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IBM App Connect vs SAP Data Services 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 ROI and operational efficiency with integration, requiring skilled personnel for optimal long-term benefits.
Sentiment score
7.5
SAP Data Services provides up to 300% ROI, significant time savings, reduced costs, and improved data quality for users.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
IBM App Connect's customer support is mostly praised, with effective escalation, though first-tier and onsite assistance require improvement.
Sentiment score
6.7
SAP Data Services support is generally praised but needs improvements in responsiveness, language options, and complexity management.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM App Connect is praised for scalability and flexibility, despite some challenges with Hypervisor Edition and XML payload sizes.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Data Services is scalable and flexible, suitable for medium to enterprise-level use, but requires product knowledge for optimization.
I would rate the scalability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM App Connect is praised for stability, with rare issues quickly resolved, maintaining high user satisfaction and performance.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Data Services is generally stable and reliable, with minor issues often due to user knowledge rather than software flaws.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM App Connect needs better logging, support, connectors, UI, command line integration, and simpler installation to address user concerns.
SAP Data Services could enhance by improving user-friendliness, integration, performance, machine learning features, and addressing support issues.
I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use.
 

Setup Cost

IBM App Connect pricing is high, dependent on volume and status, yet offers flexibility and quality justifying its cost.
SAP Data Services pricing varies widely, with options for different enterprise needs and potential high costs for smaller companies.
 

Valuable Features

IBM App Connect offers user-friendly integration with minimal coding, scalability, and security, supporting complex environments and efficient automation.
SAP Data Services offers powerful ETL, seamless integration, data quality, and transformation features with broad database support and minimal coding.
The features I find most valuable are message routing, message transformation, and protocol translation.
 

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 (11th)
SAP Data Services
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (10th), Data Quality (2nd)
 

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.
RambabuMandala - PeerSpot reviewer
Responsive support, scalable, and beneficial integration
The BA reporting tools, such as Data Services, and ETL tool in SAP Data Services are the most valuable. When we had in-memory requirements, we used HANA. HANA is most preferably for most the customers for in-memory. SAP is the first company that created the in-memory concept. There are a lot of SAP applications and they have good integration with SAP packages. In the next release, they should be more advanced cloud functionalities and web services. More integration with other applications including SAPs and other applications. They should not switch to a complete solution but provide better integration with other applications.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
47%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

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.
How do you evaluate the ratio of price to quality for SAP Data Services?
I believe the license for the product is fair, even though some competitors offer similar services at lower prices. The difference between the Edge edition and the next one up is significant in pr...
Would you recommend SAP Data Services to complete beginners?
I think after some preparation, a beginner will be able to use SAP Data Services, however, if you are completely unprepared, you may have some issues. I think that in particular you will need a mo...
How has SAP Data Services helped your organization?
SAP Data Services has helped our whole staff understand the data across various sources and systems within the company. Not everyone who works at my organization is an IT expert - most just have av...
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator, BusinessObjects Data Integrator
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
EMC Corporation, LivePerson, Eldorado, Mozzart, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, Hilti Group, Nissha Printing Company Ltd., Asian Paints, Aareal Bank Group, Migros Group
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. SAP Data Services and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.