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 ETL tools are probably the most valuable feature. It has an IBM tool, a friendly UI and it makes things more comfortable."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to transfer information via notes."
"The solution has improved the time it takes to perform tasks related to batch applications."
"The Hierarchical Data Stage is good."
"The data lineage report can be filtered for reporting. The reports are user-friendly and take less time to find what you need."
"The solution is stable."
"The performance optimization is quite good in DataStage. It provides parallelism and pipelining mechanisms"
"The most valuable features are the dynamic reading of the file metadata profile, and the ability to define business rules that are used to verify and validate the uploaded files."
"The number of docs has been reduced drastically, which is very good."
"To me, what's most valuable in Informatica PowerCenter is the flexibility in building the integration pipeline. Usually, you need to have a platform to be able to integrate with different technologies, including legacy data such as the mainframe. The platform should also be rich enough to transform the data per your business requirement, with no restrictions. Rich integration and rich transformation capabilities are the two key capabilities in Informatica PowerCenter. The solution also offers ease of use. Another valuable feature of Informatica PowerCenter is the drag-and-drop integration because it's GUI-based, similar to IBM and Oracle."
"Informatica PowerCenter is a very good ETL tool."
"It's very easy to use it to develop mappings and workflows."
"The support is valuable. There are also open-source ETL products, which work very well, but there is no support. When we face a production problem, being able to get support is valuable, and it brings efficiency. With an open-source solution, we can't engage anyone to resolve the problem as quickly as possible."
"The reliability of the product and the way of orchestration of different services is valuable to us."
"Once you have learned Informatica, it is very easy to use."
"The interface needs work to be more user-friendly."
"The setup is extremely difficult."
"We would be happy to see in next versions the ability to return several parameters from jobs. Now, jobs can return just one parameter. If they could return several parameters, that would be great."
"The error messaging needs to be improved."
"Working with some of the big data components is good, but I can see improvements are needed."
"The template mapping could be easier."
"I'd like to be able to do more with the data and metadata, including copy and pasting, et cetera."
"There are three things that could improve - the cloud, monitoring and cloud integration. It's a solid product but not a modern one and of course it depends what you're looking for."
"I would like to see an improvement in the digital adoption."
"Now they are migrating to a new version, and they have something that is called Informatica Developer. Previously, they just had PowerCenter. Now, when they move everything to Informatica Developer it's not as good or stable like it was when it was PowerCenter, though it has some nice features. This Developer tool could be better."
"The solution could have better documentation on basic steps or blocks that specify what to do."
"An issue which should be addressed is that the solution only allows us to do structured, as opposed to unstructured, data processing."
"PowerCenter could be improved by having more big data components. Normally, we prefer Informatica as a relational database, but nowadays, companies are trying to understand and use big data components. I think it would be useful if we had more chances to create a hub ecosystem because customers try to use some data integration tasks by SQL, Spark and Spark codes, and Scala, but at the end of the day, the company will understand that we need to trace all the steps. An ETL tool is a must for that company, if we're talking about the regulated industries like finance, telcos, etc. If Informatica's biggest ecosystems feature were okay, I would prefer to use it."
"There is a need to buy a separate license if one wishes to connect with some kind of SAP system, such as SalesForce."
"It would be nice to have all tools in one place. CDC needs more effort, as it's only easy to develop if you are familiar with Linux."
"The solution's commercial cost is very high. Other open-source tools can do the tool's functions for free. The world is moving to the cloud, but the solution hasn't updated its drivers. I presume that its downfall will start soon. The tool is trying to cross-sell or upsell without helping customers derive benefits from the existing products. They have multiple tools and licenses. It is better to bring the smaller tools in one umbrella."
IBM InfoSphere DataStage is ranked 7th in Data Integration with 15 reviews while Informatica PowerCenter is ranked 3rd in Data Integration with 30 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 functionalities, and doesn't require much coding because of its drag-and-drop features". 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 IBM Cloud Pak for Data, SSIS, 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 SAP Data Services. 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.