We performed a comparison between IBM InfoSphere DataStage and Informatica PowerCenter based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Data Integration solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The data lineage report can be filtered for reporting. The reports are user-friendly and take less time to find what you need."
"The Hierarchical Data Stage is good."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to transfer information via notes."
"When we have needed help from the IBM team, they were helpful. Our company is a premium partner so we get fast responses."
"Finding logs is very easy on the solution."
"The solution's scalability is really good...we are using multi-instance jobs where you can scale them easily."
"It's a robust solution."
"The technical support for Informatica PowerCenter is good."
"It is an excellent ETL tool."
"Can manage a huge quantity of data and provide reliability."
"The technical support is excellent."
"The performance and design of Informatica have been very valuable. I find the performance faster than, say, Oracle Data Integrator or DataStage."
"The interface is very clean and clear."
"The reliability of the product and the way of orchestration of different services is valuable to us."
"Easy, scalable, robust platform to integrate heterogeneous source platform's data into the unified data warehouse."
"The interface needs improvement."
"The template mapping could be easier."
"Their web interface is good but the on-prem sites are outdated. The solution could also be improved if they could integrate the data pipeline scheduling part of their interface."
"It doesn't have any big data connections. It would be good to have them because most of the systems are moving towards big data. There should also be a user-friendly way to interact with the cloud. Its loading process is very slow. It takes a lot of time for around 5 or 6 million records, and we are not able to provide real-time data to the vendors due to this delay. Its performance needs to be improved. It is also like a legacy system. It is not updated much. In higher versions, they only do small changes. We would like to have new features and new technologies."
"Currently lacking virtualization ability."
"DataStage is quite expensive. It is too hard to find a consultant using DataStage in Turkey."
"It would be useful to provide support for Python, AR, and Java."
"The setup is extremely difficult."
"We had to take on a large volume of data from the legacy Sybase system. This was taking a very long time, i.e., more than a day. We were trying to improve it with partitions to gpload, but we were told that we can't go more than four partitions."
"PowerCenter has three clients. I wish they would consolidate everything into one GUI, not three. Also, we had a persistent issue with the Informatica Developer tool but it was solved when we migrated to the newest one."
"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."
"Integrated Reporting service should be more smoothly transitioned from view to function to be in sync with the main design."
"Its interface can be modernized. It is an old product. I have been working with it for 14 years, and it still looks the same. It hasn't been modernized much. It also needs to handle more modern formats, such as JSON files. It works with the old text files and databases, but it does not always work with the newer, modern stuff. You need to make your own programs to support that kind of stuff. Support is also a kind of difficult with Informatica. They don't do direct support and rely on using their distributors around the globe for support, which means that you kind of have to go through this layer of different companies before you get help."
"This product is going to decommission in the next couple of years."
"The documentation could be improved."
"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."
IBM InfoSphere DataStage is ranked 7th in Data Integration with 37 reviews while Informatica PowerCenter is ranked 3rd in Data Integration with 78 reviews. IBM InfoSphere DataStage is rated 7.8, while Informatica PowerCenter is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM InfoSphere DataStage writes "User-friendly with a lot of functions for transmission rules, but has slow performance and not suitable for a huge volume of data". On the other hand, 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". IBM InfoSphere DataStage is most compared with SSIS, IBM Cloud Pak for Data, Azure Data Factory, Talend Open Studio and IBM InfoSphere Information Server, whereas Informatica PowerCenter is most compared with Informatica Cloud Data Integration, Azure Data Factory, SSIS, Databricks and Talend Open Studio. See our IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs. Informatica PowerCenter report.
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My experience with these products is telling me that:
- Informatica is much more flexible, it has more points, where different types of codding and tuning are available. If the landscape is heterogeneous and complex - it’s the right choice. On the other hand, it works more slowly.
- IBM DS is very strong in code efficiency and flows parallelism. If the landscape is IBM-oriented or not so complex, but data volumes are huge - it’s the right choice. On the other hand, coding and tuning abilities are more ascetic.
- Informatica needs dedicated admin in the project team, IBM DS - does not.
- Informatica has an evolving cloud version, IBM DS hasn’t yet.
- Informatica is not proper working with Hadoop, IBM DS is.
The pricing of both is more or less equal.