IBM App Connect vs. Talend ESB

- great when you need to integrate applications without any message lost or duplicated and when transnationality is important - if you need the highest throughput possible and not much (or not at all) mapping is required, a system like Kafka is more appropriate

Recommended for:

1. Multiple systems to interface for a task in the company (example: to sell an item your POS must communicate with the inventory software, then to accounting, then to service, etc).
2. When a task must bring information from several external services.
3. When you have to deal with multiple APIs.

Not recommended for:

1. Data transformation (although Talend has a software for that that works with Talend ESB)

Incentivized

• Just the ability to display and consume data through a single dashboard makes this a great application for our business purposes.
• With the ability to consume their exposed API, data validation and manipulation becomes a breeze.

Incentivized

• Up to 900 connectors included in the license with no extra cost
• Graphical UI to develop the Web Services
• You can begin with the community version to evaluate or start implementing a very uncomplicated ESB
• The Talend ESB Admin Control is very powerful with dashboards and reports to keep your IF working smoothly

Incentivized

• The development and the transformation capability is not so great. I believe IBM is looking to incorporate some of features of IBM APP Connect into API Connect.
• The authentications features are no way close to CA API Management (f.k.a Laye r7).
• The development experience is not as good as Apigee's.
• The GUI should be improved. Maybe the product team should see the other API management tools in their offering.

Incentivized

• You have to log in to each module separately
• 900 connectors is a lot, but if you have a custom app to interface, you have to develop your connector

Incentivized

It is the best on-premise application to cloud integration in the market. I guess IBM is planning to integrate IBM App Connect with the IBM API Connect solution.

Incentivized

You can do some really powerful things with this system. The overall design is an attempt to make configurable some of the routine tasks/common functionality, but allow for development/customization of the core of the application.

Incentivized

Support is good, however it takes longer than expected to get responses. When bugs are reported they often seem to fall into a black hole.

Incentivized

We did not select Cast Iron as our iPaaS solution, it was the weakest competitor in the field that we evaluated. Our experience was that it was not nearly as easy to learn, without in-depth training and guidance, and the developer UI was extremely buggy. We subjected each of the vendors to a battery of integrations, from simple to challenging, and it fell short on each one. One of the most simple integrations was grabbing a CSV file from an FTP source, parsing the data, doing a small amount of transformation, then inserting that data into an Azure MSSQL DB. After 2 hours on the phone with the Cast Iron support team, we were still unable to get this working.

Incentivized

• First, it is a lot of cheaper than the closest competitor.
• Second, Talend ESB is in the same league as other stronger brands.
• Third, the functions and modules are a 360 solution to implement an ESB.

Talend has a different approach to license since it is based on programmers and run times, not to users of cores.

Incentivized

• I don't see any negative Impact .
• I like using this tool to do my job.
• I am comfortable using this tool.

Incentivized

• Considerably cheaper than oracle service bus
• As I said before, you can run a POC using the community version of Talend Studio.
• Built from Open Source/ well-proven technologies, and a big community to support those technologies.

Incentivized