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IBM App Connect vs Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics 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
7.3
IBM App Connect enhances ROI by reducing resource needs and managing complex operations, requiring skilled practitioners for optimal results.
Sentiment score
7.2
Pentaho Data Integration offers cost-effective, efficient ETL solutions with significant time savings, enhancing IT processes despite perceived obsolescence.
IBM App Connect definitely saves significant time, approximately 50 to 60%.
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment; my team was able to stay extremely small even though we had a lot of data integrations with many companies.
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I can testify to the return on investment with metrics regarding time saved; we have increased our efficiency by about 20 to 30 percent due to the swift migration processes facilitated by the tool.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
IBM App Connect's 24/7 support offers timely help, though complex issues need escalation and response times could improve.
Sentiment score
5.1
Pentaho's support is praised for knowledge and responsiveness, but response times vary, especially for the community edition.
When opening a ticket with the global team, problems are resolved promptly and effectively.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
The customer support is available 24/7.
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The technical support from IBM is good.
Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
24/7 assistance is available for the Enterprise Edition.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
take the time to understand our business requirements, offering appropriate recommendations.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Communication with the vendor is challenging
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM App Connect excels in cloud scalability, notably in Kubernetes, though costs and larger payloads can challenge Hypervisor Edition.
Sentiment score
7.2
Pentaho scales well for small to medium data, but may struggle with large datasets, fitting diverse organizational roles.
IBM App Connect demonstrates good scalability.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
I would rate the scalability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.
Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
IBM App Connect is very scalable and a flexible tool.
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
It can be scaled well until you reach a point where you need to perform a lot of operations, and the issue arises when it runs out of memory to handle some data.
Data engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Pentaho Data Integration handles larger datasets better.
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' scalability is commendable, as it allows us to scale up according to our needs.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM App Connect is praised for stability, with issues mostly in complex cases and quick responses to reported problems.
Sentiment score
7.1
Pentaho is generally stable and reliable, though occasional memory issues and bugs occur, especially in community editions.
Some companies require multiple configurations, including ODBC connections, JDBC connections, different BI databases, main databases, and replication servers.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Performance issues arise due to reliance on a flowchart-based mechanism instead of scripts, which can lead to longer execution times.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I find that version 3.1 is the most stable version I have ever used.
Founder-CEO at Ubuntu Analytica
It's pretty stable, however, it struggles when dealing with smaller amounts of data.
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
 

Room For Improvement

IBM App Connect needs improvements in logging, interface, integrations, setup, cost, security, debugging, observability, and reliability.
Pentaho needs improved logging, debugging, user interface, performance, environment management, cloud support, documentation, and user feedback integration.
Version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use.
Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Better debugging and observability would help us track any single transaction end-to-end across steps and connectors.
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
We should also explore more effective partitioning for parallel processing and fine-tuning database connections to reduce load times and improve ETL speed.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics can be improved by working with different environments, specifically the possibility to change the variables, meaning I write my variables only once and can change them for different environments such as production or development.
Founder-CEO at Ubuntu Analytica
I also lack the option to use programming languages beyond Python and SQL, and a provision to incorporate Scala code in the scripting component would be beneficial.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

IBM App Connect is costly but valued by enterprises for quality; licensing complexities require expertise and allow for discounts.
Pentaho Data Integration provides free and paid versions, with users valuing cost-effectiveness despite rising Enterprise Edition prices.
For insurance companies with simple JDBC connections, the process is straightforward.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
I use the community version of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics, and I do not need additional costs.
Project Manager at Laberit
The setup cost was minimal, and the pricing experience was pretty good.
Data engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

IBM App Connect offers easy integration with minimal coding, pre-built adapters, security, scalability, rapid deployment, and flexible integration.
Pentaho offers intuitive data integration with extensive customization, supporting rapid ETL development, big data, and minimal coding.
Overall, 50 to 60% of the time is saved when using IBM App Connect.
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The transformation capabilities in IBM App Connect are particularly beneficial.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
The features I find most valuable are message routing, message transformation, and protocol translation.
Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has positively impacted my organization because it meant we didn't have to write a lot of custom API back-end processing logic; it did the majority of that heavy lifting for us.
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It automates the data workflow, including extraction, cleansing, and loading into warehouses for BI reporting purposes, while also removing duplicates, validating data, and standardizing formats, enabling real-time decision-making.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has positively impacted my organization because it is easier to use, and my knowledge about this work facilitates the translation from the source to my final system.
Project Manager at Laberit
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM App Connect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (13th)
Pentaho Data Integration an...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (11th)
 

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.
Michelle Lawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications
I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise29
 

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...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.