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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Apache Spark

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AApache Spark is an open-source, distributed cluster-computing framework designed for large-scale data processing, batch transformations, real-time Streaming Analytics, and machine learning workloads. The platform executes distributed memory-centric computations across heterogeneous storage layers using unified APIs in Python, Scala, Java, SQL, and R.N/A

    IBM Confluent

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AIBM Confluent helps enterprises stream, connect, process, govern and serve real-time data across hybrid environments.

    $385

    per month

    Pricing
    Apache SparkIBM Confluent
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Basic
    $0
    Standard
    Starting at ~$385
    per month
    Enterprise
    Starting at ~$1,150
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Apache SparkIBM Confluent
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Confluent monthly bills are based upon resource consumption, i.e., you are only charged for the resources you use when you actually use them: Stream: Kafka clusters are billed for eCKUs/CKUs ($/hour), networking ($/GB), and storage ($/GB-hour). Connect: Use of connectors is billed based on throughput ($/GB) and a task base price ($/task/hour). Process: Use of stream processing with Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is calculated based on CFUs ($/minute). Govern: Use of Stream Governance is billed based on environment ($/hour). Confluent storage and throughput is calculated in binary gigabytes (GB), where 1 GB is 2^30 bytes. This unit of measurement is also known as a gibibyte (GiB). Please also note that all prices are stated in United States Dollars unless specifically stated otherwise. All billing computations are conducted in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Apache SparkIBM Confluent
    Small Businesses
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    Amazon SNS
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon SNS
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Google Cloud Pub/Sub
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Apache SparkIBM Confluent
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (24 ratings)
    7.6
    (18 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    7.4
    (16 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Apache SparkIBM Confluent
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Apache
    Well suited: To most of the local run of datasets and non-prod systems - scalability is not a problem at all. Including data from multiple types of data sources is an added advantage. MLlib is a decently nice built-in library that can be used for most of the ML tasks. Less appropriate: We had to work on a RecSys where the music dataset that we used was around 300+Gb in size. We faced memory-based issues. Few times we also got memory errors. Also the MLlib library does not have support for advanced analytics and deep-learning frameworks support. Understanding the internals of the working of Apache Spark for beginners is highly not possible.
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    Very reliable product and help with streaming messages without fail which is a significant confidence booster as an SRE leader. Would recommend the product considering the fact that now it is backed by IBM in addition to all IBM Confluent was doing well before the acquisition. Has been a game changer for our organization
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Apache
    • Rich APIs for data transformation making for very each to transform and prepare data in a distributed environment without worrying about memory issues
    • Faster in execution times compare to Hadoop and PIG Latin
    • Easy SQL interface to the same data set for people who are comfortable to explore data in a declarative manner
    • Interoperability between SQL and Scala / Python style of munging data
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    • It works really well in providing data context for our customers.
    • It is helpful in real time data streaming.
    • It is really wonderful tool for doing data validations and massaging the data.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Apache
    • Memory management. Very weak on that.
    • PySpark not as robust as scala with spark.
    • spark master HA is needed. Not as HA as it should be.
    • Locality should not be a necessity, but does help improvement. But would prefer no locality
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    • Iit needs to improve in AI agents usage.
    • It needs to be more user friendly.
    • It is too complicated for beginners.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Apache
    Capacity of computing data in cluster and fast speed.
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Apache
    If the team looking to use Apache Spark is not used to debug and tweak settings for jobs to ensure maximum optimizations, it can be frustrating. However, the documentation and the support of the community on the internet can help resolve most issues. Moreover, it is highly configurable and it integrates with different tools (eg: it can be used by dbt core), which increase the scenarios where it can be used
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    Kafka and Schema Registry are the rock solid fully managed offerings from IBM Confluent Cloud. Other than that the rest of the offerings do not work as expected.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Apache
    1. It integrates very well with scala or python. 2. It's very easy to understand SQL interoperability. 3. Apache is way faster than the other competitive technologies. 4. The support from the Apache community is very huge for Spark. 5. Execution times are faster as compared to others. 6. There are a large number of forums available for Apache Spark. 7. The code availability for Apache Spark is simpler and easy to gain access to. 8. Many organizations use Apache Spark, so many solutions are available for existing applications.
    Read full review
    IBM
    The support from the Confluent platform is great and satisfying. We have been working with Confluent for more than a year now. They sent out resident architects to help us set up Confluent cluster on our cloud and help us troubleshoot problems we have encountered. Overall, it has been a great experience working with the Confluent Platform.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Apache
    Spark in comparison to similar technologies ends up being a one stop shop. You can achieve so much with this one framework instead of having to stitch and weave multiple technologies from the Hadoop stack, all while getting incredibility performance, minimal boilerplate, and getting the ability to write your application in the language of your choosing.
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    For our use case it was very important that the technology we were working with fit into our Azure architecture, and met our data processing size requirements to stream data within certain SLAs. Confluent more than met our performance requirements and compared to the others scale options and cost to run it was more than financially viable as a platform solution to our global operations.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Apache
    • Business leaders are able to take data driven decisions
    • Business users are able access to data in near real time now . Before using spark, they had to wait for at least 24 hours for data to be available
    • Business is able come up with new product ideas
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • IBM Confluent helps us get data moving from system to system at near real time.
    • IBM Confluent makes pushing data into a data lake easy - analytics, targeted deals, etc
    • The RBAC and ACL setup helps us govern and secure our data, even between teams/applications.
    Incentivized
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