Informatica PowerCenter vs Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Informatica PowerCenter
Ranking in Data Integration
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (7th)
Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Data Integration category, the market share of Informatica PowerCenter is 11.2% and it increased by 6.2% compared to the previous year. The market share of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 2.1% and it increased by 337.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
Unique Categories:
Data Visualization
1.6%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

Katarzyna Palikowska - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 17, 2023
Issue-free and reliable with good traceability
We are using the on-premises version and are working towards moving into the cloud. I design ETL workflows I'm pretty focused on narrow processes, including realizing business requirements connected to particular workflows.  The solution has been issue-free overall.  The traceability has been…
Ridwan Saeful Rohman - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 22, 2022
Good abstraction and useful drag-and-drop functionality but can't handle very large data amounts
Five years ago, when I had less experience with scripting, I would have definitely used this product over Airflow, as it will be easier for me with the abstraction being quite intuitive. Five years ago, I would choose the product over the other tools using pure scripting as it would reduce most of my time in terms of developing ETL tools. This isn't the case anymore as I have more familiarity with scripting. When I first joined my organization, I was still using Windows. It is quite straightforward to develop the ETL system on Windows. However, when I changed my laptop to MacBook, it was quite a hassle. When we tried to open the application, we had to open the terminal first, go to the solution's directory, and then run the executable file. The display also becomes quite messed up when we enable dark mode on MacBook. Therefore, if you develop it on MacBook, it'll be quite a hassle, however, when you develop it on Windows, it's not really different from other ETL tools on the market, like SQL Server Integration Services, Informatica, et cetera.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The greatest feature is that it is very easy to have someone come in and jump right in. It is one of the nicest tools in terms of getting a person acquainted quickly."
"The features I find most valuable is that the solution is very user-friendly and the graphical design is very easy to understand."
"The technical support for Informatica PowerCenter is good."
"UI-based ability to create data mapping."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"We use Informatica PowerCenter to transfer the transitional database to and from the data warehouse. This is very efficient as it enables us to quickly find our data reports and the data, so we can build AI models."
"Informatica PowerCenter has good user feedback. The developers can easily make mappings in the solution."
"It reduces a lot of legacy coding."
"The product is user-friendly and intuitive"
"We can schedule job execution in the BA Server, which is the front-end product we're using right now. That scheduling interface is nice."
"It's very simple compared to other products out there."
"The abstraction is quite good."
"We also haven't had to create any custom Java code. Almost everywhere it's SQL, so it's done in the pipeline and the configuration. That means you can offload the work to people who, while they are not less experienced, are less technical when it comes to logic."
"I absolutely love Hitachi. I'm one of the forefront supporters of Hitachi for my firm. It's so easy to integrate within our environments. In terms of being able to quickly build ETL jobs, transform, and then automate them, it's really easy to integrate throughout for data analytics."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to create many API integrations. I'm always working with advertising agents and using Facebook and Instagram to do campaigns. We use Pentaho to get the results from these campaigns and to create dashboards to analyze the results."
"The amount of data that it loads and processes is good."
 

Cons

"The licensing cost for Informatica is very high. Other all-in-one solutions have much lower prices than Informatica."
"The solution must improve the integration with new services."
"Integrated Reporting service should be more smoothly transitioned from view to function to be in sync with the main design."
"The licensing is difficult."
"The initial setup is not straightforward. You need expertise to do it."
"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."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Compared to solutions offering similar functionalities, Informatica PowerCenter is not very flexible regarding customized integrations."
"I would like to see improvements made for real-time data processing."
"If you're working with a larger data set, I'm not so sure it would be the best solution. The larger things got the slower it was."
"​I could not connect to our Hadoop environment in an easy and flexible way, and it was important to scale our data warehouse​."
"It could be better integrated with programming languages, like Python and R. Right now, if I want to run a Python code on one of my ETLs, it is a bit difficult to do. It would be great if we have some modules where we could code directly in a Python language. We don't really have a way to run Python code natively."
"It's not very stable, at least not in the case of the community edition. I'm working with the community edition right now and I think perhaps it is because of that it is not very stable, it causes the system to sometimes hang. I'm not sure if this is the case for pair tiers."
"Since Hitachi took over, I don't feel that the documentation is as good within the solution. It used to have very good help built right in."
"I work with different databases. I would like to work with more connectors to new databases, e.g., DynamoDB and MariaDB, and new cloud solutions, e.g., AWS, Azure, and GCP. If they had these connectors, that would be great. They could improve by building new connectors. If you have native connections to different databases, then you can make instructions more efficient and in a more natural way. You don't have to write any scripts to use that connector."
"Should provide additional control for the data warehouse"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing costs are excessive and pose an obstacle to someone who lacks familiarity with the solution and wishes to have a proper understanding of it."
"I am not sure about the most recent price, but I think it should be $100,000 or more."
"The price of Informatica PowerCenter is expensive, but it does give value."
"Pricing for Informatica PowerCenter isn't cheap, but if I compare it with IBM, it's as expensive as IBM, however, Informatica PowerCenter is more innovative, especially when compared to a giant company such as IBM that has thousands of products. Informatica PowerCenter is limited only to data management, but it has new features that come out every quarter. Points for ease of use and flexibility go to Informatica PowerCenter, but price-wise, IBM and Informatica are equal because they're both expensive."
"According to what I've heard and read on various blogs, it's quite expensive when compared to similar competitive products."
"Our client has purchased the license, and we are using it."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"Cost could be improved."
"The solution reduced our ETL development time by a lot because a whole project used to take about a month to get done previously. After having Lumada, it took just a week. For a big company in Brazil, it saves a team at least $10,000 a month."
"The price of the regular version is not reasonable and it should be lower."
"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."
"We did a two or three-year deal the last time we did it. As compared to other solutions, at least so far in our experience, it has been very affordable. The licensing is by component. So, you need to make sure you only license the components that you really intend to use. I am not sure if we have relicensed after the Hitachi acquisition, but previously, multi-year renewals resulted in a good discount. I'm not sure if this is still the case. We've had the full suite for a lot of years, and there is just the initial cost. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"There is a good open source option (Community Edition)​."
"I think Lumada's price is fair compared to some of the others, like BusinessObjects, which is was the other thing that I used at my previous job. BusinessObject's price was more reasonable before SAP acquired it. They jacked the price up significantly. Oracle's OBIEE tool was also prohibitively expensive."
"I believe the pricing of the solution is more affordable than the competitors"
"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"
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Comparison Review

it_user90069 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 20, 2014
Informatica PowerCenter vs. Microsoft SSIS - each technology has its advantages but also have similarities
Technology has made it easier for businesses to organize and manipulate data to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with their business. Notably, ETL tools have made managing huge amounts of data significantly easier and faster, boosting many organizations’ business intelligence operations…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
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 compo...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
 

Also Known As

PowerCenter
Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica PowerCenter vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.