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IBM Cloud Pak for Integration 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Management (27th), Cloud Data Integration (19th)
Pentaho Data Integration an...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Khalitov - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner/Full Stack Software Engineer at Maraphonic, Inc.
Manages APIs and integrates microservices with redirection feature
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Additionally, it supports incremental deployments, allowing you to shift traffic to a new version of an API gradually. For example, you can start by directing 10% of traffic to the new version while the rest continue using the legacy version. If everything works as expected, you can gradually increase the traffic to the new version over time. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has a client base that includes numerous organizations using AI and machine learning technologies. We leverage an open-source machine learning framework and integrate it with Kafka to help create and manage various products and data retrieval processes. For companies with private data, the framework first retrieves relevant data from a GitHub database, which is then combined with the final request before being sent to a language model like GPT. This ensures that the language model uses your specific data to generate responses. Kafka plays a key role by streaming real-time data from file systems and databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL. This data is published to Kafka topics, then vectorized and used with artificial intelligence to enhance the overall process. It's like an old-fashioned approach. The best way is to redesign it with products such as Kafka. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most preferable aspect would be the elimination of the command, which was a significant improvement. In the past, it was a challenge, but now we can proceed smoothly with the implementation of our policies and everything is managed through JCP. It's still among the positive aspects, and it's a valuable feature."
"In general, the solution works very, very well."
"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable. That is the most important criteria."
"Redirection is a key feature. It helps in managing multiple microservices by centralizing control and access."
"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable; that is the most important criteria."
"The most valuable aspect of the Cloud Pak, in general, is the flexibility that you have to use the product."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution has a free to use community version."
"The way it has improved our product is by giving our users the ability to do ad hoc reports, which is very important to our users. We can do predictive analysis on trends coming in for contracts, which is what our product does. The product helps users decide which way to go based on the predictive analysis done by Pentaho. Pentaho is not doing predictions, but reporting on the predictions that our product is doing. This is a big part of our product."
"The abstraction is quite good."
"Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is a great solution to accomplish big things in a very short time."
"Pentaho Data Integration is quite simple to learn, and there is a lot of information available online."
"The amount of data that it loads and processes is good."
"We use Lumada’s ability to develop and deploy data pipeline templates once and reuse them. This is very important. When the entire pipeline is automated, we do not have any issues in respect to deployment of code or with code working in one environment but not working in another environment. We have saved a lot of time and effort from that perspective because it is easy to build ETL pipelines."
"We're using the PDI and the repository function, and they give us the ability to easily generate reporting and output, and to access data. We also like the ability to schedule."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is not easy."
"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated."
"The pricing can be improved."
"Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent."
"Its queuing and messaging features need improvement."
"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated. You still have some products that are still not containerized, so you still have to run them on a dedicated VM."
"What needs to be improved is the restriction that they have on the product."
"A big problem after deploying something that we do in Lumada is with Git. You get a binary file to do a code review, so if you need to do a review, you have to take pictures of the screen to show each step."
"If you develop it on MacBook, it'll be quite a hassle."
"Support for common Hadoop utilities can be expanded, such as bulk load with composite row keys for HBase, and include drivers for Impala out-of-the-box."
"I work with different databases. I would like to work with more connectors to new databases, e.g., DynamoDB and MariaDB, and new cloud solutions, e.g., AWS, Azure, and GCP."
"Communicating with the vendor is challenging, and this hinders its performance in free tool setups."
"I experience difficulties when handling millions of rows, as the data movement from one source to another becomes challenging."
"Pentaho Dashboard Designer - needs an improvement on the various features of the Dashboards, since there are CTools available and which help to fulfil the gaps, but it needs developers involvement."
"Some of the scheduling features about Lumada drive me buggy. The one issue that always drives me up the wall is when Daylight Savings Time changes. It doesn't take that into account elegantly. Every time it changes, I have to do something. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing model is very flexible."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."
"The price of the regular version is not reasonable and it should be lower."
"For most development tasks, the Enterprise edition should be sufficient. It depends on the type of support that you require for your production environment."
"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"
"Sometimes we provide the licenses or the customer can procure their own licenses. Previously, we had an enterprise license. Currently, we are on a community license as this is adequate for our needs."
"I think Lumada's price is fair compared to some of the others, like BusinessObjects, which is was the other thing that I used at my previous job. BusinessObject's price was more reasonable before SAP acquired it. They jacked the price up significantly. Oracle's OBIEE tool was also prohibitively expensive."
"It does seem a bit expensive compared to the serverless product offering. Tools, such as Server Integration Services, are "almost" free with a database engine. It is comparable to products like Alteryx, which is also very expensive."
"I use it because it is free. I download from their page for free. I don't have to pay for a license. With other tools, I have to pay for the licenses. That is why I use Pentaho."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent.
What is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
It manages APIs and integrates microservices at the enterprise level. It offers a range of capabilities for handling APIs, microservices, and various integration needs. The platform supports thousa...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Addition...
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

No data available
Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CVS Health Corporation
66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.