IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs WhereScape RED comparison

IBM and WhereScape are both solutions in the Data Integration category. IBM is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.0, while WhereScape is ranked #45. IBM holds a 2.0% mindshare in DI, compared to WhereScape’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of WhereScape users who would recommend it.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Read 13 IBM Cloud Pak for Data reviews

2,499 Views
2,349 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

WhereScape RED

Read 15 WhereScape RED reviews

1,695 Views
1,356 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

WhereScape RED

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

WhereScape RED and IBM Cloud Pak for Data are competitors in the data management and analytics category. IBM Cloud Pak for Data appears to have the upper hand with its comprehensive data management capabilities and integration with AI tools.

Features: WhereScape RED automates ETL processes using a metadata-driven approach, providing rapid development and comprehensive documentation. It also supports agile development. IBM Cloud Pak for Data focuses on data virtualization, model development, and AI tool integration like Watson Studio. It offers extensive capabilities for data governance and supports containerization.

Room for Improvement: WhereScape RED could improve by addressing performance issues related to architectural constraints, enhancing storage utilization, and supporting change data capture. Improvements in user experience, cloud platform integration, and installation simplification are needed for IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Expanded connector options and enhanced data curation features are also desired.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhereScape RED users appreciate personalized customer service and technical support, primarily for its on-premises deployment. Meanwhile, IBM Cloud Pak for Data allows flexible deployment across hybrid and public cloud environments, with highly rated customer service and thorough technical support despite initial resource challenges.

Pricing and ROI: WhereScape RED's simple developer seat licensing model is cost-effective, leading to rapid ROI and notable cost savings. In contrast, IBM Cloud Pak for Data's higher and complex subscription pricing poses accessibility challenges for smaller companies, although users find it justified by the wide range of data management and AI capabilities offered.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. WhereScape RED Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. WhereScape RED

July 2025

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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

24th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (3rd)

WhereScape RED

Ranking in Data Integration

45th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhereScape RED is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Michelle Leslie

Data asset management engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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.

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reviewer1618884

BI Analyst DW Architect at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees

Quick to set up, flexible, and stable

The scheduling part I don't like due to the fact that it allows you to schedule as a parent and child and other things, however, the error trackability has to be a little more user-friendly. It's also not user-friendly in the sense that it loads all the jobs and there are not enough filters so that it doesn't need to load everything. If the job fails, you don't get any type of alert or email. It would be ideal if there was some sort of automated alert message. Technical support isn't the best. It would be ideal if we understood how to do it in a card exception regarding exclusion, where the card is captured separately rather than filling the whole process on the data inbound side. Certain workloads like this are organized in such a way where you seem to be doubling the work as opposed to streamlining the process.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its data preparation capabilities are highly valuable."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is the Modeler flows. The ability to develop models using a graphical approach and the capability to connect to various sources, as well as the data virtualization capabilities, allow me to easily access and utilize data that is dispersed across different sources."

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten."

"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."

"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."

"Cloud Pak's most valuable features are IBM MQ, IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect, and ISPF."

"Cloud Pak is a very, very, very good system."

"You can model the data there, connect the data models with the business processes and create data lineage processes."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data pros

"It has a built-in automatic scheduling environment."

"I found the initial setup very easy."

"WhereScape's deployment package is a fantastic feature. The application allows for selecting specific objects that you would like to deploy from one environment to another rather than deploying the entire database."

"This is a fantastically robust DW tool that will make you at least 10 times faster in producing a DW."

"WhereScape RED has improved our business's ability to generate needed reporting without requiring a large team of developers to manually code all of the necessary plumbing."

"I like the data vault implementations."

"Naturally produces a way to easily debug your DW data solutions."

"RED has provided us the ability to integrate, stage, and transform data from diverse sources into an enterprise-grade data warehouse which meets the needs of my organization, but it also enables us to easily and quickly make ETL or DW changes."

More WhereScape RED pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"Cloud Pak would be improved with integration with cloud service providers like Cloudera."

"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 interface could improve because sometimes it becomes slow. Sometimes there is a delay between clicks when using the software, which can make the development process slow. It can take a few seconds to complete one action, and then a few more seconds to do the next one."

"The solution's catalog searching or map search needs to be improved."

"The product is trying to be more maturity in terms of connectors. That, I believe, is an area where Cloud Pak can improve."

"The solution could have more connectors."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data cons

"The solution can be a little more user-friendly on enterprise-level where people use it."

"The scheduled jobs which are run by the WhereScape scheduler seem to be a strangely separate animal. Unlike all other WhereScape objects, jobs cannot be added to WhereScape projects. Also, unlike all other objects, jobs also cannot be deleted using a WhereScape deployment application."

"Technical support isn't the best."

"No support for change data capture or delta detection - that must be custom coded ."

"Improve the object renaming ability (it works, but it could be more automated)."

"The ability to execute SSIS projects within WhereScape would be nice because we have a lot of packages that are too cumbersome to recreate."

"Jobs cannot be deleted via the deployment package. When deploying from dev to QA or production, a job has to be retired. The job has to be manually removed from the target environment."

"Project-based searching of data objects in the data warehouse browser needs to be improved."

More WhereScape RED cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I think that this product is too expensive for smaller companies."

"Cloud Pak's cost is a little high."

"The solution's pricing is competitive with that of other vendors."

"It's quite expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"Factor in the price of specialized consulting who know this product. They're hard to find and expensive."

"Our company purchased a corporate unlimited license."

"Speed to market of a warehouse solution at a relatively inexpensive price point."

"ROI is at least 10 times."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

DataStage allows me to connect to different data sources.

See all answers

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.

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What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

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Comparisons

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 40% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 12% of the time

Denodo vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 10% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data Competitors

dbt vs WhereScape RED

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs WhereScape RED

Compared 14% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs WhereScape RED

Compared 12% of the time

erwin Data Catalog by Quest vs WhereScape RED

Compared 12% of the time

SSIS vs WhereScape RED

Compared 11% of the time

More WhereScape RED Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

July 2025

Download IBM Cloud Pak for Data product report

Buyer's Guide

WhereScape RED

June 2025

Download WhereScape RED product report

Also Known As

Cloud Pak for Data

No data available

Overview

IBM Cloud Pak® for Data is a fully-integrated data and AI platform that modernizes how businesses collect, organize and analyze data to infuse AI throughout their organizations. Cloud-native by design, the platform unifies market-leading services spanning the entire analytics lifecycle. From data management, DataOps, governance, business analytics and automated AI, IBM Cloud Pak for Data helps eliminate the need for costly, and often competing, point solutions while providing the information architecture you need to implement AI successfully.

Building on the streamlined hybrid-cloud foundation of Red Hat® OpenShift®, IBM Cloud Pak for Data takes advantage of the underlying resource and infrastructure optimization and management. The solution fully supports multicloud environments such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud™ and private cloud deployments. Find out how IBM Cloud Pak for Data can lower your total cost of ownership and accelerate innovation.

IBM

WhereScape is data warehouse software that automates the Data Warehouse lifecycle. From implementation to maintenance, WhereScape will ensure your data warehouse projects are completed up to 5x faster than manual coding.

WhereScape

Sample Customers

Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival

British American Tobacco, Cornell University, Allianz Benelux, Finnair, Solarwinds and many more.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. WhereScape RED

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. WhereScape RED

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs. WhereScape RED and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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