HCL DataConnect vs. SnapLogic

I wouldn't recommend Data Integrator over SSIS, but it may be a better tool than other ETL offerings. Having a background in the Microsoft Stack, I am hesitant to recommend any other products especially in a Microsoft-centric company. If this was the only option to use, I think it does a good job at integrating systems after taking time to learn the approach. "Maps" in Data Integrator is definitely different than "process flow" philosophy in SSIS.

Incentivized

Snaplogic is unique from other IPASS tools if you're very sensitive about data security as they have an on-premise option where your data never needs to leave your data center. And data pipelines can be quickly created if Snaplogic has the requisite connector to your data sources. On the downside, if you're transforming a large amount of data for example in training machine learning models, a tool with elastic compute capability is more appropriate.

• Map multiple source and destination tables - what would be done in many steps in SSIS can be done in one or two "maps" in Data Integrator.
• Platform independent, cloud based, no client software.
• Conversion of data types, write flat files - this helps us with integrating systems.
• Fairly straightforward to use if the user has ETL experience.

Incentivized

• Their customer service response time is brilliant.
• SFTP tasks do a great job in reading the file directly from the server, instead of having to download it and then read it.
• Tasks expose the ability to run them using external job schedulers.
• Once you have a server up, setting up SnapLogic service does not take long. They have good documentation and customer support too.

Incentivized

• Integration Manager needs better scheduling improvements. Like dependencies, and not running a process again if the prior run is still running.
• New connector development does not seem a priority.

Incentivized

• Git integration outside of Github (Bitbucket, and other git service providers)
• I would like to see an improved way to perform unit testing within the SnapLogic framework, as opposed to the manual approach
• I would prefer that the underlying source of SnapLogic pipelines be more human-readable, although it is a GUI approach to authoring pipelines

Incentivized

This has been hands down the BEST software company I have ever used and dealt with. I am a 25 year IT veteran at this college. They go above and beyond in soliciting our feedback/input and proactively follow up about bugs, issues, etc. I have given multiple potential clients my thoughts and after seeing the SL demo they all sign up. I appreciate their support model, it's REFRESHING!

Incentivized

It is very powerful but has a steep learning curve

Incentivized

They can be prompt but they have not been as useful as I've wanted. We had a bug that affected many of our customers through an API connection between SnapLogic and our platform. Eventually they were able to figure it out, but it took a long time of negotiating between our engineering team and theirs. Additionally, we installed the SnapLogic groundplex for our customers and we've run into a bunch of problems of connectivity. If SnapLogic offered to be on those calls with our clients to troubleshoot how to fix these problems, I would give them a better grade here.

Incentivized

The groundplex in our VPC is very nice for security reasons and the SnapLogic team was extremely helpful during our implementation

Incentivized

As I stated earlier, DataConnect makes a head-to-head run against the others. It has advantages and disadvantages compared to the competitors. The choice really comes down to pricing and specific requirement needs for the project you are planning. Questions such as On-premise or Cloud, Security, and Specific Connectors available will drive your decision.

Incentivized

Boomi was our runner-up product. The pricing model was much higher and cost-prohibitive. They were not as flexible with pricing on a non-profit higher education institution. We did love their integration code library shared across all clients. The user interface was on par with Snaplogic as well as the features that come included. Overall, seemed like a solid product just found something better for a lower price point.

Incentivized

• Our customer likes the consistent reliable integrations we have built so we [got] a definite return on investment.
• Problems are fairly easy to handle and rework.

Incentivized

• We had a positive impact at our organization where handful of developers were able to integrate more than 50 systems in less than a year. It has helped us a lot by providing access to data that was previously not possible or unimaginable or get in such easy format.
• The only place where it didn't have a positive impact was for a realtime application integration project requiring on the fly aggregations, wherein this tool claimed it could do it but wasn't able to.

Incentivized