Informatica Cloud Data Integration vs Informatica PowerCenter comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on May 3, 2022

We performed a comparison between Informatica Cloud Data Integration and Informatica PowerCenter based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: For the most part, Informatica Cloud Data and Informatica PowerCenter users tell us the overall setup of both solutions is straightforward and simple. Some users with more complex architectures do feel that Informatica PowerCenter can be challenging to set up and may even require additional technical support to complete correctly.
  • Features: Informatica Cloud Data Integration users feel the mass ingestion functionality and the elasticity of the solution are great. Users tell us the licensing is very flexible. Valued features of the solution include the data quality, data masking, master data management, and API management. Some users feel there can be a steep learning curve with Informatica Cloud Integration. Users would like to see more regions added, as some of the current regions where data reside may be problematic.

    Informatica Powercenter users tell us the solution is very good for integrating a huge amount of data in a very short period of time. Once users provide the source and the target, mappings are automatically done, which makes it easy to use for the development team. Users especially like the enterprise-scale ETL solution; it is robust, very stable, and easy to scale. The solution integrates and connects seamlessly with multiple new systems, both structured and semi-structured. Users would like to see the solution modernized, as it seems to them a bit dated. It also should handle more modern formats, such as JSON.
  • Pricing: Users feel both solutions are expensive.
  • Service and Support: Overall, users are satisfied and feel the support they get for both products is timely, knowledgeable, and helpful. Informatica PowerCenter offers tiered support, which can make the problem-solving process even faster.

Comparison Results: These are two exceptional solutions under the Informatica Brand, which is synonymous with quality, reliability, and high price. Informatica Cloud Data is created and best suited for small to medium organizations and it remains somewhat limited in the regions it can be used. Informatica PowerCenter is best for large enterprises that can utilize all of the numerous options PowerCenter has to offer. Large enterprises can more easily absorb the high cost and make better use of their current bundle licensing tier.

To learn more, read our detailed Informatica Cloud Data Integration vs. Informatica PowerCenter Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Answer: 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 quantities of data with a high level of reliability. We also like the metadata repository and the data warehouse application console. We would like to see the licensing improved, though. We would like to see a feature-wise option as opposed to the current bundle option. PowerCenter is a very expensive solution. The numerous levels of transformation and multiple interfaces can make it a very confusing solution to learn. Cloud Data Integration offers great options for data cleansing, data mastering, data masking, master data management, and API management. The UI is very easy to use and the setup is straightforward. The new licensing is very flexible. Cloud Data Integration has inbuilt tools that allow for a lot of data transformation without changing any SQL queries from the code. This is one of our favorite features. We would point out, though, that there are some limitations with performance using Cloud Data Integration. We experienced some connectivity issues, making things run a bit slow. There are some issues with data residency laws in some countries. More regions should be added. Finally, it would behoove Cloud DataIntegration to consider adding more data sources. Conclusion: These are two great solutions under Informatica Brand which is synonymous with quality, reliability, and price. (Very high price.) Cloud Data is best suited for small to medium organizations and is somewhat limited in the regions it can be used. PowerCenter is most applicable for large enterprises that can more easily absorb the cost and best utilize everything PowerCenter has to offer with their current bundle licensing tier.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The mass ingestion functionality and the elasticity of the solution are great.""The most valuable features of the solution are pushdown, optimization, and partitioning, which can be used for frequent data loading, especially when we have a huge data volume in our company.""The solution provides increased efficiency while still being user-friendly and easy to operate.""The support is very good.""We have a lot of integrations, and it's very easy to create integrations. They have a lot of connectors.""It is quite easy to use and flexible.""The most valuable features of Informatica Cloud Data Integration for our clients are the AI capabilities within Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services.""Data synchronization tasks."

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"UI-based ability to create data mapping.""Good product if you are trying implement data quality, data integration, and data management projects.""It has a Data Catalog that uses the Model repository.""The features I find most valuable is that the solution is very user-friendly and the graphical design is very easy to understand.""The most valuable features are the metadata repository and the data warehouse application console.""It provides everything I need. Nothing is missing. PowerCenter is a good tool for on-premise databases.""Easy, scalable, robust platform to integrate heterogeneous source platform's data into the unified data warehouse.""Technical support, and their approach is good. They have a support portal and support tickets. If you open a ticket it has multiple levels of severity from level one to very high or critical."

More Informatica PowerCenter Pros →

Cons
"Connectivity could be improved, it can be a little slow.""Performance also needs to be significantly improved, especially when connecting to SFDC for read and write operations.""I would like to see support for more data sources.""There is room for improvement at the highest level in terms of useability and connectors for various types of new applications. The row processing performance could be better because you experience some latency dealing with high volumes of data. Most organizations will be dealing with multiple cloud applications, so you could see performance issues moving from one system to another.""The current features are a bit complicated, and we need to write big scripts and test.""One area where Informatica Cloud Data Integration could improve is in providing more accelerators for certain functionalities.""With the solution, we had some issues, and we have every day, and we used to open a ticket. Sometimes, there are data issues and transformation issues.""It could be improved by including a buffer that saves data when there is a connectivity issue."

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"The solution must improve the integration with new services.""The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required, considering the fact that the present licensing charges of the tool are expensive.""Integrated Reporting service should be more smoothly transitioned from view to function to be in sync with the main design.""If you want to transfer a ZIP file, it is a pain. You need to use Command-Line. Sometimes we just want to transfer a file. It should be easy to move them from A to B.""The solution can improve by providing more connectivity by having native ODBC or JDBC connections available. It will be easier and more people could start using it.""We need another tool for monitoring. It would be easier if all the features were consolidated into one tool.""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.""The real-time database connectivity when getting the real-time data using the VPN is an area that needs improvement."

More Informatica PowerCenter Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is cost effective and an easily accessible tool."
  • "The pricing structure is good, but having to pay for extra drivers to be used in an ICS environment makes me a little nervous."
  • "Licensing is difficult to understand, but the team is always available to explain anything. They are very helpful."
  • "My understanding is that Informatica is quite expensive compare to other tools that are available in the market."
  • "Our customers sometimes are able to negotiate a much better price for Informatica Cloud Data Integration based on their relationship with the vendor."
  • "Its pricing model can be improved."
  • "I'm not sure about the most recent pricing trends, but I don't believe it's significantly different from PowerCenter. I believe it is nearly the same."
  • "The price of Informatica Cloud Data Integration could be reduced."
  • More Informatica Cloud Data Integration Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We have found the pricing very cost-effective. The licensing is CPU and data source-based."
  • "Cost could be improved."
  • "Licensing is a one time cost. But maintenance costs depend on what you want, how long you need it. Maintenance is a kind of insurance. With health insurance, you don't know whether you will get sick or need to go to hospital or not but you have to have insurance. It's the same thing with support. If you have that expertise in resolving issues, if you have enough experience in your IT department, I would say you don't need the support. But in practice, they recommend you go with the support. If you want support you have to pay for it."
  • "Price-wise, it's more expensive than SSIS, but it's a better tool, so it has more features. Licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • "Its maintenance is expensive."
  • "It's much more expensive, almost three times more expensive than most other solutions."
  • "We are satisfied with the pricing."
  • "I consider this to be an expensive product."
  • More Informatica PowerCenter Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Netanya Carmi
    AmanyEldaly - PeerSpot reviewerAmanyEldaly
    Real User

    Both are powerful solutions and most of the actions can be done by both. 


    You should choose based on your organization and the business requirements taking a valid decision in terms of the quality and price. 

    Rob Carney - PeerSpot reviewerRob Carney
    User

    Cloud Data Integration

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:When it comes to cloud data integration, this solution can provide you with multiple benefits, including Overhead reduction by integrating data on any cloud in various ways Effective integration of… more »
    Top Answer: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 and… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing model of Informatica PowerCenter is suitable for big companies and enterprises. This is an amazing product, and it certainly does its job, however, if you are a medium or small business… more »
    Ranking
    5th
    Views
    3,648
    Comparisons
    2,996
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    467
    Rating
    7.8
    3rd
    out of 94 in Data Integration
    Views
    20,419
    Comparisons
    16,998
    Reviews
    30
    Average Words per Review
    472
    Rating
    7.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PowerCenter
    Learn More
    Overview

    Informatica Cloud Data Integration is a cloud-native cloud data integration solution that enables users to connect a large number of applications and data sources across on-premises and integrate the data sources at scale on the cloud. The product is built on microservices-driven management and integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and assists organizations to govern costs, increase productivity and collaboration, and simplify their experience. Informatica Cloud Data Integration allows companies to deliver data and analytics to lines of business in a timely manner, build data warehouses on Amazon Redshift, Google Cloud BigQuery, Snowflake, and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, and utilize the required data integration patterns, including elastic processing, extract, load, and transform (ELT), and extract, transform, and load (ETL).

    The solution allows users to to build enterprise-scale integration workloads within hours while it improves the productivity of development teams by providing them a codeless, drag-and-drop user interface. Companies can benefit from integration features built for data warehousing and optimized connectors for bulk loads of billions of records. Informatica Cloud Data Integration offers organizations the option of going serverless at scale by allowing them to process data integration jobs from cloud-hosted as well as managed environments. The Spark-based engine allows the solution to handle high-volume data demands and complex data integration tasks.

    Informatica Cloud Data Integration Features

    Informatica Cloud Data Integration provides its users with various features and tools. Among the key capacities of the product are:

    • Advanced Pushdown Optimization: Informatica Cloud Data Integration offers a feature that provides users with the benefits of ELT while maintaining their data flow definitions at a logical or abstract level. This feature allows users to choose a runtime option that complies with the workload as well as send their data processing work to cloud ecosystem pushdown, cloud data warehouse pushdown, Spark serverless processing, or traditional ETL.

    • Connectors for all major data sources: This feature provides out-of-the-box connectivity to a large number of cloud and on-premise systems, data stores, analytics and BI tools, and enterprise and middleware applications.

    • Data transformation capabilities: This feature allows users to process data transformation in real time or batch by using a variety of transformation types, such as cleansing, masking, aggregation, fileting, parsing, and ranking.

    • Spark-based complex data integration: Informatica Cloud Data Integration Elastic allows specialists to use elastic clusters to process their data transformation.

    • Codeless integration: This feature facilitates the creation of simple-to-sophisticated data integration projects with a visual mapping designer that speeds up pre-build transformations for development through a variety of endpoints across cloud and on-premises.

    • Serverless data integration: Users can achieve cloud data integration in a mode called Advanced Serverless, where they can benefit from a fully managed environment with no software, no cloud administration, and no servers or clusters to manage.

    • Taskflow orchestration: This feature allows users to combine batch and real-time integration through a taskflow designer in order to create simple-to-sophisticated orchestrations.

    • Intelligent structure discovery: This feature uses the CLAIRE engine to automatically understand the parsing model for complicated files based on their structure.

    • Change data capture: Utilizing the prebuilt task wizards and Change Data Capture tool, users can automatically pull only the updated or incremental data from source systems to the targets on a frequent basis.

    • Security: The product offers various features which ensure the highest level of data and workload security and comply with various policies.

    Informatica Cloud Data Integration Benefits

    Informatica Cloud Data Integration brings multiple benefits to its users. These include:

    • The product offers optimized connectivity to various systems through custom build-connectors.

    • Users can benefit from improved elasticity and performance by utilizing Spark clusters and auto-tuning.

    • The tool allows developers to focus on business logic by facilitating infrastructure management through serverless deployment features.

    • Informatica Data Cloud Integration provides user flexibility by connecting to any database, cloud data lake, on-premise apps, and data warehouses.

    • Through a zero-coding environment and role-appropriate user experience, the solution is suitable for all types of users.

    • The solution offers consistent experience and unified metadata across all cloud services.

    • Users can leverage enterprise-level performance for integration design with no coding required.

    • Informatica Data Cloud Integration scales as a business grows, providing a high level of adaptability.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Divya R., a senior consultant at Deloitte, rates Informatica Cloud Data Integration highly because it is a UI-based tool with great scripting.

    A data architect at a retailer likes Informatica Cloud Data Integration because of its flexible licensing, good connectors, and timely upgrades and patches.

    Informatica PowerCenter is a data integration and data visualization tool. The solution works as an enterprise data integration platform that helps organizations access, transform, and integrate data from various systems. The product is designed to support companies in the full cycle of a project, from its initial rollout to critical deployments. Informatica PowerCenter allows developers and analysts to collaborate while accelerating the work process to deploy projects within days instead of months.

    The Advanced edition of the product provides an additional real-time engine which allows companies to have always-on enterprise data integration. This ensures seamless collaboration and increment of data lineage visibility and impacts analysis.

    The Premium edition of the solution offers an early warning system that detects unexpected behaviors or incorrect utilization of resources in the workflows and alerts companies in the case that these occur. This version of the product also offers automatic data validation, which ensures data accuracy and reduces testing time and expenditure of resources for by up to 90%.

    Informatica PowerCenter Features

    The product provides users with various features which allow them to execute data integration initiatives such as analytics, data warehousing, data governance, consolidation, and application migration. The features of the solution include:

    • Collaboration: Informatica PowerCenter offers role-based tools and processes which enable business self-service while benefiting from high-quality IT resources.

    • Automation: Through various automations and easy-to-use software, users can utilize graphical and codeless tools and initiate effective data integration without additional knowledge.

    • Scalability: The tool provides high scalability to users, which ensures seamless performance and minimum downtime. PowerCenter also has adaptive load balancing, pushdown optimization, and dynamic partitioning.

    • Monitoring: Through the extensive monitoring feature, the operations and governance of the solution are easily overseen by users. The tool also provides alerts that can prevent damage to the system.

    • Real-time data: Through real-time data, users can monitor applications and analytics, ensuring their efficient operation.

    • Prototyping: Informatica lets its users collaborate with information technology to prototype, profile, and validate results in a timely manner.

    • Connectivity: Users can access and integrate data from different types of sources through high-performance connectors.

    • Automated data validation testing: The product offers script-free automated and repeatable audit and validation of data.

    • Data transformation: This feature allows users to use comprehensive parsing of JSON, PDF, XML, Microsoft Office, and the Internet of Things (IoT) for non-relation data.

    • Cloud applications connectivity: The product allows for seamless connection to cloud application sources and targets.

    Informatica PowerCenter Benefits

    The benefits of using Informatica PowerCenter include:

    • The tool can work over a wide range of systems and platforms and also allows for lean integration.

    • It enhances the quality and speed of performance and optimizes the cost of the process for your organization.

    • PowerCenter supports multiple databases, including TPump, Parallel Transporter Fastload, and Teradata MLoad.

    • The tool is very easy to monitor and maintain, which simplifies the data integration process for companies.

    • The centralized error logging system allows users to locate errors in a timely manner and correct them.

    • The tool can convert data from an application to another format, as it serves as one of the most powerful data transformation solutions.

    • PowerCenter can also serve as middleware between two applications.

    • The solution offers both parallel processing and load balancing.

    • PowerCenter is a tool with a high level of security, which also minimizes essential administration activities.

    • The solution ensures the quality of information, as it does not allow invalid or unwanted data to be uploaded to the source.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Yahya T., a developer and architect at L'Oreal, says the product is stable, provides good support, and integrating it with other systems is very fast.

    Mohamed E., a senior manager for Data management and data governance at a tech company, says PowerCenter is stable, mature, and offers flexibility in building the pipeline and has a drag-and-drop mode because it's GUI-based; technical support is brilliant.

    Sample Customers
    Chicago Cubs, Telegraph Media Group
    University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company37%
    Pharma/Biotech Company21%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Individual & Family Service5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Insurance Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Insurance Company7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Insurance Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise74%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise74%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise74%
    Buyer's Guide
    Informatica Cloud Data Integration vs. Informatica PowerCenter
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica Cloud Data Integration vs. Informatica PowerCenter and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Informatica Cloud Data Integration is ranked 5th in Cloud Data Integration with 18 reviews while Informatica PowerCenter is ranked 3rd in Data Integration with 30 reviews. Informatica Cloud Data Integration is rated 7.8, while Informatica PowerCenter is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Informatica Cloud Data Integration writes "It has more connectors for various types of applications than some competing tools". 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". Informatica Cloud Data Integration is most compared with Azure Data Factory, AWS Glue, Fivetran, Mule Anypoint Platform and Matillion ETL, whereas Informatica PowerCenter is most compared with Azure Data Factory, SSIS, Databricks, AWS Glue and Informatica PowerExchange. See our Informatica Cloud Data Integration vs. Informatica PowerCenter report.

    See our list of best Cloud Data Integration vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud Data Integration reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.