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IBM Data Governance vs Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) 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

IBM Data Governance
Ranking in Data Governance
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Informatica Intelligent Dat...
Ranking in Data Governance
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
214
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (2nd), Data Quality (1st), Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), API Management (6th), Cloud Data Integration (3rd), Test Data Management (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (2nd), Data Masking (1st), Metadata Management (1st), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (3rd), Test Data Management Services (3rd), Product Information Management (PIM) (1st), Data Observability (1st), AI Data Analysis (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of IBM Data Governance is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) is 5.3%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)5.3%
IBM Data Governance1.3%
Other93.4%
Data Governance
 

Q&A Highlights

YN
Research Assistant at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
 

Featured Reviews

Murali B - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Provides a single interface to monitor and navigate data quality metrics
One area with room for improvement would be the ability to generate detailed quality reports. Some Python libraries provide quality scores and reports—having that capability within IBM Data Governance would be beneficial. We can see the pass/fail results, but getting additional percentage ratios would add significant value. My experience with IBM Data Governance has mostly been with the GUI. I've noticed some latency when accessing the portal. Also, automating reports can sometimes hang, though that might depend on the overall system. That's where I see the most room for improvement – quicker report generation. Fetching specific data from the IBM Data Governance repository tends to be slower compared to other vendors. For example, Collibra has a more responsive GUI. Retrieving large datasets from the IBM catalog is particularly slow.
Divya-Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Consultant cum Assistant Manager & Offshore Lead at Deloitte
Handles large data volumes effectively and offers competitive pricing
There is a lot of improvement required, as we still face some cache issues most of the time, which is a challenge that we expect to see resolved in the future. Additionally, there is some limitation when we are working with a tool, especially regarding In and Out parameters, and I feel that this aspect should be improved going ahead. We face issues with the API side, as Cloud Application Integration cannot handle large volumes; according to the API page, there is a limitation of 500 records or 500 MB. The AI integrated into the Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services solution is called Application Integration, where we still face challenges when dealing with huge volumes, as previously explained.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Data Governance improved data analytics operations. During a company merger, we used IBM Data Governance to understand and bridge sample data between systems."
"The valuable features include ease of use and quick response time with Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services; the performance and response time are notably faster."
"Their new licensing is very flexible. With Informatica Cloud, you have plenty of items under the same umbrella, such as services, offerings, data quality, and data masking. You have also got master data management and API management. What I really like about them is that you don't need to go to Informatica and say that you need a data integration module. You would say that you need iPaaS or Informatica Cloud. They'll then try to understand your needs and give you IPUs, which are the processing units. If I purchased a hundred IPUs from Informatica as a customer, I can use 70 IPUs for data integration. I would also need data quality, so I can use 10 IPUs for data quality. I can use the remaining 20 IPUs for API management. Down the line, if I see that my initial data integration needs for the development phase are met, then out of the 70 IPUs assigned for data integration, I can use 30 IPUs for data masking. I can shuffle these numbers in any way within the Informatica Cloud umbrella for the tenure for which I have subscribed to these IPUs. I can use all services the way I want. This flexibility is what I really love about Informatica. It also has got good connectors."
"Axon has something called Overlay, which can be used to extend the technical lineage."
"Whether we need data cleansing or data mastering, we get it all in one platform."
"Seeing the data in the mapping itself is really nice."
"The solution is easier to use compared to the other solutions."
"It comes with lot of features and is a one-stop-shop solution for integration, data modeling, and data governance. Everything can be built under one particular umbrella. If any issues come up, then there won't be any blame game saying that it could be an integration issue or an MDM hub issue because it's wholly owned by Informatica. That's the biggest advantage of Informatica MDM over that of any other tools that are available on the market."
"There isn't any human touch involved. It's just an automated business process to build different applications and talking to various APIs using the client's ecosystems. We then build new functionalities out of it."
 

Cons

"One area with room for improvement would be the ability to generate detailed quality reports. Some Python libraries provide quality scores and reports—having that capability within IBM Data Governance would be beneficial."
"I would like to see more functionality added so that it is a bit closer to how much you can do with Informatica PowerCenter."
"The GUI needs to be a little more user-friendly and appealing."
"There is room for improvement at the highest level in terms of useability and connectors for various types of new applications. The row processing performance could be better because you experience some latency dealing with high volumes of data. Most organizations will be dealing with multiple cloud applications, so you could see performance issues moving from one system to another."
"I feel the out-of-the-box APIs or the API management could be improved slightly from their current state. It could be more user-friendly."
"In terms of data volume processing, Intelligent Cloud Services does not match the efficiency of Power Center."
"Informatica's issue is the licensing. Right now, there are a lot of new gen MDMs that are offering a lot in a single licensing model."
"Its features for partitioning and optimization could be better."
"The cloud version of Axon is far behind the on-prem, and many of my clients want to go fully to the cloud. However, Axon has to be an on-prem installation. I would like to see their cloud products catch up with their on-prem capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's an expensive solution."
"Informatica Cloud Data Quality is a costly solution."
"Informatica MDM is very expensive. Apart from licensing fees, they have broken down their products into multiple products, and they charge for each and every product. If the data is huge, they charge for the data. At times, we have to use third party services for data cleaning, and they charge for that as well."
"We saw an ROI. We have been able to get data from various sources and consolidate it into a data lake, which is helping us in data analytics."
"It is expensive. That's probably the biggest drawback. The business has heartache paying the license, but that's mainly because they don't realize what value it brings. The key thing about the MDM solution is that it is in the backend, and no one sees what it is actually doing. You don't know it is a problem until it is not there."
"The price of Informatica Cloud Data Integration could be reduced."
"Pricing is determined by the number of licensed users as well as the number of Core CPUs."
"Informatica Axon is a costly solution. I rate Informatica Axon a four out of ten for its pricing."
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Answers from the Community

YN
Research Assistant at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
Sep 1, 2022
Sep 1, 2022
Hello Yegane, I recommend add Precisely Data360 Govern (Infogix Data360 Govern)
See 2 answers
TH
Architecture Sr. Manager, Data Design & Metadata Mgmt at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Sep 1, 2022
Besides features, don't forget to look at user experience and software performance. One of your choices is significantly lacking in both areas. You might consider adding erwin Data Intelligence Suite to your list. Something you might find interesting: Alation vs Collibra vs Quest (erwin) 2022 | Gartner Peer Insights  You can change the products you are comparing, seeing how others have rated the tools you are looking at.
DA
CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Sep 1, 2022
Hello Yegane, I recommend add Precisely Data360 Govern (Infogix Data360 Govern)
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise153
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Data Governance?
IBM Data Governance improved data analytics operations. During a company merger, we used IBM Data Governance to understand and bridge sample data between systems.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Data Governance?
I would rate pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. It's pretty expensive.
What needs improvement with IBM Data Governance?
One area with room for improvement would be the ability to generate detailed quality reports. Some Python libraries provide quality scores and reports—having that capability within IBM Data Governa...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
What are the biggest benefits of using Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
When it comes to cloud data integration, this solution can provide you with multiple benefits, including: Overhead reduction by integrating data on any cloud in various ways Effective integration ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ActiveVOS, Active Endpoints, Address Verification, Persistent Data Masking
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TIAA CREF, Control Risks Group
The Travel Company, Carbonite
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Collibra, Informatica and others in Data Governance. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.