K3 by BroadPeak

Benefits:

Started using K3 about a year ago. This is a very smart team doing smart software. The idea is basically giving the non-coding people doing the ability to maintain and control integration. This is huge in terms of running efficiently. This is actually very do-able through the K3 user interface. The amount of control you get from the rules engine in terms of tackling tough issues is amazing.

Drawbacks:

None come to mind. We've used K3 with RabbitMQ and Kafka. K3 is JMS friendly, so i don't know why you couldn't use any message bus.

Benefits:

When it comes to ETL tools, K3 is about as good as it gets. I've been a project manager for several firms over the years and hadn't heard of K3 before. It was recommended to me by an ex-colleague and could see the value in it after the very first demo. This was my first exposure to a real "streaming ETL" tool in which transformations are done in real-time (necessary for our business). On top of that, the tool is very easy to learn and most of our analysts were able to figure it out by themselves after just a couple hours of tinkering.

Drawbacks:

As a small, fast growing company there are minor growing pains to be expected, but overall had a wonderful experience with the team and the finished product.

Benefits:

We use K3 a bit differently. Mostly we are using it for data prep pulling data out of a series of in house databases and legacy systems. We used to use a desktop tool for this, but K3 quickly pulls data out and we clean/map/rule it via K3 This gives us a great dataset to do Business Intelligence.

Drawbacks:

None that I can think of. The user interface is intuitive. And if you are dealing with legacy systems its awesome.

In sum:

Mostly we are using it for data prep pulling data out of a series of in house databases and legacy systems.

Benefits:

We use K3 to facilitate Tableau reports. The selling point for us was streaming mapping and streaming rules. This lets us generate our own Tableau reports pulling data from multiple systems.

Drawbacks:

None that I can think of. Actually i didn't find any reason to any kind of deception. Really it's a very nice product.

In sum:

Great Experience to use this software.

Benefits:

BroadPeak asked me to leave a review. K3 is a good application. We report trades in Europe and the United States. K3 takes data from our trading system and sends it to CME and Unavista. Setup was straightforward. It's all automated and has email alerts. We get a full audit trail of our reporting activity. The project was completed on time and on budget. This is rare at our company so kudos to the BroadPeak Team.

Drawbacks:

European support is getting better but we would love to seem more. Else there is no reason to give any negative comment.

In sum:

K3 is a good application. We report trades in Europe and the United States.

Benefits:

I started the company in 2013. Our client base grew rapidly right from the start, which is an excellent problem to have, but certain challenges came with the territory. I scoped out the market for an integration solution that was optimized for scalability. BroadPeak's pricing structure is based on the number of systems we integrate, so we get unlimited users and there is no cap on the amount of data we have flowing. K3 has been an integral factor in our ability to grow exponentially year after year without needing to vastly increase our internal resources.

Drawbacks:

Don't have any

Benefits:

As a project manager I can only comment on a couple of things. We put K3 in and it was my job to oversee the project. BroadPeak team is very organized and aggressively pushes deliverables. They seem to have their ..you know what... together. The internal team seemed to take to the application quickly everyone including myself readily understood how the application works. K3 is great at Business Analyst enablement. BroadPeak team has a very strong understanding of how to work in a rigorous project management modality. Strongly on top of deliverables. I'll admit they are also pretty fun to work with.

Drawbacks:

No cons. For my world these guys delivered on time and got on top of a very complicated architectural footprint.

In sum:

K3 is great at Business Analyst enablement.

Benefits:

For full disclosure I was a beta tester for the 7.0 release. We use K3 for a lot of things, but mostly data harmonization. 7.0 is a real step up (in most places) from the 6.xx version. Its really clean and the mapping is awesome. The other thing that is great is that now the entire data store is indexed immediately and really well.

Drawbacks:

What happened to the audit trail. I know you can still see it in the 6.x version but not in 7.0?

Benefits:

Started with this company about a year ago. They kept so much information in Excel over the years and didn't really have the technical bandwidth to spend a lot of time organizing everything. LONG overdue to put all this data to good use. You know..pretty much your typical BI nightmare. Tableau is great, but analytics are useless if you can't get a handle on your data in the first place. K3 really took on the bulk of the work. The UI is very straight-forward. I didn't even have to call on my IT guy for help (which I think he appreciated probably more than me). Its just nice to have control over my data.

Drawbacks:

No Cons so far.

Benefits:

The attitude and skills of the owners/managers is their biggest asset and competitive advantage. Their team intuitively understand our energy trading business and the unique IT challenges we face in trying to meet evolving derivative regulatory changes. The effectiveness of their software used in our organization reflects their sophisticated philosophical approach to prioritizing flexible and scale appropriate IT solutions for real business needs.

In sum:

We were able to enhance the quality and flexibility of our legacy ETRM system data for a relative low cost. Our experience was overwhelmingly positive, both their software and attitude was flexible enough to overcome our internal legacy challenges without blowing our budget.