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Elastic Search 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

Elastic Search
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
IBM InfoSphere Information ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (34th), Metadata Management (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Louis McCoy - PeerSpot reviewer
Searches through billions of documents have become impressively fast and consistent
The seamless scalability is something I see as among the best features Elastic Search offers. The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis. I find configuring relevant searches within Elastic Search platform very straightforward. Elastic Search is easily scalable. The customer support for Elastic Search is quite good. I advise others looking into using Elastic Search to think about the future of your platform and where you intend it to be in five years, and based on that, which version of Elastic Search best suits the needs of your platform. Additionally, jump into the AI products first as you're in the planning phase so that as you're filling out your data, the AI products and machine learning products can enrich the data real-time early on in the process, which will save you a lot of time later. The overall performance of the platform, scalability of the platform and other additional features, especially when it comes to AI, really earn the nine.
UmeshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Prompt support, reliable, but lacking scalability
IBM InfoSphere Information Server has multiple tools in that product suite. However, we mainly use it as an integration tool I have been using IBM InfoSphere Information Server for approximately five years. IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable. IBM InfoSphere Information Server should be…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You have dashboards, it is visual, there are maps, you can create canvases. It's more visual than anything that I've ever used."
"Implementing the main requirements regarding my support portal​."
"Helps us to store the data in key value pairs and, based on that, we can produce visualisations in Kibana."
"The most valuable features of Elastic Enterprise Search are it's cloud-ready and we do a lot of infrastructure as code. By using ELK, we're able to deploy the solution as part of our ISC deployment."
"The most valuable feature for us is the analytics that we can configure and view using Kibana."
"Data indexing of historical data is the most beneficial feature of the product."
"There's lots of processing power. You can actually just add machines to get more performance if you need to. It's pretty flexible and very easy to add another log. It's not like 'oh, no, it's going to be so much extra data'. That's not a problem for the machine. It can handle it."
"We had many reasons to implement Elasticsearch for search term solutions. Elasticsearch products provide enterprise landscape support for different areas of the company."
"The integration with different technologies is the most valuable feature."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This solution is extremely flexible and scalable."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable."
 

Cons

"The different applications need to be individually deployed."
"The metadata gets stored along with indexes and isn't queryable."
"Elasticsearch could be improved in terms of scalability."
"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. We faced a few issues."
"The GUI is the part of the program which has the most room for improvement."
"I don't see improvements at the moment. The current setup is working well for me, and I'm satisfied with it. Integrating with different platforms is also fine, and I'm not recommending any changes or enhancements right now."
"Performance improvement could come from skipping background refresh on search idle shards (which is already being addressed in the upcoming seventh version)."
"I have not been using the solution for many years to know exactly the improvements needed. However, they could simplify how the YML files have to be structured properly."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"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."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
"There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can move from $10,000 US Dollars per year to any price based on how powerful you need the searches to be and the capacity in terms of storage and process."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"Elastic Search is open-source, but you need to pay for support, which is expensive."
"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"We are using the open-sourced version."
"The pricing structure depends on the scalability steps."
"The pricing model is questionable and needs to be addressed because when you would like to have the security they charge per machine."
"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
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Government
16%
Insurance Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
We could benefit from refining the machine learning models that we currently use in Elastic Search, along with the possibility to integrate agents, intelligent artificial intelligence, form of agen...
What do you like most about IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required. In our company, we are presently in the process of doing a PoC phase since we have the solution cu...
What is your primary use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
I use IBM InfoSphere Information Server in retail banking for transformation purposes.
 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
InfoSphere Information Server, IBM Information Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
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 Elastic Search vs. IBM InfoSphere Information Server and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.