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IBM App Connect vs Informatica PowerExchange 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
IBM App Connect enhances efficiency and ROI with centralized integrations, requiring expertise for long-term success across various sectors.
Sentiment score
7.9
Informatica PowerExchange enables smarter decisions, streamlines data pipelines, and saves costs, showing ROI within weeks for digital transformation.
It is considered cost-efficient because it leads to the re-utilization of channels and platforms, which saves time and money.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
IBM App Connect support is responsive and competent, but inconsistencies and delays exist, especially in non-urgent and local support.
Sentiment score
7.1
Informatica PowerExchange support is seen as knowledgeable but receives mixed reviews due to varying response times and availability.
When opening a ticket with the global team, problems are resolved promptly and effectively.
The technical support from IBM is good.
Their support aligns with what I have experienced with Informatica data quality teams, and it is quite effective.
Informatica's technical support team is very supportive and provides help whenever required.
The support was good enough, and they were able to resolve all the issues I raised in the past.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM App Connect is praised for scalability in cloud and container environments, with suggestions for improved administration features.
Sentiment score
7.0
Informatica PowerExchange offers robust scalability for diverse sources and transformations, suitable for medium to large data environments.
IBM App Connect demonstrates good scalability.
I would rate the scalability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM App Connect is stable, with high reliability, though occasional issues arise from environment, configuration, or resource management.
Sentiment score
7.7
Informatica PowerExchange is praised for stability despite some issues with resource load, visibility, and log maintenance in newer versions.
IBM App Connect occasionally crashes for various reasons, requiring problem-solving intervention.
Technical errors sometimes occur, such as network breakages at the source level, which breaks connectivity.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM App Connect users seek improved logging, interface enhancements, better community support, and simpler, more cost-effective version transitions.
Informatica PowerExchange needs better integration, user-friendliness, real-time processing, cloud features, and affordability while addressing performance and support challenges.
I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use.
Version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility.
One area that could be improved is performance, as PowerExchange sometimes has less performance compared to native connectors when dealing with a huge volume of data.
The addition of data quality dashboards or measures would also help in profiling data to assess its health before sharing or moving it.
 

Setup Cost

IBM App Connect's annual pricing varies by transactions and partnership, with complexities and flexibility in setup and licensing.
Informatica PowerExchange pricing depends on capacity, with variable costs based on usage, but offers moderate cost-efficiency.
For insurance companies with simple JDBC connections, the process is straightforward.
Informatica PowerExchange is considered cost-efficient due to reduced number of APIs needed.
The pricing and cost depend heavily on SAP's licensing structure, especially if using SAP integration services.
 

Valuable Features

IBM App Connect excels with robust integration, user-friendly design, scalability, and flexibility for seamless, secure, and complex integrations.
Informatica PowerExchange is lauded for versatile data integration, real-time capabilities, scalability, and support for diverse data sources and formats.
File operations are simple to execute, and converting between XML to JSON formats is effortless with IBM App Connect.
The features I find most valuable are message routing, message transformation, and protocol translation.
It also reduces the number of APIs needed for new integrations by offering a unified exchange platform.
The primary advantage of Informatica PowerExchange is being able to extract data from source systems that Informatica does not natively support.
PowerExchange is one of the best software solutions to build integrations with non-Oracle or standard database services, especially for SAP and Hana products.
 

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 (7th)
Informatica PowerExchange
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Emirhan Guven - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mohammad Faizan Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful in handling areas like complex data sources and data processing but needs improved support services
The major challenge with the tool stems from the fact that if you are implementing it in the cloud, then it has to be within the framework. Another challenge is the large volume of data. Informatica PowerExchange is a product through which we enable connectivity, so it is not an application product or a stand-alone tool, but Informatica's core systems or IICS uses it to connect to multiple systems. The major challenge associated with the tool is on the infrastructure side. The tool's features could be something faster with more connectors. A number of connectors can help connect to a wide variety of applications. The tool should focus on reducing the resilient time, like, if any network disconnectivity happens, then auto-reconnection and the retry method should be more robust so that manual intervention is not required. We communicate with the tool's support team as we need to raise our issues with them. I have already worked with Informatica and have a total experience of around eight to nine years; the one problem with the tool is its support team since they take a lot of time to address a particular issue. If one time you schedule a call and explain the situation to them about the issue, the support team will raise tickets and take notes. They will ask you to share the logs or screenshots of the errors, and you will get no resolution. The support team will randomly give you some documents and expect you to go through them, and if you get back to them with questions, a new person will be allocated, and you will have to start explaining everything again. I would not say it is a pleasant experience.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Informatica PowerExchange?
Informatica PowerExchange is considered cost-efficient due to reduced number of APIs needed, enabling re-utilization of existing channels, cutting down on development and training costs.
What needs improvement with Informatica PowerExchange?
It would be helpful to have more metadata provided, which is useful for engaging more users in data exchange. The addition of data quality dashboards or measures would also help in profiling data t...
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
PowerExchange, Connectors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
ACH Food, BNSF Railway Company, Illinois State University
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. Informatica PowerExchange and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.