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 ability to scale through partitions helped us to improve the performance."
"It's a complete package, which is why we use this solution."
"Easy, scalable, robust platform to integrate heterogeneous source platform's data into the unified data warehouse."
"Informatica PowerCenter has good user feedback. The developers can easily make mappings in the solution."
"It provides monitoring and we can therefore be aware of what is happening when we are handling jobs."
"Deployment was simple and straightforward."
"It is an excellent ETL tool."
"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."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"We can extract data at a table level, extract data at the ETL level, and we can extract data at an ODP level."
"It's easy to understand and deploy. It's easy to create new applications, and depending on the complexity of the application, it is easy to deploy the new requirements."
"The most valuable features of SAP Data Services lie in its ability to effectively observe and interpret the information within data related to people or facts, stands out."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Data Services is the integration with data sources."
"Technical support from SAP is awesome. If we have an issue, they give a good solution."
"The fact that it's built on SQL, it makes it easy to write code. The database and the connection are quite smooth."
"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."
"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 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."
"Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user."
"While on-premises is a better product, we really need to move to the cloud and need the cloud to be as robust as this product."
"PowerCenter could integrate better with cloud applications. We had to do a lot of configuration work using API integrations to connect with cloud applications. Informatica Cloud Data Integration has a generic connector that you can use directly, so it's much easier."
"In the future, I would like to see Informatica PowerCenter integrate a more powerful dashboard."
"The licensing cost for Informatica is very high. Other all-in-one solutions have much lower prices than Informatica."
"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."
"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."
"It would be nice if this solution was a bit easier to move from development to production."
"Newer feature integration is lagging behind the company acquisitions and the product could do more to service a broader range of devices."
"The solution could improve the overall features. There is a lot that can be done in the solution, therefor there are areas where it can improve. Additionally, there is a need to make it easier for one to create connections to other non-SAP systems. The flexibility to connect to other non-SAP systems is needed."
"With SAP Data Services, the problem arises when I try to connect to Azure Databricks."
"The skillset of data engineers matters a bit to use all the functionality of this solution. Otherwise, the delivery speed won't be faster."
"There needs to be multi-language support, however, my understanding is they are working on multi-language now."
"The execution engines and processing engines have shortcomings and need improvements."
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 Alteryx Designer, 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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