IBM App Connect vs. Microsoft BizTalk Server

IBM App Connect is well-suited to serve as a central integration hub, particularly for scenarios involving data transformation, complex routing logic, and dynamic backend routing. It excels at enabling legacy system modernization and supports real-time, event-driven architectures effectively. However, it is less appropriate for simple point-to-point integrations or for use cases requiring workflow process management and human task orchestration, where BPM or lightweight automation tools may be more suitable.

It is perfectly suited if some heavy operation needs to be automated where jobs can be queued up. Scalable app which is required to develop in a lesser time frame. Good for when users should be able to change rules more frequently without any downtime, like promotions. The server is well proven in the market. BizTalk server is the best fit if all other integration adapters are developed using Microsoft applications and if all applications are meant to be processed on a Windows environment.

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

• BizTalk uses Microsoft Visual Studio as the IDE (integrated development environment) tool, and it's very easy to use.
• The orchestration engine of BizTalk addresses resource issue very well for long-running business processes by dehydrating and rehydrating orchestration instances.
• BizTalk is very easy to integrate if the development is mainly on the Microsoft software family.

Incentivized

• The UI crashed constantly while trying to develop integrations.
• The UI was not nearly as intuitive as many of its competitors in the iPaaS space, which lead to a much larger learning curve.

Incentivized

• BizTalk needs to be better at tracking down errors after the fact. Input files by default get deleted after processing successfully, unless you specifically specify that they don't. This can be an issue where you need to see what the input file contained, since you may have errors showing up in your target platform, in our case this was SAP.
• BizTalk logging needs improved. It needs to be able to log the content of the messages it sends and receives. It would be good if the log had a link to the input and output files.
• BizTalk needs to allow a simple way to preserve the input and output files for debugging purposes. A master setting on the orchestration would be helpful for this.

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

BizTalk will always be required at this hospital.

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

Microsoft BizTalk is not an intuitive product. It requires many hours of looking through the settings to achieve what you need. Using 3rd party DLLs is a nightmare as you are forced to register them in the GAC of the server and this process is quite cumbersome just to use a DLL.

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

BizTalk Server has been supported for more than 15 years. It is well proven in the market. Microsoft has provided excellent support with technical issues.

Incentivized

Make sure you have everybody and all depts. On board during testing on test server.

Incentivized

We selected IBM App Connect Enterprise due to our confidence in IBM as a long-term partner and our history with their integration technology (Message Broker/Bus). IBM App Connect provides the robustness and high reliability needed for our core on-premises systems, with proven scalability to the cloud. Its key strength is enabling deep integration by combining low-code with the power of complex, custom logic, ensuring the platform's capabilities exactly matched our need to handle complex flows.

Incentivized

We did look at Jitterbit dataloader from Salesforce.com. Jitterbit seems like a pretty decent solution if you are doing a lot of uploads into Salesforce.com. However, its not nearly as flexible as Microsoft Biztalk is. Biztalk allows you to create any type of custom solution you wish, whereas Jitterbit is much more limited.

Incentivized

• We can integrate different applications in just few hours
• We can validate the received/sent messages
• We can monitor any error appeared in the flows

• Microsoft BizTalk is more of a neutral ground as its [pricey] but it does do what it says
• Microsoft BizTalk requires a much larger team of developers and server ops to run
• Microsoft BizTalk can be pricey depending on your agreement

Incentivized