Informatica PowerCenter Room for Improvement

YT
Developer, Architect at L'Oreal

What needs improvement in Informatica PowerCenter is the cloud experience because, nowadays, other companies, such as AWS, Azure, and Google, have more experience in the cloud. The pricing for Informatica PowerCenter on the cloud is also very expensive for customers, so some customers prefer open-source tools or lower-priced tools, such as Azure. From my point of view, Informatica must work on the pricing policy and review the policy on the cloud for Informatica PowerCenter or propose more tools with lower pricing.

Clients want the automatic integration of Informatica PowerCenter with other tools. Currently, the integration process is manual, and you have to add other tools to facilitate the integration, especially with the DevOps methodology. You need scripts and tools for the integration, and you'll need to use other integration tools if you want automatic deployment for Informatica PowerCenter, so this is another area for improvement in the solution.

What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for the integration with APIs to be simpler, because currently, the API integration feature of Informatica PowerCenter is very difficult. It's not intuitive. You have to facilitate API integration and the real-time streaming of messages in Kafka, for example, so that should be improved.

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Mohamed Elkady - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr.Manager - Data Management & Data Governance at a tech company with 201-500 employees

Areas for improvement in Informatica PowerCenter include scalability and high availability or the clustering configuration because that's still very basic. The elasticity or scaling of the platform needs a lot of improvement. For example, when it comes to DR handling or building an active-active or active-passive cluster, Informatica PowerCenter is still not that powerful.

Automation also needs improvement in the solution. Improving automation leads to some improvement in the stability of Informatica PowerCenter and other aspects related to it.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Informatica PowerCenter is real-time capability because the solution is mainly for patches, and to have real-time integration, you need to count on some additional components from Informatica. I would expect more integration and a complete platform in terms of real-time capability or patching with minimal interventions or minimal components to be aligned together.

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PS
Analytics Insights - Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

If we could have the option of performance improvement within Informatica, and if it could have more features, that would be ideal. For example, we have a DTM buffer, and sometimes we face issues where we are creating the cache in Informatica, and it keeps on adding onto that particular directory. Even though we deploy code to remove that cache, somehow Informatica DTM does not remove the cache, and it keeps on piling up, filling up the whole server unless we manually remove that.

There are some functionalities in Informatica, however, after some time, they stopped working. That has been an issue that has added up to operational costs. If we could have the consistent working of all the functionalities that Informatica offers, not just during the start of the project or for around six months, that would be ideal. We find that it stops working due to some issue, due to some process not getting started or getting in a hung state.  

From 10.1, to 10.1.1, to 10.5.1, there is a feature in the expression transformation where users have the option to evaluate the expression. It works only when you do not have variables in that, yet only some values (hard-coded values). For example, if you have column one and column two and put in column three, then when you evaluate the expression, and you only get column one plus column two, and it even does not work. It says you can't pass the variables, pass the values, and then that feature that was introduced is of no use. 

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Informatica PowerCenter
March 2024
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Ravi Kuppusamy - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO and Founder at BAssure Solutions

PowerCenter seems to be a little bit higher side of cost. Customers are thinking about alternatives. Talend seems to be a pure Java-based thing, however, there are some technical hiccups there. There are a few finance companies are probably started using Talend as a competition tool for Informatica. Most of the smaller companies are trying to build open-source-based ETL tools.

It should be more cloud-centric than on-prem-centric. That is where the problem with Informatica.

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HK
Developer and Team Lead at ZIM

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.

In the future, there will be a need to develop the product's features related to integrations with APIs. Nowadays, the most popular integration features that products offer are mostly related to cloud-based areas. When users want to fetch data from the cloud and not do it with the help of an on-premises model, then how to deal with the part involving JSON format is something I want to be made available in the product's future releases.

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CC
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We also have a data integrator, and if we were to compare the software together, the one thing Informatica doesn't have is the ability to create the script inside the solution. We need to rely on Unix or Windows. We can't do the scripting in Informatica itself. We need better integration potential. 

The FTP tools that the solution has are limited. 

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.

I want to eliminate interdependencies on the script. If Informatica could do everything, it would be a more powerful tool.

We'd like to have all of the capabilities available in the cloud available also on PowerCenter.

The solution is expensive. 

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AE
Enterprise application architect at Ministry of Health

It doesn't have the change data capture feature. That's why we have been exploring some alternatives.

The licensing is difficult. It prevents us from accessing all of the features.

Since I haven't used the latest version, it's hard to comment on what needs to be added. 

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PB
Technical Manager at Agriitex

This product is going to decommission in the next couple of years. Therefore, I don't have anything specific to say something has to be improved.

The pricing is pretty high.

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Katarzyna Palikowska - PeerSpot reviewer
ETL Developer at Det Norske Veritas

This product is not on the cloud yet. We need to move to the cloud. 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.

We'd like to see improved lookups in the future. This is a transformation feature that helps us find rows in the database. It would help if this were easier. 

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CR
Business Intelligence Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Informatica are very rigid when it comes to cloud migrations which discourages customers in moving their solution to the cloud. I cannot simply move my code from on-premise to the cloud. There is a conversion process and that conversion process has to be done by Informatica. They charge a huge amount for their professional service. 

Informatica is not as mature when it comes to cloud solutions and cloud connectors and still they want to charge for cloud IACS adoption. If I compare Informatica with Oracle, Oracle provide almost double the licenses when we move onto a cloud solution, regardless of what on-prem license we have. The migration is free of charge.

In a future release, we would like to have cloud connectors.

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VS
Senior Associate at PwC Acceleration Centers

Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user.

In a future release of Informatica PowerCenter, they should add more flexibility on re-usability options. Reusing any setup developed on Informatica PowerCenter, more options to make it reusable, exporting the setup, or importing the setup to any project folder or anywhere in Informatica PowerCenter so that we can use it as a plug-and-play option.

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Lars Borchers - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior BI Backend Developer at ALD Automotive Portugal

The solution is not for newcomers. It has an old touch. The solution must improve the integration with new services. It was part of the program at Informatica when they moved to their cloud platform. It is integrated. However, from an on-premise perspective, we need to buy licenses for PowerExchange. If we want a native driver to access a special service, we need to extend our license to those services. It is expensive. I don't like that it's not all included in the solution.

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DC
Director at Lolatech

In the future, I would like to see Informatica PowerCenter integrate a more powerful dashboard.

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SG
Solution Design Expert at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

There are a lot of cloud connectors missing on the on-premises. These do exist on the cloud, however.

We'd like better integrations with ServiceNow and Splunk. It's not so integrated with the infrastructure. We need more compatibility and more detailed information on operational insights. 

The solution does not scale.

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AS
Associate Manager at Accenture

Informatica PowerCenter can improve its unstructured data handling part. Unstructured data handling is an important area with a shortcoming that needs improvement in the solution.

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KG
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Its scalability can be improved. It is not scalable.

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RR
Practice Head - Advanced Analytics & Cloud at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

I believe that people are shifting to more agile, flexible platforms not only in this era but also in the last two or three years. This is happening not only on data management platforms but also on analytics platforms. Platforms for visualizing data dashboards. We used to have very rigid tools like Cognos and MicroStrategy, but Tableau and Power BI have recently taken over. The same can be said for data management. 

Informatica, in my opinion, is very rigid and not very flexible, whereas platforms like Alteryx or Matillion are very flexible and agile.

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VJ
Principal Consultant at Genpact - Headstrong

It would be better if I could do all the work within a single window. If I'm working on any mapping and if I have to switch to sessions, I have to open a new window altogether. If I have to get into workflows, I have to open a new window. It was also very expensive. In the next release, I would like it to be more user-friendly.

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MS
Assistant Manager at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

They should release new versions for the solution's on-premises setup. It is challenging for us to switch to on-cloud immediately.

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Ramesh SV - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Lead / Practise Architecht at TEKsystems (ex Aston Carter)

Informatica PowerCenter could improve the data threshold for large sets of data. Additionally, they should add real-time integration.

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Muhammad -Usman - PeerSpot reviewer
Data AI Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Compared to solutions offering similar functionalities, Informatica PowerCenter is not very flexible regarding customized integrations. It's not a very customizable solution.

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Mohammad Faizan Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Technical Associate at Investcorp Bank BSC

PowerCenter could integrate better with cloud applications. We had to do a lot of configuration work using API integrations to connect with cloud applications. Informatica Cloud Data Integration has a generic connector that you can use directly, so it's much easier. 

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Parwaz Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data Analytics at Bupa Arabia

Informatica PowerCenter could improve by having a single interface because half of the system is still in the legacy interface and many other elements are moved to the developer client. It would be good if there was a single interface for the end user and developers.

In the next release, Informatica PowerCenter would be beneficial to have run time column propagation. Other solutions have this feature but it is missing in this solution.

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Hari Kathireshan - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr PHP Developer at GE

In terms of performance improvement and tuning, there should be a bit more guidance and documentation. I would also like to see improvement on some of the installation, especially to the adapters. The setup for the SAP adapters is a bit complex.

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RemonHanna - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The performance of Informatica PowerCenter could improve.

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Dusanka Mladenovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

I think the UI could be improved, it's a little outdated. Configuration is  complicated and could be simplified; it requires experience, and not many people have that. 

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Henry Niessen - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at DEN21DS

What is not that clear, is the usability in the cloud, for example. That's a little bit fuzzy.

The reputation of Informatica is that it is expensive. There are some things which could improve for the customer so that they have the perception that they get more for their money.

I would say that the transparency towards the cloud is a big area for improvement. For example, Microsoft and Oracle, make it easy since they create a cloud and then integrate all the stuff that way that you always have the possibility to work to optimize with. Informatica is a little bit different.  

On-premise should not be eradicated.

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ChandrasekharPetaka - PeerSpot reviewer
VP - Digital at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

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. 

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Raghavendra Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at Refinitiv

Informatica PowerCenter is outdated and would benefit from modernization. They should have a very good migration strategy from Informatica PowerCenter to AACF. Informatica PowerCenter there is no point in using it, you have to use a cloud version.

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Buyer's Guide
Informatica PowerCenter
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Informatica PowerCenter. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.