with more servers to get the level of speed desired. Everything from small processes to big batch processing needs to be faster.
PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo
Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the ability to flow through the source and see what happens to the data as the statements are executed. If there is a fault, it will track the event, and we can then look back to see why it may have caused the fault. You can also reverse engineer your test. You can set it so that you can go backward as well as forward in your test. This is something that I haven't done here at my company. Compuware Xpediter is one of the best debugging tools for mainframe software development. We have currently licensed only the COBOL language for Xpediter, but I know they have other languages, including Assembler, PL/I."
"Our intention is to use Topaz for the next generation of mainframe developers to maintain mainframe applications."
"My guess is this would have taken twice as long, or we would have had many more issues without using Xpediter."
"One of the features that the developers like is that they can retrieve what they need with the tool. They don't have to go through some process or request something be done by another team. They can get the programs they need, compile them, retrieve the JCL and alter the JCL if they need to, and put these programs wherever they need to go for their testing."
"The smart editor helps because it will code-complete for me. I can see code working a lot faster and I'm able to get things coded in less time."
"Compuware Xpediter is one of the best debugging tools for mainframe software development."
"The debugging is really the most important feature, enabling us to be able to step through."
"For bank applications, DB2 is the best on the market."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"The benefit is escaping email communication. Sometimes people ignore emails or put them into spam, but with Confluence, everyone sees the same text at the same time."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."
"To date, we have seen improvements in performance and scalability, so we recommend this solution."
"I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and tools."
"The features I find most useful in Confluent are the Multi-Region Cluster, MRC, and the Cluster Linking for replication."
 

Cons

"I'm waiting to see what 19.2 for Topaz looks like, but I have a problem with the JES Explorer right now. It limits you to a certain prefix for job names and there are some groups that have multiple prefixes that they'd like to see all at once in their job names, because of how they work in a group. And they can't see that in the JES Explorer."
"We have noticed that Topaz supported Eclipse environments are rather old. It would be nice if Topaz were compatible with the more current Eclipse releases."
"The ability to incorporate or convert REXX into macros that are usable under the Topaz software is not there, and the REXX macros that I have developed over 40 years of work are useless, so I have a toolbox I can't use or deploy using the Topaz technology, while I can use it under MVS."
"It's a very complicated tool."
"There are some features that are not well documented, so documentation could use a little help, on things like setting up deployment and which structures in the database correspond to which tables."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"Their technical support could be better. There were times where, when we reported bugs, they would fix one bug but add another one. That's probably because of their support model. A lot of organizations are developing software using Agile rather than the Waterfall method, so things are happening all over the place. You get things quicker, but sometimes one fix will break another one or add other bugs."
"Better discussions to identify inventory prior to the start of any migration would be helpful for potential clients that have applications with code that is not modified often."
"It could have more themes. The themes in the version I'm using are very limited; they offer two to three themes."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"Areas for improvement include implementing multi-storage support to differentiate between database stores based on data age and optimizing storage costs."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."
"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been competitive."
"In terms of pricing, there isn't an extra charge for the parts of it we use. It comes with the licenses we purchased for other products, so no complaints there. The licensing is built in with the other products that you purchase from Compuware."
"The only thing I would mention related to the licensing and/or the pricing, is that they have some visualization features in there that are licensed by concurrent users. We're starting to trip up on that. We're looking to probably increase the number of concurrent licenses that we have. But those types of licensing strategies, where they license by concurrent users or the number of seats is confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times."
"The price point is great."
"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"It comes with a high cost."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on zOS?
BMC Data Management improved our data recovery process by simplifying it.
What needs improvement with BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on zOS?
One area for improvement with this product could be in providing clearer guidance and tools for disaster recovery planning and execution. As someone involved in managing infrastructure, understandi...
What advice do you have for others considering BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on zOS?
From my perspective as an infrastructure guy, the most valuable aspect of BMC's data management solutions was their ability to optimize CPU cycles, improving IMS performance without directly impact...
What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Helvetia, The IMT Group, Hapag-Lloyd, Royal Bank of Canada, Chunghwa Telecom
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.