Apache Camel is an open source integration platform.
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Informatica B2B Data Exchange (legacy)
Score 7.2 out of 10
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Informatica B2B Data Exchange was an EDI solution used to securely integrate any data with partners. It is a legacy product.
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Premier Bank Platform
Score 6.4 out of 10
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Financial technology company Fiserv offers the Premier Bank Platform to banking institutions, providing an environment to integrate data and manage bank operations in a simplified browser-based interface.
Message brokering across different systems, with transactionality and the ability to have fine tuned control over what happens using Java (or other languages), instead of a heavy, proprietary languages. One situation that it doesn't fit very well (as far as I have experienced) is when your workflow requires significant data mapping. While possible when using Java tooling, some other visual data mapping tools in other integration frameworks are easier to work with.
Premier Bank Platform is well suited for a banking environment, it wouldn't really make sense to use it in any other kind of environment. We are a medium sized bank who outsources Platform and it suits us fairly well. They are some issues with Fiserv from time to time but overall Platform allows us to complete our banking duties quickly and with relative ease. Fiserv takes care of updating all aspects of Platform for us so from an IT perspective it saves us a lot of headaches. Most end users are satisfied with Platform, the only grumbling you'll typically hear about is when the service is unavailable.
Camel has an easy learning curve. It is fairly well documented and there are about 5-6 books on Camel.
There is a large user group and blogs devoted to all things Camel and the developers of Camel provide quick answers and have also been very quick to patch Camel, when bugs are reported.
Camel integrates well with well known frameworks like Spring, and other middleware products like Apache Karaf and Servicemix.
There are over 150 components for the Camel framework that help integrate with diverse software platforms.
Because the Premier Bank Platform is developed by Fiserv, a very large company, there are considerable resources to continue to develop Premier and roll out new solutions.
It holds most all of our customer data in one central location and transfers that data to other Fiserv apps fairly well.
It is fairly intuitive and most users pick up on it quickly.
The software itself is currently a bit dated, but it will be overhauled here sometime in 2019.
We outsource the platform and sometime the connections to Fiserv are not reliable which cause the platform to be unusable.
Fiserv has several different platforms and Premier seems to be the most dated of the bunch, again that appears to be changing in 2019 but in the interim it still remains an issue
The customer support can sometimes be lacking when facing issues with the platform, they will tell you they'll fix it later but give no time frames as to when that might be.
If you are looking for a Java-based open source low cost equivalent to webMethods or Azure Logic Apps, Apache Camel is an excellent choice as it is mature and widely deployed, and included in many vendored Java application servers too such as Redhat JBoss EAP. Apache Camel is lacking on the GUI tooling side compared to commercial products such as webMethods or Azure Logic Apps.
Very fast time to market in that so many components are available to use immediately.
Error handling mechanisms and patterns of practice are robust and easy to use which in turn has made our application more robust from the start, so fewer bugs.
However, testing and debugging routes is more challenging than working is standard Java so that takes more time (less time than writing the components from scratch).
Most people don't know Camel coming in and many junior developers find it overwhelming and are not enthusiastic to learn it. So finding people that want to develop/maintain it is a challenge.
Platform is absolutely critical to our daily bank operations. It's a bit on the expensive side to setup and maintain but in the end worth the money because of the complete coverage it provides in daily business functions.
There are several competitors to Platform but Premier is what our bank has used for many years, even before it's Fiserv acquisition, and what many employees are comfortable with. A switch would involve a massive investment in retraining.
A negative impact can be on when there are outages or mishaps on Fiserv's side. Fiserv has a tendency to not compensate you even when they should be obligated to. They seem to play the outlast you game where they hope you will give up and stop asking.
