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IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs Talend Open Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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 Cloud Pak for Data
Ranking in Data Integration
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (3rd)
Talend Open Studio
Ranking in Data Integration
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Talend Open Studio is 3.3%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Talend Open Studio3.3%
IBM Cloud Pak for Data1.8%
Other94.9%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Michelle Leslie - PeerSpot reviewer
Starts strong with data management capabilities but needs a demo database
What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated. There are so many components to data management, and more often than not, people understand one thing really well. They may understand DataStage and how to move data around, but they do not see the impact of moving data incorrectly. They also do not see the impact of everyone understanding a piece of data in the same way. I would love Cloud Pak to come with a demo database that illustrates the different components of data management in a logical way, so I can see the whole picture instead of just the area I'm specializing in. It would be great if Cloud Pak, from a data modeling point of view, allowed us to import our PDMs, for example. It would be ideal to import and create business terms in Cloud Pak. The PEA would be great to create the technical data. The association between the business and the technical metadata could then be automated by pulling it through from your ACE models. The data modeling component is available in Cloud Pak. Additionally, when it comes to Cloud Pak, even though it has the NextGen DataStage built into it, there is Cloud Pak for data integration as well. Currently, I do not think we have a full enough understanding of how CP4D and CP4I can enhance each other.
Jason Hale - PeerSpot reviewer
Intuitive interface and documentation make it simple to build jobs and APIs and logging helps pinpoint and resolve issues quickly
Talend is doing a lot of work at the moment, and it's not there yet, but the whole platform could be managed in a SaaS-type environment. You still need to have the Studio running on a virtual desktop or a PC. They will get to be able to do the whole thing inside your browser, so you don't need to install anything locally. It's down the track, and it's the nirvana that we were looking for in Boomi. But the biggest challenge they have is that the platform is so focused on the Studio for all of its development. They'll probably get there, but they have such a mature Studio client that it's a huge amount of work to get all of that functionality into a browser or SaaS platform. That's pretty much the biggest flaw with the Talend environment—being reliant on the Studio, which needed to be on a local machine. The only other thing is that you have to integrate into an API gateway. We're in Azure, so we use Microsoft Azure Gateway. It doesn't come with its own gateway, which is another sort of big plus side that we saw in Boomi. Talend isn't quite there yet with the API gateway. Other than that, it's bloody hard to find something because it just seems to be all good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"DataStage allows me to connect to different data sources."
"It is a scalable solution, and we have had no issues with its scalability in our company. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cloud Pak for Data are the Watson Studio, where we can initiate more groups and write code. Additionally, Watson Machine Learning is available with many other services, such as APIs which you can plug the machine learning models."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten."
"Cloud Pak's most valuable features are IBM MQ, IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect, and ISPF."
"What I found most helpful in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is containerization, which means it's easy to shift and leave in terms of moving to other clouds. That's an advantage of IBM Cloud Pak for Data."
"IBM Watson Catalog and data pipelines are the most valuable features of the solution."
"I love the way that I can start at a very basic level with my data management journey by capturing my policies, justifying my data, and putting them into different categories to say this is data relating to individuals, for example, or data relating to geography."
"The solution has a good balance between automated items and the ability for a developer to integrate and extend what he needs. Other competing tools do not offer the same grade of flexibility when you need to go beyond what is provided by the tool. Talend, on the other hand, allows you to expand very easily."
"Open Studio's best features are that it's user-friendly, even for beginners, and very easy to implement."
"It is easy to use and covers most of the functions needed. We can use the code without any extra effort. The open source is very good. They have the same commercials with additional connectors. The graphical design environment is also very easy."
"It is user-friendly and the interface is good."
"Talend is safe to use because it is very restrictive. It is easy to use when one learns how to manipulate data with SQL."
"A very user friendly solution."
"I can connect with different databases such as Oracle Database or SQL Server. It allows you to extract the data from one database to another. I can structure the data by filtering and mapping the fields. It is very user-friendly. You need to know the basics of SQL development or SQL queries, and you can use this tool."
"This product is very easy to use."
 

Cons

"One challenge I'm facing with IBM Cloud Pak for Data is native features have been decommissioned, such as XML input and output. Too many changes have been made, and my company has around one hundred thousand mappings, so my team has been putting more effort into alternative ways to do things. Another area for improvement in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is that it's more complicated to shift from on-premise to the cloud. Other vendors provide secure agents that easily connect with your existing setup. Still, with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, you have to perform connection migration steps, upgrade to the latest version, etc., which makes it more complicated, especially as my company has XML-based mappings. Still, the XML input and output capabilities of IBM Cloud Pak for Data have been discontinued, so I'd like IBM to bring that back."
"The tool depends on the control plane, an OpenShift container platform utilized as an orchestration layer...So, we have communicated this issue to IBM and asked if it is feasible to adapt the solution to work on a Kubernetes platform that we support."
"One thing that bugs me is how much infrastructure Cloud Pak requires for the initial deployment. It doesn't allow you to start small. The smallest permitted deployment is too big. It's a huge problem that prevents us from implementing the solution in many scenarios."
"The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem."
"The solution's catalog searching or map search needs to be improved."
"The product must improve its performance."
"What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated."
"There is a solution that is part of IBM Cloud Pak for Data called Watson OpenScale. It is used to monitor the deployed models for the quality and fairness of the results. This is one area that needs a lot of improvement."
"We don't get continuous replication of the data."
"Inter-version compatibility is a problem, and migration projects between versions are required."
"The solution should integrate with a version control system in the subscription versions to make it easy to work with and manage the version control."
"I would say that writing to JSON is kind of a pain. It reads from a JSON file pretty well, but writing to a JSON file is not so great because its components are not good."
"It doesn't have the ability to keep the repository of the source code (visual pipeline). It can be integrated with Git."
"In terms of what can be improved, the scheduling is not there in the sister version, while it is there in the cloud one, which is a paid version. If all kinds of scheduling could be available on the Open Studio that we generally use and practice on, that would be great. The scheduling of the data migration is currently not available in the sister version of Talend Open Studio that we are working on. It is available in the advanced version of the Talend. This is the one thing that can be improvised."
"When faced with a challenge, such as the necessity to link up with an unconventional data source like the legacy Cyprus Vision database that wasn't inherently supported by Talend, I had to resort to writing Python code to establish the connection."
"It is complicated to understand the configuration process for email components."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the licensing of the solution, there is a yearly payment that needs to be made. Also, since it is expensive, cost-wise, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is competitive with that of other vendors."
"It's quite expensive."
"I think that this product is too expensive for smaller companies."
"I don't have the exact licensing cost for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, as my company is still finalizing requirements, including monthly, yearly, and three-year licensing fees. Still, on a scale of one to five, I'd rate it a three because, compared to other vendors, it's more complicated."
"Cloud Pak's cost is a little high."
"The solution is expensive."
"IBM Cloud Pak for Data is expensive. If we include the training time and the machine learning, it's expensive. The cost of the execution is more reasonable."
"The paid version of this solution has a very high price, but even with the limitations, the Community version works fine."
"The solution will be more expensive if you have a low data volume and a large number of developers."
"There are many versions available and one is open-sourced which is free."
"Price could be lower. It is getting too expensive when compared to some other solutions, which is actually a little bit concerning."
"Right now, because we're using the open-source version, there's no cost."
"Pricing and licensing are fairly straightforward. It is reasonably priced and managed."
"The cost for one year for the ETL tools, not for the big data, is 6K per year. It is a good price."
"For Talend Open Studio, there is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing cost. Talend Open Studio is a bit expensive, in my opinion."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?
The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem.
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Data?
What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated. There are so many components to data...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?
My primary use case for Cloud Pak is that I am the reference Data steward for the Africa regions in the banks where I work. My main objective is to capture the reference data in Caltech or Data and...
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What do you like most about Talend Open Studio?
It is easy to use and covers most of the functions needed. We can use the code without any extra effort. The open source is very good. They have the same commercials with additional connectors. The...
 

Also Known As

Cloud Pak for Data
Open Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival
Almerys, BF&M, Findus
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. Talend Open Studio and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.