We performed a comparison between Informatica Powercenter and SSIS based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Informatica PowerCenter is a more advanced option if you can afford the higher price. However, SSIS scored better in terms of ease of deployment and service and support.
"I like the automated scheduling feature."
"The partitioning and optimization to help enhance our development is a very valuable aspect of Informatica PowerCenter."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring tools and the reporting manager."
"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."
"Has a good visual tool for data mapping."
"Easy, scalable, robust platform to integrate heterogeneous source platform's data into the unified data warehouse."
"Can manage a huge quantity of data and provide reliability."
"Complex transformations can be easily achieved by using PowerCenter. The processing layer does transformations and other things. About 80% of my transformations can be achieved by using the middle layer. For the remaining 15% to 20% transformations, I can go in and create stored procedures in the respective databases. Mapplets is the feature through which we can reuse transformations across pipelines. Transformations and caching are the key features that we have been using frequently. Informatica PowerCenter is one of the best solutions or products in the data integration space. We have extensively used PowerCenter for integration purposes. We usually look at the best bridge solution in our architecture so that it can sustain for maybe a couple of years. Usually, we go with the solution that fits best and has proven and time-tested technology."
"It has a drag and drop feature that makes it easy to use. It has a good user experience because it takes into account your most-used tools and they're lined up nicely so you can just drag and drop without looking too far. It also integrates nicely with Microsoft."
"This solution is easy to implement, has a wide variety of connectors, has support for Visual Basic, and supports the C language."
"Like most Microsoft products, SSIS is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The product's deployment phase is easy."
"The ability of SSIS to transform and transport data is extremely valuable to me. It allows for intelligent extraction and manipulation of data during the process. Improved error handling would enhance ETL processes further. I haven't directly utilized the data flow components but they seem capable of supporting complex data integration needs."
"The technical support is very good."
"SSIS is easy to use."
"Its compatibility with Microsoft products has been very valuable to our company. It fits well within the architecture."
"The only problem with this product is the level of complexity with the number of levels of transformation that you have to go through."
"Informatica PowerCenter is outdated and would benefit from modernization. They should have a very good migration strategy from Informatica PowerCenter to AACF. Informatica PowerCenter there is no point in using it, you have to use a cloud version."
"It would be good to recreate the entire interface to make it easier for users to build workflows."
"I would like to see improvements made to the custom transformations. It should be more open for users that want to write their own code and use cases."
"The solution does not scale."
"The multiple interfaces in Informatica PowerCenter are not great for the user experience. Because of this, I think it can cause confusion for any beginner developer."
"Integration with Artificial Intelligence would benefit this solution."
"It should be more cloud-centric than on-prem-centric."
"The performance of this solution is not as good as other tools in the market."
"There is connectivity with other databases, however, this is the most significant issue that has to be addressed."
"I have a tool called ZappySys. I need that tool to cut down on the complexity of SSIS. That tool really helps with a quick turnaround. I can do things quickly, and I can do things accurately. I can get better reporting on errors."
"It should have other programming languages supported as well from a scripting perspective. Currently, only C# and VB.NET are supported, which limits it to .NET. It should have Java support as well."
"I would also like to see full integration with our BI because then our full load of data will be available in our organization. They should incorporate an ATL process."
"We purchase an add on called task factory primarily to allow bulk delete, update and upsert capability. I'd like to see this be part of the standard package."
"Sometimes we need to connect to AWS to get additional data sources, so we have to install some external LAN and not a regular RDBMS. We need external tools to connect. It would be great if SSIS included these tools. I'd also like some additional features for row indexing and data conversion."
"Generic processes should be used instead of custom code for each table."
Informatica PowerCenter is ranked 3rd in Data Integration with 78 reviews while SSIS is ranked 2nd in Data Integration with 69 reviews. Informatica PowerCenter is rated 8.0, while SSIS is rated 7.6. 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 SSIS writes "Maintaining the solution and contacting its support team is easy". Informatica PowerCenter is most compared with Informatica Cloud Data Integration, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, AWS Glue and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), whereas SSIS is most compared with Talend Open Studio, IBM InfoSphere DataStage, Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), AWS Glue and Azure Data Factory. See our Informatica PowerCenter vs. SSIS report.
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Curious why you would compare these 2 tools and why you wouldn't be looking for a PaaS solution?
SSIS is free verses Informatica is the opposite. But there are no plans to fully embrace SSIS within Azure. They have moved to ADF and Synapse pipelines.
That said there is IR (Integration Runtime) so you can run SSIS in Azure but it's limited in terms of SSIS add-ons. Clearly, the future for Microsoft is Azure and Synapse so don't count on SSIS staying around for many more years.
In fact, the BiXpress add-on has been deprecated by its new owner. And I would NOT recommend using SSIS without BiXpress as its built-in logging and error control is awful.
I'm looking at us migrating from SSIS to ADF over the next few years.
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free components and connect cloud and on-premises data sources. We find it very useful for connecting traditional data sources, big data, and NoSQL.
We like that it can carry out simple and complex transformations. It is easy to use and helps us connect with multiple systems and web services. It makes it really easy for developers to develop production SSIS packages. It helps us to pull data because it is DBA-friendly.
However, the filtering of the tasks is a bit difficult, and the error messages can be confusing and hard to resolve.
That’s why, when evaluating both solutions, we ultimately decided to go with Informatica PowerCenter. This metadata-driven integration tool is easy to use and effective even when creating complex mapping. It is easy to monitor jobs, create workflows, and detect bugs. It is well suited for handling a low volume of records, therefore maintaining a real-time operation at an affordable cost.
Another advantage is that it works with ETL-type data integration, connecting to almost all types of database systems. It has great support and documentation, too. Informatica PowerCenter can address different data quality issues, such as data masking and virtualization. It has supporting tools for big data as well. It is critical to ensure we can feed on multiple data streams and transform them into usable data in the data warehouse.
There are a few downsides, though. There aren’t many scheduling options, and debugging the workflows is kind of hard.
Conclusions:
Overall, SSIS is a very good group of tools. For organizations used to working with MS products, it provides easy integration and connections between databases. Since we work with a small number of records, the Informatica PowerCenter works better for us.