I don't see any necessary improvements as IBM App Connect has been a market leader for many years. I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use. Any major improvements have been addressed with App Connect Enterprise. Perhaps more tutorials for the training of new people who want to learn IBM App Connect would be beneficial.
Team Leader, Software Development at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 10
Mar 27, 2025
The transition between version 12 and version 13 presents some challenges. While version 12 had approximately 10 features, version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility. The learning curve for developers moving from version 12 to 13 could be smoother. When using new components, better context explanations would be beneficial. In version 13, accessing new features requires connecting through a web browser, which can be challenging to understand. The explanation of new features could be more user-friendly.
Senior Developer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
May 24, 2024
I've been using IBM App Connect for about twenty-five years, and while I like it, there are some areas for improvement. The trace policy is ridiculous, and the biggest issue is the cost—it's expensive. People would use it much more if the price point weren't so high.
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.
Information Technology Product Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Apr 15, 2024
Finding developers for the product is difficult since it is a niche solution. I know the OpenShift environment is running well for the microservice environment. We had some issues with the other environment we tried to implement. It can be easily implemented internally, but we have some problems in practice.
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.
Head of ICT division at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
May 15, 2023
We have not used the solution for too long. I haven't noted any issues with the product so far. We're still discovering new features. When we do a version upgrade of the system, the platform is kind of complicated. It would be ideal if it was easier to manage. Sometimes we have issues with local support.
Student at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
MSP
Dec 8, 2022
The user interface of IBM App Connect can be a little bit more user-friendly, I would say because the first-time developer is onboarded while using IBM App Connect, he or she may get a little intimidated or daunted looking at all the options available or the pipelines, et cetera. So a little bit on the user interfaces or how it looks like and how it can be perceived by a developer. Right now I believe that the command line integration tool is a separate tool for IBM App Connect. If I want to access items and work through the command line interface, I have to open up a separate one, I forgot the tool, and command line interface's name, but I need to open a separate tool and use that. But probably a native command line integration in IBM App Connect, which can help us validate our POCs or our code. That would be an interesting feature to have within the IBM App Connect product.
Plugins for the repositories are a little difficult to find. It requires some information in the toolkit and if there were some links, options, or search buttons that would simplify things. I would like to have some predefined plugins built-in to App Connect with a list to choose from because some people use SVN, some use GitHub, and others use Bitbucket. The solution has a DFU mode which IBM states can easily be seen in the variables. It's not that easy to see and is lacking definition. When you're testing the code, you test it with the tool, but you also test the flow that you've created in the tool kit and see the values and what has been created in between the flows. I would want to see it presented in a more defined manner so that it's easy to view while you are debugging. I'd like to have more visibility when testing and debugging the code.
The addition of string functionality would be a benefit, particularly in the ESQL space that IBM already uses internally. If you have non-unique elements but need unique elements, you must write code. For example, Java provides one function for obtaining unique values.
In the next release, I would like to get some quality connectors. With the configuration of MuleSoft, they have multiple connectors if you're going with the quicker stuff. There's IBM Professional and IBM Enterprise solution. IBM Professional will have all the connector things, but I'm expecting that to be included on-premise as well. IBM should be competitive on the third party cloud side of integration so that we can do the development quickly. It would also be very useful for the cost effectiveness of project development.
The installation of containers could be simplified, as it currently requires a senior-level installer. In the next release, I would like it to be integrated with lifecycle management.
Rapidly connect public clouds, private clouds and on-premises application
App Connect Professional is IBM’s cloud integration offering which delivers an integration solution• With ease-of-use, flexibility and increased responsiveness to the evolving business needs, while removing the daunting complexities of integration.• Provides the powerful combination of a ‘simple integration experience’ for business users looking to automate how their applications talk to each other; coupled with a...
I don't see any necessary improvements as IBM App Connect has been a market leader for many years. I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use. Any major improvements have been addressed with App Connect Enterprise. Perhaps more tutorials for the training of new people who want to learn IBM App Connect would be beneficial.
The transition between version 12 and version 13 presents some challenges. While version 12 had approximately 10 features, version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility. The learning curve for developers moving from version 12 to 13 could be smoother. When using new components, better context explanations would be beneficial. In version 13, accessing new features requires connecting through a web browser, which can be challenging to understand. The explanation of new features could be more user-friendly.
I've been using IBM App Connect for about twenty-five years, and while I like it, there are some areas for improvement. The trace policy is ridiculous, and the biggest issue is the cost—it's expensive. People would use it much more if the price point weren't so high.
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.
Finding developers for the product is difficult since it is a niche solution. I know the OpenShift environment is running well for the microservice environment. We had some issues with the other environment we tried to implement. It can be easily implemented internally, but we have some problems in practice.
More connectors could be available for the product as some of the third-party software doesn't have default connectors.
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.
IBM App Connect should improve security features and have a faster mechanism than MuleSoft, which has better capabilities.
We have not used the solution for too long. I haven't noted any issues with the product so far. We're still discovering new features. When we do a version upgrade of the system, the platform is kind of complicated. It would be ideal if it was easier to manage. Sometimes we have issues with local support.
The setup time for App Connect could be improved.
The user interface of IBM App Connect can be a little bit more user-friendly, I would say because the first-time developer is onboarded while using IBM App Connect, he or she may get a little intimidated or daunted looking at all the options available or the pipelines, et cetera. So a little bit on the user interfaces or how it looks like and how it can be perceived by a developer. Right now I believe that the command line integration tool is a separate tool for IBM App Connect. If I want to access items and work through the command line interface, I have to open up a separate one, I forgot the tool, and command line interface's name, but I need to open a separate tool and use that. But probably a native command line integration in IBM App Connect, which can help us validate our POCs or our code. That would be an interesting feature to have within the IBM App Connect product.
Plugins for the repositories are a little difficult to find. It requires some information in the toolkit and if there were some links, options, or search buttons that would simplify things. I would like to have some predefined plugins built-in to App Connect with a list to choose from because some people use SVN, some use GitHub, and others use Bitbucket. The solution has a DFU mode which IBM states can easily be seen in the variables. It's not that easy to see and is lacking definition. When you're testing the code, you test it with the tool, but you also test the flow that you've created in the tool kit and see the values and what has been created in between the flows. I would want to see it presented in a more defined manner so that it's easy to view while you are debugging. I'd like to have more visibility when testing and debugging the code.
The addition of string functionality would be a benefit, particularly in the ESQL space that IBM already uses internally. If you have non-unique elements but need unique elements, you must write code. For example, Java provides one function for obtaining unique values.
In the next release, I would like to get some quality connectors. With the configuration of MuleSoft, they have multiple connectors if you're going with the quicker stuff. There's IBM Professional and IBM Enterprise solution. IBM Professional will have all the connector things, but I'm expecting that to be included on-premise as well. IBM should be competitive on the third party cloud side of integration so that we can do the development quickly. It would also be very useful for the cost effectiveness of project development.
There needs to be an IBM App Connect web console clustering feature.
The integration with HR systems could be better.
The interface could be better.
The installation of containers could be simplified, as it currently requires a senior-level installer. In the next release, I would like it to be integrated with lifecycle management.