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IBM App Connect vs TIBCO BusinessWorks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
IBM App Connect enhances ROI and operational efficiency with integration, requiring skilled personnel for optimal long-term benefits.
Sentiment score
7.3
TIBCO BusinessWorks offers flexibility and reliability, with ROI seen in two years, ensuring smooth development and overall satisfaction.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
IBM App Connect's customer support is mostly praised, with effective escalation, though first-tier and onsite assistance require improvement.
Sentiment score
6.1
TIBCO BusinessWorks customer service is generally efficient with knowledgeable teams, though experiences vary in responsiveness and problem-solving.
The technical support from IBM is good.
Customer service is very helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM App Connect is praised for scalability and flexibility, despite some challenges with Hypervisor Edition and XML payload sizes.
Sentiment score
6.9
TIBCO BusinessWorks is scalable, handling large data, but costs and licensing can limit expansion, especially on-premise.
I would rate the scalability of IBM App Connect as nine out of ten.
It is not like AWS where I can add memory or more servers.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM App Connect is praised for stability, with rare issues quickly resolved, maintaining high user satisfaction and performance.
Sentiment score
7.6
TIBCO BusinessWorks is stable but faces challenges post version 5.14; users report memory spikes and require hotfixes for issues.
It is stable, however, every now and then, it just ends.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM App Connect needs better logging, support, connectors, UI, command line integration, and simpler installation to address user concerns.
TIBCO BusinessWorks needs stability, cloud adoption, user-friendliness enhancements, better pricing, and improved support for non-technical users and monitoring.
I find it particularly good for on-premises and now cloud use.
The learning curve takes time compared to webMethods.
They should ensure that what was working in the previous version must also work in the new version of BW six.
 

Setup Cost

IBM App Connect pricing is high, dependent on volume and status, yet offers flexibility and quality justifying its cost.
TIBCO BusinessWorks is costly, especially for medium-sized companies, with discounts mainly benefiting large organizations through Enterprise License Agreements.
Pricing is for an enterprise application, so the company pays for it with a company license.
 

Valuable Features

IBM App Connect offers user-friendly integration with minimal coding, scalability, and security, supporting complex environments and efficient automation.
TIBCO BusinessWorks offers user-friendly, robust performance and scalable integration with efficient service creation and extensive legacy and cloud support.
The features I find most valuable are message routing, message transformation, and protocol translation.
When I have an architecture designed to plug in the service itself with BW, it makes things much easier.
It's a great software application for the middleware use cases to connect the front channels to the back ends in a secure and safer way.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM App Connect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (11th)
TIBCO BusinessWorks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexible adapters, good scalability but logging can be difficult at times
There is room for improvement in the logging messages. Sometimes, if you put someone new into App Connect, they can abandon it the same day. The logging is really painful. However, IBM has made efforts to integrate with Elasticsearch for logging, so that's an improvement. Overall, the logging can be difficult at times. One more important point is that if IBM improves its CI/CD capabilities, it will make a big difference. Right now, I have to create my own CI/CD setup from scratch for every client, which is inefficient. Back in 2013, I worked with Sonic ESB, and even then, it had CI/CD with Maven. With App Connect, you need to build everything yourself when using tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, or CircleCI. IBM really needs to provide official support for this.
Moustafa Fares - PeerSpot reviewer
Connects systems securely, simplifies data communication, and benefits from AI integration potential
I would like to see an AI project with BusinessWorks. I haven't worked with cloud architecture using BusinessWorks, so I would like to work with it as a cloud architect. I am still learning the documentation, so I don't have a complete experience with TIBCO. The learning curve takes time compared to webMethods.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM App Connect?
I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's like...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM App Connect?
IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products.
What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?
Our company has a big project for delivery and e-commerce sites. We use IBM App Connect to deliver information to our end users after they buy our products. We get information from many places, suc...
How does TIBCO BusinessWorks compare with Mule Anypoint Platform?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether TIBCO BusinessWorks or Mule Anypoint platform integration and connectivity software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mule...
What do you like most about TIBCO BusinessWorks?
The ability to link to different technologies is valuable to us.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO BusinessWorks?
Pricing is for an enterprise application, so the company pays for it with a company license. Everything comes packaged with the license.
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
Euler Hermes, QSuper, Scandinavian Airlines
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. TIBCO BusinessWorks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,589 professionals have used our research since 2012.