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IBM App Connect 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

IBM App Connect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (13th)
IBM InfoSphere Information ...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (28th), Metadata Management (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Emirhan Guven - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Transforms data efficiently and navigates licensing challenges with ease
The transition between version 12 and version 13 presents some challenges. While version 12 had approximately 10 features, version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility. The learning curve for developers moving from version 12 to 13 could be smoother. When using new components, better context explanations would be beneficial. In version 13, accessing new features requires connecting through a web browser, which can be challenging to understand. The explanation of new features could be more user-friendly.
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

"The solution is very fast-paced when it comes to making things right. We can quickly download what we need if we need any app migrations for our software business. We can download it plenty of times when we need to use it. It gives us very high speed for delivering any development."
"I would say that the most valuable feature is the array of connectors and integration tools."
"One of the most beneficial features is the ability to handle multiple communication technologies, like integrating Kafka flows, which is helpful as other teams heavily use it. Regarding error handling, I initially wrote most of the handling myself. While built-in features for error handling are built-in, it largely depends on the developer. We use a custom solution that catches all exceptions, logs them in a database, and replays them as needed. It has been effective for us for over twenty years."
"The most valuable feature is the security."
"It has an efficient design flow."
"The solution is fast and supports Open UI 3.0 certification."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendliness of the application."
"It has different type of interfaces that can integrate with companies."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The user interface of IBM App Connect can be a little bit more user-friendly, I would say because the first-time developer is onboarded while using IBM App Connect, he or she may get a little intimidated or daunted looking at all the options available or the pipelines, et cetera."
"When we do a version upgrade of the system, the platform is kind of complicated."
"Finding developers for the product is difficult since it is a niche solution. I know the OpenShift environment is running well for the microservice environment. We had some issues with the other environment we tried to implement. It can be easily implemented internally, but we have some problems in practice."
"The setup time for App Connect could be improved."
"IBM needs to enhance and have a stronger offering for the event streaming part because this is the future needed for the containerization and the new integration requirement."
"The product should improve its support."
"It is not easy to deploy. It requires someone with a high level of knowledge in the solution to deploy it, not just anyone can do it."
"IBM App Connect is scalable. From the administration side, they need to improve the RBAC model, as well as the clustering of this product. It will be good if we can start up the cluster, via IBM Connect Console. Some other products like MuleSoft, are providing this type of administration. MuleSoft is easy to use and user friendly."
"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."
"There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
"Unlike other tools, IBM tools do not provide much help from the internet, so additional support should be available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products."
"The solution's pricing isn't cheap, but you can get good discounts based on your competitive deal."
"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."
"It is very expensive if we want to scale."
"The cost depends upon the consumer."
"Initially, App Connect was quite expensive because the cost was based on the number of processors we used. However, it's now based on containers, which means we can be more specific about our consumption and get a better price."
"App Connect is not cheap."
"The price could be better."
"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
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
7%
Government
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM App Connect?
I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's like...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM App Connect?
Configuration time varies by implementation. For insurance companies with simple JDBC connections, the process is straightforward. However, companies requiring multiple configurations for ODBC, JDB...
What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?
I am a developer specializing in IBM App Connect. We have a customer interested in comparing ESB tools, such as webMethods, which was previously owned by Software AG company before IBM acquired the...
What needs improvement with IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
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 Ser...
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?
Currently, IBM InfoSphere Information Server is deployed on-premises in my organization. Mostly it is on-premises only, but slowly things are changing towards pro-cloud. It will not be a public clo...
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
InfoSphere Information Server, IBM Information Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
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 IBM App Connect vs. IBM InfoSphere Information Server and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.