K3 by BroadPeak Reviews

K3

Comments: I like it. K3 does a good job of troubleshooting general data issues. The K3 team does pick up the phone. THis alone is a huge difference to our experience with other vendors. They are very responsive and interested in solving problems..

Pros:

We connect to a bunch of legacy systems, files and APIs. We get the data out of there and both send it to other systems and warehouse it. K3 has very intuitive ETL that does not require Python or some other code. Our operations teams have pretty much gone ahead and taken command of the full data lifecycle.

Cons:

Nothing in particular comes to mind. For the super complicated work flows we worked with the K3 team to design some really complex orchestration. It took less time than expected. Documentation is fine maybe comparable to other systems but could always be better.

Our Data Process

Comments: Easily connected to lots of challenging applications. Great ETL. Rules engine has saved us multiple times.

Pros:

I can walk you though our process. We have a lot of on prem apps. We also have a handful of SAAS apps. There are a lot of integration options. We looked at everything from custom, in-house build to drag drop type solutions. Any integration app you look at is going to fall somewhere on this spectrum. For example, one product we looked at just formalizes an in house build, but carries a similar high workload. Others are highly abstracted and easy to use but do not allow you low level control. Many of these drag drop typesdid not get enterprise apps and complex integration work (nope this app has no API). We picked K3 because of its ability to create low level control, while making simple tasks easily managed by non-technical people. Do your homework. Every developer wants to build their own stuff. But they do not want to maintain. K3 is great at meeting both sides. We flow a ton of very high priority data through K3 and support is great. BroadPeak really does understand challenging applications/ environments.

Cons:

Pricing can get complicated. But, our all in cost is very reasonable. I asked one of their employees about this over beers and they admitted on the initial sale they are trying to figure out what kind of client you are going to be. Those who have a firm idea about what they want get a much better deal.

We Use K3

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

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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

K3 review

Comments: Very nice product.

Pros:

I've worked with the team on multiple engagements over the past 4 years. This is a great group of people. They really hire exceptionally well. The software is deployed on very complex projects efficiently. The code is top notch and reliable. As an external project manager, I've supervised implementations that are delivered on time and on a budget again and again. A lot of this is due to their no-nonsense approach.

Cons:

K3 has evolved quite a bit since the early days. I like the direction they are going. They will not do custom code for you unless its a specialized adapter. If you want something in the middleware that is just for you...expect a no. This is actually a really good thing. Too many vendors jump at this to make a buck. But it hurts the overall application by having a single code stream.

Easy choice, because it's the right choice

Pros:

Best in class. Not much more needs to be said. Always happy to recommend the right tool and I have yet to see a client of ours be anything but pleased with K3. Pricing is fair. The guys at BroadPeak are good at what they do. They know trading, they know compliance, they know commodities, and they know technology.

Cons:

Never had a problem with K3 or BroadPeak

Scalable

Pros:

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.

Cons:

Don't have any

Trading integration

Comments: K3 is the plumbing that brings in all our trades from CME, Trayport and ICE. We book about 6 thousand trades per day. Works like a charm.

Pros:

K3 is the plumbing that brings in all our trades from CME, Trayport and ICE. We book about 6 thousand trades per day. Works like a charm. We get alerts anytime there is a block or EFRS for us to follow up on. Compared to our old solution it works amazingly well. All trades go straight into our primary ETRM and two other systems. We get far more performance out of our ETRM by aggregating fills before booking. K3 keeps both the fills and output trades. It's significantly reduced our end of day and spared us some costly upgrades.

Cons:

These guys know trading and technology very well. We didn't think they could connect to our older systems but they got it done and done quickly. I know BroadPeak has big plans for K3 outside of trading. I just hope it does not dilute their acumen in our area.

Data Analysis

Comments: K3 is a key part of our overall architecure. We get data from several internal and external systems. Transform the data into one of two data lakes. We then use Tableau to viz and report. It all works great. We had a great time setting up the system with the K3 team and learned a lot.

Pros:

Easy ETL. good data analysis setup. Easy to get data into data lakes. actually great support

Cons:

none that i can think of. K3 is very intuitive.

K3 Integration

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

I have used K3 at a couple different clients, where my company supplies IT resources.

Comments: Saves a tremendous amount of man power.

Pros:

Mapping Data in any industry involves a host of business analysts and programmers. K3 allows users to Map data, and maintain mappings without involving programmers and data analysts. The process is fast, easy, and also documents the mappings.

Cons:

I don't have any Cons at this time. I would say, that I think this type of software is hard for companies to adopt. Companies that have IT resources will have a hard time adopting a product that displaces IT resources.

Broadpeak at Calpine

Comments: Excellent. Very knowledgeable folks willing to help at every turn. Product has been rock solid since day one.

Pros:

They stay one step ahead of any and all changes and integrate them pretty seamlessly. Very proactive. Their support is excellent. The support folks are friendly and extremely knowledgeable. They have helped us through several highly critical issues on the spot. It's always on and captures/has captured all of our trades on multiple exchanges every day for years.

Cons:

The highlight/scroll feature when reviewing alot of trades is sometimes hard to tell which trade you're on.

Good software... great company

Pros:

I've been using K3 for a little over 3 years. Primarily for integrating multiple internal systems, but we also it for connecting to various third party systems as well. Our experience with K3 has been positive all around and the support team is incredibly responsive. They have really helped us get the most out of our data by guiding us to leverage K3's functionality with new and legacy systems

Cons:

I dont have any cons

great

Comments: K3 can easily customize xpath and templates for obscure xml. Its intuitive enough that i could figure most out myself.

Pros:

K3 is an integration platform. We have used it for a couple of years. Currently connecting 7 different applications. Setup is simple. Can easily customize xpath and templates for obscure xml. DB connectors are really flexible.Solid documentation.Its intuitive enough that i could figure most out myself.

Cons:

I would like to be able to add my own JAR files at some point. You might be able to do this but I have not figured it out.

Building a Single Source of Truth

Comments: K3 is the tool we use to minimize risk. Its pretty simple actually.

Pros:

K3 is the middleware that drives our enterprise single source of truth. I've been around the IT world long enough to know that enterprise data warehousing projects are a recipe for career disaster. K3 is the tool we use to minimize risk. It's pretty simple actually. We connect to 5 upstream systems with K3 and use it to drive the transformation that is necessary to our downstream BI efforts. Some vendors talk about streaming ETL but K3 actually does it very gracefully.

Cons:

No drawbacks to K3. The learning curve is very short. No complex coding required. We've freed up a bunch of developers using this thing.

Regulatory Reporting

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

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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

K3 provides efficient solutions for data automation with superb customer service.

Pros:

Ease of use, efficiency, customer service/support. K3 is a fluid integration platform that will conform itself to fit a company’s specific set of needs. Broadpeak has a staff of experienced developers that are able to customize the K3 system to automate communication and trade booking with exchanges, trade repositories, and the eConfirm confirmation platform for a number of our customers. They are efficient and partner well to deliver the best customer experience available. Broadpeak has initiated the automation of regulatory compliance requirements such as trade submission, valuation reporting, and life cycle events for a variety of our customers who have been pleased with the user interface and most of all the customer service K3 and Broadpeak provides.

Cons:

no issues identified

Finally caught up with technology

Pros:

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.

Cons:

No Cons so far.

A friend referred me. I owe him a drink.

Pros:

I have been very pleased with this product. We have tons of data that's just been sitting dormant for years because nobody has time to do anything about it. A friend of mine referred me to BroadPeak. They were very helpful and trained me on using K3 simultaneously during implementation so I have been off and running from the get go with little need for support. It's just a great tool to have in your tool belt.

Cons:

Can't complain. K3 has been a huge value add to our organization.

Limits

Comments: Like the software and the company.

Pros:

Our company only uses K3 for position limits. Setup was fast. We get real time trades from the exchanges and K3 calculates our real time limits. Atlas is a big plus. Like the software and the company.

Cons:

There were some minor configuration issues that had to be troubleshot when we first started. Some was just education on our part. But once it is up and running the reports are great, intuitive etc.

The best software vendor experience I have encountered in the industry

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Makes our day-to-day tasks much easier to manage

Pros:

K3 keeps us out of the data weeds. Implementation was quick and painless, but the real value has come through by significantly cutting down on mundane tasks. The rules engine allows us to easily apply the necessary business logic without hassle. User friendly. Sufficient admin/security features for our needs. Great product -especially for the price.

Cons:

Don't have any at this time.

I have had a wonderful experience with this software and the people behind it.

Comments: There is nothing that I do not like about the software but I also have realistic expectations. K3 offers a wide variety of adapters and a platform that can easily move data between systems. If a company has an in-house created system and/or has specific requirements, then no solution is going to work out of the box. If you have this challenge, the key is to work a development team and platform that can easily adapt. BroadPeak has this experience, and K3 is flexible enough to allow for this.

Pros:

BroadPeak offloads the setup, maintenance and support from the local IT team to them. Having a hosted integration platform promotes cohesion, supportability and the ability to easily add new interfaces. The cost is worth it as creating an in-house solution requires specific skills (higher employee costs) and can lead to poorly designed desperate solutions (multiple interfaces written in various languages and styles by different employees over time). Integration maintenance costs can be high when systems on either side are upgraded and changed; this is especially the case with exchanges like ICE and CME that frequently upgrade. This challenge is easily solved with a company BroadPeak performing the work.

We were very impressed by the capabilities of K3

Pros:

If you work with several different FCMs, brokers, exchanges, software providers and data vendors, then you need K3. And even if you don't but you want a simple tool for great value to integrate several pieces of data together, then you need K3. Their ability to integrate data into a single database that is easy to manage is unbeatable. Also, while maintaining reasonable cost structures, they offer all of the services of a team of in house developers along with the upkeep after implementation. They are quick to deploy and with their deep understanding of business and IT challenges, can have you up and running in days.

The Real Streaming ETL Tool

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Salesforce

Pros:

We use K3 for Salesforce Integration. We were using another integration platform. It was good but required a lot of coding. The biggest reason we moved was that it was REALLY expensive to scale. We started using K3 and reduced the cost of integration significantly.

Cons:

None