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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
6.5
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (5th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (6th)
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

reviewer2817942 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Logging and vector search have transformed observability and empowered reliable ai agents
Elastic Search is not specifically being used for certain purposes. I deploy Elastic Search database on the cloud and use cloud services so that nobody can attack. However, I do not use Elastic Search to resolve attack issues. The basic main purpose of Elastic Search, as of now, I feel it can do more in the AI area. Sometime I saw that when I am developing RAG and have to generate the embeddings, which I call metadata, sometimes it tries to fail. That durability or issue handling should be improved, but apart from that, I did not find anything as of now. As per my use case, whatever I am using seems pretty good. Apart from that, some definitely improvement will be there. One improvement is that it should be faster. Whenever I am searching any logs, it takes much time. For example, if I open my log in Notepad or a similar tool, I can search the text within a second. With Elastic Search, it takes a little bit of time, ten to fifteen seconds. That can be improved. Sometimes, engineers take time to assign when I create a ticket.
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 helps us to analyse the logs based on the location, user, and other log parameters."
"Elastic Search is the perfect tool for scalability."
"It provides deep visibility into your cloud and distributed applications, from microservices to serverless architectures. It quickly identifies and resolves the root causes of issues, like gaining visibility into all the cloud-based and on-prem applications."
"Elastic Enterprise Search is a very good solution and they should keep doing good work."
"The ability to aggregate log and machine data into a searchable index reduces time to identify and isolate issues for an application. Saves time in triage and incident response by eliminating manual steps to access and parse logs on separate systems, within large infrastructure footprints."
"The stability of Elasticsearch was very high, and I would rate it a ten."
"The AI-based attribute tagging is a valuable feature."
"What I like the most about Elastic Search is that I can store my data and search throughout my document."
"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 is extremely flexible and scalable."
"Deploying the solution is straightforward for me."
"Data connections, data partitioning, flexibility, and performance are the most valuable features."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"The integration with different technologies is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"In Elastic Search, the improvements I would like to see require many resources."
"The most significant issue I find with Elastic Search is that it gets out of sync, and this has happened in both cases where I have implemented it."
"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."
"While integrating with tools like agents for ingesting data from sources like firewalls is valuable, I believe prioritizing improvements to the core product would be more beneficial."
"The solution's integration and configuration are not easy. Not many people know exactly what to do."
"The deployment was a struggle as I faced challenges with bash commands and understanding how to run things on my system."
"The solution must provide AI integrations."
"There is a lack of technical people to develop, implement and optimize equipment operation and web queries."
"Heavy use of scratch disk which sometimes leads to failure."
"We have decided to decrease the usage of metadata management because we did not see any significant advantages."
"There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required."
"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."
"Unlike other tools, IBM tools do not provide much help from the internet, so additional support should be available."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
"Customer Service: It's poor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."
"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"The cost varies based on factors like usage volume, network load, data storage size, and service utilization. If your usage isn't too extensive, the cost will be lower."
"It can be expensive."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
"We are using the Community Edition because Elasticsearch's licensing model is not flexible or suitable for us. They ask for an annual subscription. We also got the development consultancy from Elasticsearch for 60 days or something like that, but they were just trying to do the same trick. That's why we didn't purchase it. We are just using the Community Edition."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"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
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
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 Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search is easy to use in Azure cloud. Mostly, my full company uses Azure cloud, so it is easy to use. Cost-wise, my company found Elastic Search is good. Cost matters. Based on cost and use...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
The initial configuration could be easier; at first, the learning curve is a little high, and over time, it becomes easier. For me, the initial configuration might be improved.
What is your primary use case for ELK Elasticsearch?
We use Elastic Search for a research application based on paper study, and the primary usage is for indexing the data and then functioning in a similar way to an e-commerce search bar.
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

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
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