Real-Time Data Pipelines Made Simple with IBM StreamSets
October 15, 2025

Real-Time Data Pipelines Made Simple with IBM StreamSets

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM StreamSets

I mainly use IBM StreamSets to stream data from our on-prem systems to cloud applications and use them in real-time user applications to give them the latest information of various business reports that users create on different systems like client onboarding applications etc which then gets streamed to advisor applications where the advisor users create reports out of this available data and use it in their regular day to day work activities.

Pros

  • It helps streaming huge data that we have in our Teradata database to various reporting applications that runs on cloud seamlessly.
  • We also use IBM StreamSets to power few BI dashboards that our product managers use on regular basis to showcase various data with clients.
  • I think the data quality is way better compared to Informatica tool.

Cons

  • IBM should make things easy for beginners to get started with IBM StreamSets tool. Most new joinees in my team always find it difficult to do debugging in existing pipelines that we have.
  • The integration limitations are there. Like compared to Java where it integrates well but other frameworks like Python, .NET etc, the support is not so good.
  • The UI/UX interface, while intuitive for simple pipelines, sometime becomes cluttered and hard to navigate when managing complex pipelines involving more data streams.
  • With IBM StreamSets we are able to do realtime data integration from our data warehouse to various user facing applications in cloud without much overheads.
  • Also, the low code pipeline design and reusable templates helps me create more pipelines at faster pace and make things prod ready in short time.
  • One negative thing that I can say is the licensing cost. Initially when we started using we had very less data pipeline so our usage was very minimal during the POC stage. Later when we started creating pipelines, we started seeing the licensing cost go up huge. So this is the only negative thing I feel.
I rated 7 because while the platform is generally intuitive and powerful, there are areas that could be improved. On the positive side, the drag‑and‑drop interface makes pipeline creation straightforward, and the wide range of connectors simplifies integration across diverse data sources. Features like data drift handling and reusable pipeline templates also reduce manual effort and improve reliability. However, the advanced configurations are complex, and the learning curve for new users is steep. Documentation for more technical use cases is sometimes limited, and debugging errors can be time‑consuming due to less transparent logs.

Overall, IBM StreamSets strikes a good balance between functionality and usability, but there is still room for refinement in the above-mentioned things.
  • Informatica Cloud API & App Integration
Before, we were using Informatica since most of our applications were running on on-prem servers. Later, when we started moving to the cloud, we tried Informatica Cloud, but it's more useful for batch-oriented than streaming. That's why one of our tech architects suggested IBM StreamSets for our real-time data streaming. During the POC stage, we were happy that the data streaming was way better with IBM StreamSets compared to the Informatica Cloud way of doing.

Do you think IBM StreamSets delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IBM StreamSets's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM StreamSets live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of IBM StreamSets go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM StreamSets again?

Yes

When you are dealing with a data warehouse and want to find an easy way to integrate applications and expose data in real-time, then IBM StreamSets is the best tool to go for. I'm using it for the same purpose in my applications.

This tool will be well-suited for someone with a proper technical background. Though IBM StreamSets UI is mostly drag and drop, advanced configurations require technical expertise or support to do the initial setup.

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