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Ab Initio Co>Operating System vs Informatica PowerExchange [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 11, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Ab Initio Co>Operating System
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (24th), Workload Automation (19th)
Informatica PowerExchange [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Senior Solutions Architect at IDS Comercial
Enables creation of sophisticated applications with powerful parallelism and quick, effective support
The most valuable features of Ab Initio Co>Operating System are its performance and the ability to implement parallelism. There are three kinds of parallelism in Ab Initio Co>Operating System, which allow us to create very sophisticated solutions for almost any kind of application. This parallelism is one of the strongest features. Additionally, its scalability offers a unique way to escalate applications that differs from other technologies. In terms of data processing, the emphasis is on understanding the data. Data profiling is fundamental, and Ab Initio Co>Operating System integrates tools to perform this within the GDE, as well as specialized products for this purpose. Data profiling graphs can be implemented when necessary to understand the data sources.
HA
Sr. IT & Data Governance and Management Consultant & Technical Lead at a government with 51-200 employees
Facilitates seamless data exchange for Middle Eastern government entities while reducing costs and simplifying integration processes
Informatica PowerExchange is important for services and common services implementations. This allows workflow communication between different entities, providing proper services. The tool's governance features include HA rules, responsibilities, and policies which are highly valued. It also reduces the number of APIs needed for new integrations by offering a unified exchange platform that facilitates easy-to-use services without the need for coding.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Ab Initio Co>Operating System excels at providing data lineage regardless of the type of data I have."
"Ab Initio reaches the highest performance and is very flexible in processing huge amounts of data."
"Co>Operating System's most valuable feature is its ability to process bulk data effectively."
"The graphical interface of Ab Initio Co>Operating System is very easy to understand and allows me to visualize the data flow effectively."
"Ab Initio Co>Operating System support is the best I have encountered."
"Overall, it's a good tool. It's currently number one on the market. It pretty much has all the necessary capabilities to pull the incremental data from the source system, technically speaking."
"I would rate Informatica PowerExchange nine out of ten due to its robust functionality within the Informatica ecosystem and its seamless integration with other Informatica products."
"From the product feature or product capability perspective, the aspects around integration, transformation, and standardization are valuable. It's fairly easy to use. It has a GUI-based interface."
"This product is easy to install and it can be done in a few hours."
"The product’s flexibility is valuable."
"The user interface and user experience are perfectly all right."
"I rate Informatica PowerExchange a ten out of ten."
"In terms of the return on investment, the tool is very helpful in the digital transformation process since multiple systems are available."
 

Cons

"An awesome improvement would be big data solutions, for example, implementing some kind of business intelligence or neural networks for artificial intelligence."
"Co>Operating System would be improved with more integrations for less well-known technologies."
"While Ab Initio Co>Operating System has positive attributes, I find that certain features can sometimes be difficult to understand."
"Ab Initio Co>Operating System is a very expensive product."
"Apache Spark has a machine learning algorithm, an area where Informatica PowerExchange lacks."
"The solution could be made more user-friendly. The configurations are also quite difficult."
"The product is not suitable for application integration."
"V10.2 is very stable, but we are still struggling to make V10.5 stable. We found services that were down, and PowerExchange stopped working."
"Pushdown optimization could be improved."
"The major shortcoming of PowerExchange is high availability and failover. None of the versions we've used to date have had the out-of-the-box ability to enable failover and high-availability requirements. This is a significant challenge and risk."
"The one place where it could be improved is definitely pricing. That's a very big problem. It depends product to product, but pricing is an issue."
"It would be helpful to have more metadata provided, which is useful for engaging more users in data exchange."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Co>Operating System's pricing is on the expensive end since it tends to be used by big enterprises."
"It's expensive. In fact, nobody would buy any product of Informatica if the price was the only consideration. It costs money, and it doesn't come cheap, but it provides value for money in many ways."
"An annual package license fee is required."
"There are licensing and connector costs. Basically, Informatica is pay-as-you-use."
"Many users don't prefer to use the product, considering the high costs attached to the licensing part of the solution."
"The product is not very expensive."
"The cost of PowerExchange is reasonable. It does not rely on complicated formulas or unrealistic equations. The pricing model is straightforward. There is one component, and real-time integration is included. Some other solutions require purchasing additional modules or third-party plugins for this capability."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing cost of the product. It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Ab Initio Co>Operating System?
While Ab Initio Co>Operating System has positive attributes, I find that certain features can sometimes be difficult to understand. When I have too many import feeds opened, they can conflict wi...
What is your primary use case for Ab Initio Co>Operating System?
The flexibility of data type and source integration for my IT ecosystem is excellent because Ab Initio Co>Operating System uses metadata, so it doesn't actually access the data; it takes the dat...
What advice do you have for others considering Ab Initio Co>Operating System?
I have not been involved in the security access of the platform's data security features, but I know that Ab Initio Co>Operating System is very careful because it doesn't access any customer dat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Informatica PowerExchange?
Informatica PowerExchange is considered cost-efficient due to reduced number of APIs needed, enabling re-utilization of existing channels, cutting down on development and training costs.
What needs improvement with Informatica PowerExchange?
It would be helpful to have more metadata provided, which is useful for engaging more users in data exchange. The addition of data quality dashboards or measures would also help in profiling data t...
 

Also Known As

Co>Operating System
PowerExchange, Connectors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

A multinational transportation company
ACH Food, BNSF Railway Company, Illinois State University
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