![]() | InitZero Enterprise MDM Architect / Solution Arch at a energy/utilities company |
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
"We've used the solution for quite some time, so in our organization, the product is pretty mature."
"It has flexibility in extending the data model."
"The data quality component is very good."
"I like the number of options that are presented with Informatica, fuzzy matching, and your screen."
"MDM doesn't require a separate IDQ."
"Its data cleansing capabilities are very valuable. The match and merge and the audit trail functionalities are very good."
"Technical support is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the administration console."
"It is very easy to deploy and provision a machine."
"What I like about Microsoft, is that it has a huge database with many users."
"Its availability for a secured server is one of its most valuable features. Also its replications - we can manage eight replicas. Their clustering and availability groups are also valuable."
"It has a very good feature called Excel plug-in. You just have to install the plug-in, and then it directly connects to the MDS instance where you can maintain and manage your data and publish it right through Excel. You don't need to go to the front end to make any changes. It has easy integration with SQL Server, and you can use SSIS to do the ETLs. It is a part of the Microsoft stack. It works with most of the Microsoft stuff."
"It's very easy to use."
"One of the main features I have found useful is the integration with Azure active directory."
"The integration could be a bit better. The process is something new."
"The advertising makes promises about data analytics that it does not keep."
"Pre-sales technical support is much better than post-sales technical support."
"They have too many diversified products. If you don't know Informatica, it's very confusing and feels very idiotic."
"The solution doesn't directly connect to any of the analytical tools."
"Their support should be improved. We have had some trouble with their support from time to time. Its scalability should also be improved. I would also like to have a bit more modern and friendly UI for the end-users. There should definitely be a simplified way to configure and set it up."
"The solution could be better integrated into Microsoft's other products."
"In the next version, I would like to see integration with Azure."
"Most of the Microsoft partners, especially digitally, are separate. Personnel are business people, and they do not have technical expertise, so you end up as a company spending a lot of money training your staff and your engineers."
"They do not offer the SQL Server Management tool via the installation. It is a separate tool I use when I'm trying to configure the mirroring with SQL Server Mirroring. This is not supported and I'm getting some errors on the database mirroring."
"The only drawback is that it does not have the matching, merging, and all true MDM components. For these, you have to use another competent called Data Quality Services (DQS). You need to plug it in and use it along with MDS for true MDM. Both of these are integrated together, but you have to do them separately, whereas, in Profisee, there are a couple of screens where you can configure the matching process, create matching rules, and other things, and everything is in one product, which is not the case with MDS. In order to implement a true MDM, you need MDS, DQS, and SSIS. You have to use MDS to store your golden records, DQS to configure and standardize all your rules and matching percentages, and SSIS to load the data to DQS and MDS. At the same time, you also need Melissa Data to clean up your addresses to validate and standardize the addresses. That's the main component of true MDM. It would be good if they can create a true matching component inside MDS and merge MDS and DQS."
"It would be a better option to have an on-cloud version."
"I do not like using Silverlight and Internet Explorer. The new 2019 version gets rid of that, which is one of the reasons why we are looking to switch."
"It's pretty high for us. It's more on the higher side, like low to middle high."
"The pricing of this solution is good."
"With Microsoft, we buy everything though an agreement, so we purchase volume licensing every year."
"I would like to see better pricing."
"MDS is a part of the SQL Server enterprise license. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"SAP is more expensive than Microsoft."
"The solution does require a license and we have enterprise licenses."
Informatica MDM solution delivers the market-leading foundation on which to build that trusted 360-degree view. Companies around the globe rely on Informatica MDM to give business users easy access to the data that drives their strategic decisions about cutting costs, increasing revenues, improving operations, reducing risk, and capitalizing on opportunities. As the industry’s only true end-to-end MDM solution, it incorporates data integration, data quality, data governance, business process management, and master data management on a single vendor-agnostic platform to ensure faster time-to-value.
Master Data Services (MDS) is the SQL Server solution for master data management. Master data management (MDM) describes the efforts made by an organization to discover and define non-transactional lists of data, with the goal of compiling maintainable master lists. An MDM project generally includes an evaluation and restructuring of internal business processes along with the implementation of MDM technology. The result of a successful MDM solution is reliable, centralized data that can be analyzed, resulting in better business decisions.
Informatica MDM is ranked 1st in Master Data Management with 5 reviews while Microsoft MDS is ranked 2nd in Master Data Management with 9 reviews. Informatica MDM is rated 8.0, while Microsoft MDS is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Informatica MDM writes "Good use cases and end-to-end features but needs more setup documentation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft MDS writes "MDS 2016 - Bit clunky but it works and the price is right and easy to get setup ". Informatica MDM is most compared with IBM InfoSphere MDM, Informatica PIM, SAP Master Data Governance, Reltio Cloud and Orchestra Networks EBX, whereas Microsoft MDS is most compared with SAP Master Data Governance, Profisee, Semarchy xDM, Reltio Cloud and Pimcore. See our Informatica MDM vs. Microsoft MDS report.
See our list of best Master Data Management vendors and best Cloud Master Data Management vendors.
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