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IBM App Connect vs Qlik Compose 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
24
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (6th)
Qlik Compose
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (23rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexible adapters, good scalability but logging can be difficult at times
There is room for improvement in the logging messages. Sometimes, if you put someone new into App Connect, they can abandon it the same day. The logging is really painful. However, IBM has made efforts to integrate with Elasticsearch for logging, so that's an improvement. Overall, the logging can be difficult at times. One more important point is that if IBM improves its CI/CD capabilities, it will make a big difference. Right now, I have to create my own CI/CD setup from scratch for every client, which is inefficient. Back in 2013, I worked with Sonic ESB, and even then, it had CI/CD with Maven. With App Connect, you need to build everything yourself when using tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, or CircleCI. IBM really needs to provide official support for this.
Sahil Taneja - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy matching and reconciliation of data
The initial setup was easy for the data warehousing concept. But for a person who is new to ETL and warehousing concepts, it may take some time. If someone is familiar with these concepts, they could understand and learn the tool quickly. However, compared to other tools, the UI is complex. It would be helpful to have a better UI and documentation for new users. As of now, there is a challenge in learning the Compose tool for new users altogether. Qlik Compose was deployed on-premises. But the servers, like the SQL servers were maintained on the cloud—the managed instances.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"App Connect's best feature is that it can be deployed in a container."
"It has an efficient design flow."
"It's stable to use, connect with the cloud, and to deploy."
"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 likely an adapter for that."
"The solution is fast and supports Open UI 3.0 certification."
"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 user-friendliness of the application."
"The most valuable feature is the security."
"The technical support is very good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"It's a stable solution."
"There were many valuable features, such as extracting any data to put in the cloud. For example, Qlik was able to gather data from SAP and extract SAP data from the platforms."
"One of the most valuable features was the ability to integrate multiple source systems that mainly used structured IDBMS versions."
"As long as you pick the solution that best fits with your requirements, you won't find that performance is a problem. It's good."
"I have found it to be a very good, stable, and strong product."
"The most valuable is its excellence as a graphical data representation tool and the versatility it offers, especially with drill-down capabilities."
"It can scale."
 

Cons

"Updates are constantly delayed."
"One more important point is that if IBM improves its CI/CD capabilities, it will make a big difference. Right now, I have to create my own CI/CD setup from scratch for every client, which is inefficient."
"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 setup time for App Connect could be improved."
"IBM App Connect should improve security features."
"More connectors could be available for the product as some of the third-party software doesn't have default connectors."
"In the next release, I would like to get some quality connectors."
"The addition of string functionality would be a benefit, particularly in the ESQL space that IBM already uses internally."
"When processing data from certain tables with a large volume of data, we encounter significant delays. For instance, when dealing with around one million records, it typically takes three to four hours. To address this, I aim to implement performance improvements across all tables, ensuring swift processing similar to those that are currently complete within seconds. The performance issue primarily arises when we analyze the inserts and updates from the source, subsequently dropping the table. While new insertions are handled promptly, updates are processed slowly, leading to performance issues. Despite consulting our Qlik vendors, they were unable to pinpoint the exact cause of this occurrence. Consequently, I am seeking ways to optimize performance within Qlik Compose, specifically concerning updates."
"For more complex work, we are not using Qlik Compose because it cannot handle very high volumes at the moment. It needs the same batching capabilities that other ETL tools have. We can't batch the data into small chunks when transforming large amounts of data. It tries to do everything in one shot and that's where it fails."
"There could be more customization options."
"There should be proper documentation available for the implementation process."
"There is some scope for improvement around the documentation, and a better UI would definitely help."
"Qlik's ETL and data transformation could be better."
"I'd like to have access to more developer training materials."
"The solution has room for improvement in the ETL. They have an ETL, but when it comes to the monitoring portion, Qlik Compose doesn't provide a feature for monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends upon the consumer."
"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."
"The price could be better."
"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."
"It is very expensive if we want to scale."
"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."
"App Connect is not cheap."
"While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the solution a six."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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?
IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products.
What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?
I have been using IBM App Connect for application integration.
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
There are two products I know about * TimeXtender : Microsoft based, Transformation logic is quiet good and can easily be extended with T-SQL , Has a semantic layer that generates metat data for cu...
What do you like most about Qlik Compose?
The most valuable is its excellence as a graphical data representation tool and the versatility it offers, especially with drill-down capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Compose?
While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us.
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
Compose, Attunity Compose
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
Poly-Wood
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. Qlik Compose and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.