We performed a comparison between Informatica PowerCenter and Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics 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."One of the most valuable features for us is the metadata repository because it can easily understand the lineage of first target mapping. My company and I also find Informatica really easy to use—when a consultant joins our company, in just a few days to a few weeks, they can understand how to use it—so we prefer to use this ETL tool."
"The most valuable aspects of Informatica PowerCenter are the many features, ease of use, and user-friendliness."
"I would recommend that others considering the solution go ahead and use it for any batch and high volume loads with complex transactions."
"It has good standard features for ETL development."
"It works with any multi-databases, so it works with Sybase, SQL Server. Also, the performance is really good and it is easy to use."
"It is an excellent ETL tool."
"Complex transformations can be easily achieved by using PowerCenter. The processing layer does transformations and other things. About 80% of my transformations can be achieved by using the middle layer. For the remaining 15% to 20% transformations, I can go in and create stored procedures in the respective databases. Mapplets is the feature through which we can reuse transformations across pipelines. Transformations and caching are the key features that we have been using frequently. Informatica PowerCenter is one of the best solutions or products in the data integration space. We have extensively used PowerCenter for integration purposes. We usually look at the best bridge solution in our architecture so that it can sustain for maybe a couple of years. Usually, we go with the solution that fits best and has proven and time-tested technology."
"Informatica PowerCenter is a very good ETL tool."
"The abstraction is quite good."
"We're using the PDI and the repository function, and they give us the ability to easily generate reporting and output, and to access data. We also like the ability to schedule."
"The fact that it enables us to leverage metadata to automate data pipeline templates and reuse them is definitely one of the features that we like the best. The metadata injection is helpful because it reduces the need to create and maintain additional ETLs. If we didn't have that feature, we would have lots of duplicated ETLs that we would have to create and maintain. The data pipeline templates have definitely been helpful when looking at productivity and costs."
"Flexible deployment, in any environment, is very important to us. That is the key reason why we ended up with these tools. Because we have a very highly secure environment, we must be able to install it in multiple environments on multiple different servers. The fact that we could use the same tool in all our environments, on-prem and in the cloud, was very important to us."
"We use Lumada’s ability to develop and deploy data pipeline templates once and reuse them. This is very important. When the entire pipeline is automated, we do not have any issues in respect to deployment of code or with code working in one environment but not working in another environment. We have saved a lot of time and effort from that perspective because it is easy to build ETL pipelines."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to use PL/SQL statements inside the data transformations and jobs."
"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."
"Pentaho Data Integration is quite simple to learn, and there is a lot of information available online."
"Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user."
"The performance of Informatica PowerCenter could improve."
"Informatica are very rigid when it comes to cloud migrations which discourages customers in moving their solution to the cloud."
"As a connector to big data, it is not well developed. We've had problems connecting Informatica with Hadoop. The functionality to connect Informatica with Hadoop, for me it's not good."
"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."
"It would be good to recreate the entire interface to make it easier for users to build workflows."
"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."
"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."
"Parallel execution could be better in Pentaho. It's very simple but I don't think it works well."
"If you develop it on MacBook, it'll be quite a hassle."
"Although it is a low-code solution with a graphical interface, often the error messages that you get are of the type that a developer would be happy with. You get a big stack of red text and Java errors displayed on the screen, and less technical people can get intimidated by that. It can be a bit intimidating to get a wall of red error messages displayed. Other graphical tools that are focused at the power user level provide a much more user-friendly experience in dealing with your exceptions and guiding the user into where they've made the mistake."
"I would like to see improvement when it comes to integrating structured data with text data or anything that is unstructured. Sometimes we get all kinds of different files that we need to integrate into the warehouse."
"I work with the Community Edition, therefore I do not have support. There was an issue that I could not resolve with community support."
"The reporting definitely needs improvement. There are a lot of general, basic features that it doesn't have. A simple feature you would expect a reporting tool to have is the ability to search the repository for a report. It doesn't even have that capability. That's been a feature that we've been asking for since the beginning and it hasn't been implemented yet."
"The performance could be improved. If they could have analytics perform well on large volumes, that would be a big deal for our products."
"Its basic functionality doesn't need a whole lot of change. There could be some improvement in the consistency of the behavior of different transformation steps. The software did start as open-source and a lot of the fundamental, everyday transformation steps that you use when building ETL jobs were developed by different people. It is not a seamless paradigm. A table input step has a different way of thinking than a data merge step."
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Informatica PowerCenter is ranked 3rd in Data Integration with 78 reviews while Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is ranked 16th in Data Integration with 48 reviews. Informatica PowerCenter is rated 8.0, while Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is rated 8.0. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics writes "It's flexible and can do almost anything I want it to do". Informatica PowerCenter is most compared with Informatica Cloud Data Integration, Azure Data Factory, SSIS, Databricks and AWS Glue, whereas Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is most compared with Azure Data Factory, SSIS, Talend Open Studio, Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and FME. See our Informatica PowerCenter vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics report.
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