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IBM Confluent vs. IBM webMethods Universal Messaging (formerly from Software AG)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    IBM webMethods Universal Messaging

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AIBM webMethods Universal Messaging (formerly from Software AG) is message-oriented middleware that provides guaranteed message delivery between distributed applications. It carries data across public, private, and wireless networks, and across heterogeneous systems. According to IBM's documentation, it works without a web server and without changes to firewall policy.N/A
    Pricing
    IBM ConfluentIBM webMethods Universal Messaging
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $0
    Standard
    Starting at ~$385
    per month
    Enterprise
    Starting at ~$1,150
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM ConfluentIBM webMethods Universal Messaging
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsConfluent monthly bills are based upon resource consumption, i.e., you are only charged for the resources you use when you actually use them: Stream: Kafka clusters are billed for eCKUs/CKUs ($/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
    Community Pulse
    IBM ConfluentIBM webMethods Universal Messaging
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    17 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    17 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    15 Answers
    No answers on this topic
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    IBM ConfluentIBM webMethods Universal Messaging
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    Medium-sized Companies
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    Score8.8 out of 10
    Amazon SNS
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Google Cloud Pub/Sub
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Google Cloud Pub/Sub
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM ConfluentIBM webMethods Universal Messaging
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.6
    (18 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.4
    (16 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM ConfluentIBM webMethods Universal Messaging
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    Software AG Universal Messaging is best used in conjunction with Software AG webMethods integration platform, as it works seamlessly with other components of that platform such as webMethods Integration Server and webMethods Trading Networks. It can be used with any messaging client developed in Java or .NET and supports JMS clients, however, it is best suited to being used as one component in an organization that is going to implement the entire webMethods platform to implement their Enterprise Service Bus integration solution.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    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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    IBM
    • Low latency high performance messaging and event handling
    • High availability
    • Horizontal scalability
    • Seamless integration with Software AG webMethods integration platform
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • Iit needs to improve in AI agents usage.
    • It needs to be more user friendly.
    • It is too complicated for beginners.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Logging
    • Administration
    • Observability
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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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    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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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    IBM
    Software AG Universal Messaging has excellent performance characteristics, a good high availability story, and works great when you are using the other products in the Software AG webMethods integration platform, as our organization is. It has relatively high licensing costs, which is a large negative when compared with open-source solutions such as Apache Kafka. However, Software AG provides good support services, and is a market leader in the integration space, giving some surety for risk-averse organizations that if something goes wrong we have a vendor we can rely on to help fix it.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Enables disparate software systems to be integrated, reducing manual data entry
    • Enables high performance event handling for data lakes and analytics
    • Has relatively high licensing costs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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