We performed a comparison between Informatica PowerCenter and SAP Data Services based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: SAP Data Services wins out in this comparison. The main difference between the two solutions is that Informatica PowerCenter cannot do batch processing and users also consider it to be expensive.
"The most complex task, in this case, was to read and transform BLOB data, and Java transformation in Informatica Power Center was a great solution."
"Good interface, reasonable documentation."
"Informatica PowerCenter is very good for integrating a huge amount of data in a very short duration, such as a minute. It is also very easy to use. After you provide the source and the target, mappings are automatically done, which makes it easy to use for the development team."
"It's a very powerful tool you can use to load data, get data, do the drawing between the tables, and put into the packet in a very fast way."
"The solution is stable."
"One of the most valuable features for us is the metadata repository because it can easily understand the lineage of first target mapping. My company and I also find Informatica really easy to use—when a consultant joins our company, in just a few days to a few weeks, they can understand how to use it—so we prefer to use this ETL tool."
"It is UI friendly and has all the advantages of an ETL tool."
"We have found the PowerCenter and B2B data transformation most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Data Services is the integration with data sources."
"The basic functionality is quite good as is the basic logic and data information."
"The BA reporting tools, such as Data Services, and ETL tool in SAP Data Services are the most valuable. When we had in-memory requirements, we used HANA. HANA is most preferably for most the customers for in-memory. SAP is the first company that created the in-memory concept."
"Its integration capabilities and the data migration capabilities are the most valuable. It is very good for SAP and non-SAP tools. It has very good integration with SAP, but it also has the capabilities to connect to other systems. We find it very helpful and stable."
"Technical support from SAP is awesome. If we have an issue, they give a good solution."
"The reporting on the data, even from third-party software, is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the ETL functionality."
"The logic is also simple. It makes it easy to build your extraction."
"The solution could have better documentation on basic steps or blocks that specify what to do."
"What needs improvement in Informatica PowerCenter is the cloud experience because, nowadays, other companies, such as AWS, Azure, and Google, have more experience in the cloud. The pricing for Informatica PowerCenter on the cloud is also very expensive for customers, so some customers prefer open-source tools or lower-priced tools, such as Azure. From my point of view, Informatica must work on the pricing policy and review the policy on the cloud for Informatica PowerCenter or propose more tools with lower pricing. Clients want the automatic integration of Informatica PowerCenter with other tools. Currently, the integration process is manual, and you have to add other tools to facilitate the integration, especially with the DevOps methodology. You need scripts and tools for the integration, and you'll need to use other integration tools if you want automatic deployment for Informatica PowerCenter, so this is another area for improvement in the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for the integration with APIs to be simpler, because currently, the API integration feature of Informatica PowerCenter is very difficult. It's not intuitive. You have to facilitate API integration and the real-time streaming of messages in Kafka, for example, so that should be improved."
"Some of the conversions are done inside the product. We use work tables that are created by the engine itself, but the names of the work tables are very long, and they don't have any meaning, which makes it a bit difficult to understand and follow exactly what is happening inside."
"Its licensing can be improved. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise. A bundle will definitely be costly. In addition, we might use one or two features. That's why the pricing model should be based on the features. The model should be flexible enough based on the features. Their support should also be more responsive to premium customers."
"Integration with Artificial Intelligence would benefit this solution."
"It should be more cloud-centric than on-prem-centric."
"Areas for improvement in Informatica PowerCenter include scalability and high availability or the clustering configuration because that's still very basic. The elasticity or scaling of the platform needs a lot of improvement. For example, when it comes to DR handling or building an active-active or active-passive cluster, Informatica PowerCenter is still not that powerful. Automation also needs improvement in the solution. Improving automation leads to some improvement in the stability of Informatica PowerCenter and other aspects related to it. What I'd like to see in the next release of Informatica PowerCenter is real-time capability because the solution is mainly for patches, and to have real-time integration, you need to count on some additional components from Informatica. I would expect more integration and a complete platform in terms of real-time capability or patching with minimal interventions or minimal components to be aligned together."
"The reputation of Informatica is that it is expensive."
"Source code control is another headache. When your source code base gets too large, managing the source code becomes cumbersome."
"An area for improvement in SAP Data Services could involve making the product more accessible to non-technical end-users."
"We would like the different tools offered within this solution to be available as standalone entities, rather than having to purchase the entire package when we only require a few features."
"Some of the jobs that are built within Data Services require local files, and during initial deployment, those local files cannot be transported between machines simply because of security issues."
"We encounter challenges while exporting implemented rules, such as those applied to objects like the material master, into a format like Excel for documentation and further analysis."
"The solution shows a lack of cloud support data services."
"Integration with other products could be improved."
"It's an ETL that is very good with relational databases but not as good with files and semi-structured files."
Informatica PowerCenter is ranked 3rd in Data Integration with 78 reviews while SAP Data Services is ranked 10th in Data Integration with 45 reviews. Informatica PowerCenter is rated 8.0, while SAP Data Services is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Informatica PowerCenter writes "Stable, provides good support, and integrating it with other systems is very fast, but its pricing is expensive". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP Data Services writes "Responsive support, scalable, and beneficial integration". Informatica PowerCenter is most compared with Informatica Cloud Data Integration, Azure Data Factory, SSIS, Databricks and Tableau, whereas SAP Data Services is most compared with Azure Data Factory, Syniti Data Quality, SAP Process Orchestration, Palantir Foundry and SSIS. See our Informatica PowerCenter vs. SAP Data Services report.
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