Informatica PowerCenter Reviews

We use Informatica PowerCenter to extract the data from legacy products and load it into new applications. We're using it for this purpose only. Apart from that, we use the Data Quality tool for data quality issues. We use this solution to extract and load.

I like the automated scheduling feature. Suppose we want to automate data anonymization, we have tools within PowerCenter for that. In terms of the capability of data loading features, Informatica products are better.

Support could be better. Technical support's friendly, but we should be able to get responses from them more quickly.

We found PowerCenter to be stable. When comparing the tools within the Informatica PowerCenter and IDQ, we felt that PowerCenter was more stable for data quality and extraction purposes. Through the command mode, we can do many things for loading purposes, and for all that, PowerCenter is better.

Informatica PowerCenter is highly scalable. Whether it's 4000 records, one million records, or ten million records, we did all these use cases, and it was fine.

Technical support is fine, but we got some delayed responses or didn't get proper responses in certain cases. But overall, it's okay.

We have used some other tools, but we found this solution when we had a huge dataset. We felt that PowerCenter was capable of doing the extraction and loading better than other products. We were also using Microsoft SQL Server DTS in the previous year.

It's easy for me to install Informatica. But for configuration and domain creation with multiple nodes, it will take time. If you have to do it multiple times, it'll take even more time. 

For a simple installation, it's straightforward. Otherwise, it will take three to four hours for multiple nodes under multiple services. For example, if you're doing it for only an integration service, it's very simple. But for our data integration service and other services, it will take more time.

I implemented this solution by myself. 

I would recommend it to potential users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Informatica PowerCenter an eight.

ETL ; Extract Transform Load from data base to data warehouse based on specific business rules.

Informatica PowerCenter satisfies our customers need; thus making Extract Transform Load from data base to data warehouse based on specific business rules.

There are two valuable features. The first is the main typical functionality that the PowerCenter gives, that is the ETL. The ETL is able to extract transform load from/to a variety of sources, like Oracle, Microsoft's SQL Server, and Big Data. 

The second is the capabilities of the GUI interface; drag and drop solution. 

It's a powerful tool and might be the first ETL tool based on Gartner to extract, transform, and load data operations.

The licensing cost for Informatica is very high. Other all-in-one solutions offer much lower prices. 

Also, sometimes with data capture, the solution doesn't support some data types so you must find an alternative, Informatica Data Replication, for instance. You end up buying two very expensive products to get just a little bit more functionality. They need to offer an all-in-one package.

I'd like Informatica to provide more use cases. We have a huge knowledge base, but use cases in specific domains like healthcare, banking, and financial transactions would be helpful. There are some tools that exist for making predictions in different domains. I want something like that in Informatica so we can see use cases that showcase better management, better quality, and better governance, in different domains.

The solution needs better support and training. Informatica can do a better job in making it clear at the beginning what is supported and not supported, and what the licenses include and do not include. That way we are better able to communicate with the clients and to get assistance from support. It would also save us time in raising issues with support if we knew what was covered.

The stability is mainly written in Java programming language. If someone is working as a data engineer and he is not from a computer science background, he may fear there are some errors, specifically in Java packages that Informatica has built. It is not yet stable, but some hotfixes in the big data edition of Informatica, in versions 10 and 10.1, work well to patch any issues.

The solution is very scalable but at the same time, it is very expensive. It's a scalable platform and is distributed, but on the other hand, you have to pay for many separate things. For instance, a real-time integration like a cloud connector for grabbing data from the cloud may be advantageous, but the disadvantage is that the whole package would cost a very huge amount of money for the license. 

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. 

Also, you can buy a support policy for 24/7 support. 

Sometimes, we've had issues where customers complain so we have to keep pressuring support and escalating the matter to upper management to get things fixed in a timely fashion. However, this doesn't happen too often. The process as a whole is good.

Our company has many locations, in the Middle East and Africa, but we're mostly based in Cairo, and have about 100 engineers using the solution.

In terms of advice, I would give to others considering using the solution, I'd say this: they should start with a datasheet of every product on Informatica. Licensing is expensive, so you should study the needs of the customer or your business and make a compliance matrix between the products and what the company needs. You'll run into big problems if your customer's needs aren't met in the Informatica products you choose.

I would rate the solution at a seven or eight out of ten. They're still far away from offering a holistic solution for better management, and there can be more enhancements in use cases, but it's a good solution.

The stability of the solution is one of its best features. The user interface is also very good.

The cost and set up of the licenses could be improved. You need a lot of different licenses, depending on your setup, and it gets expensive. For example, we're connected with Oracle, be we need licenses for that plus the core server, Terradata, etc. It gets costly.

There's also a feature that exists on IBM DataStage called CDC. It's not on Informatica PowerCenter, but if they could add a feature similar to this in the next release, it would be useful.

The solution is very stable.

It is easy to scale the solution.

I don't get in touch with technical support very often, but I would rate them as medium in their level of efficiency in dealing with issues. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

We use the on-premises version of the solution.

I'm a consultant, and I largely work with enterprises.

I would recommend the product for integration. It's one of the best tools in the integration field.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten.

We are trying to implement both Finance and Operations modernization with the help of Informatica. This tool is mainly used in data ingestion, where we bring different sources into a Hadoop environment.

• Big Data connectivity, Data Integration solutions, and Data Quality solutions. 
• Easy to code and understand solutions in Informatica.

Yes, we had stability issues, mostly with JVM size.

Yes, there can be scalability issues. Huge amounts of data ingestion will impact performance.

I rate tech support seven out of 10.

Straightforward.

There are a lot of other data integration tools available in the market. Based on our needs we have to choose which is applicable: Talend, SSIS, Ab Initio, DataStage, ODI (Oracle Data Integrator).

Good product if you are trying implement data quality, data integration, and data management projects.

We have a good relationship with the vendor. We get notifications related to new products for user validation and beta release. We have given user experience feedback for Operational Insights tool.

Once you figure it out, it is a powerful and simple ETL tool. Its stability has been very satisfactory.

Like any other ETL tool, it collects business information for centralized reporting and analytics.

The UI is outdated and old-fashioned, at least in our current version. Also, we have experienced some stability issues with the Workflow Monitor application.

Our company has used it since 2002, I started using it in 2009.

The integration service itself is very stable. The applications suffer from minor stability problems.

The product scales very well, beyond our needs.

The technical support team is eager to help but the problems that we have faced were usually too complex. However, there has always been a workaround.

Our company has always used this solution.

I was personally not involved with the initial setup, but from what I have heard, it was fairly straightforward.

We have found the pricing very cost-effective. The licensing is CPU and data source-based.

In the new version, it is supposed to allow a variety of data sources with the standard license.

I was not involved with choosing the product.

Choose the right tool for the right job.

For the purpose that this product was designed, I believe it is still the best in the market.

Our primary use case of this solution is for building data warehouses for clients with data visualization tools. We need to pull data from other sources so we use Informatica as the ETL. The solution is generally deployed on-prem but sometimes on cloud. 

The solution provides good performance with an easy to use interface and reasonable documentation.

One of the things that I found lacking is that there should be some sort of a calculator where you can input your requirements regarding the number of data switches required, number of users, and the number of data switches in order to get a general idea of cost. It would save me time rather than having to run to the company to get the information. 

The solution is stabl. 

It's a scalable solution. 

I haven't had any issues with technical support. 

This is an expensive solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

Integration between different applications, such as Hospital Information Systems built on AS400 and in-house legacy. It is old data structure file based as opposed to relational. Therefore, it was very difficult to connect and integrate with other new applications. We used Informatica to read from our Hospital Information System and transform the data into a relational model in order to speed up reporting and do cleansing of the data. We also used Informatica to integrate SQL Server based applications with our Oracle applications.

Ease and speed of building integrations, especially integrations between different applications, such as our Hospital Information System. 

The GUI.

10 years.

No.

Its maintenance is expensive.

Yes, we evaluated SSIS and IBM. We also looked at additional features in Informatica.