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Informatica PowerCenter vs Spring Cloud Data Flow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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

Informatica PowerCenter
Ranking in Data Integration
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (9th)
Spring Cloud Data Flow
Ranking in Data Integration
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Informatica PowerCenter is 8.5%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Deepak Shiv - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides multiple transformations in one toolset and helpful when extracting data from multiple sources
Error handling capability is quite good in Informatica PowerCenter because it provides a very detailed session log, which is really helpful to identify errors. In addition, there are KB articles published by Informatica that are really helpful. So, error handling and the KB articles provided by Informatica are very helpful. Even if you face any issues or errors, we can usually resolve them. If the error cannot be solved with Informatica PowerCenter, we can raise a case with Informatica, and their support team will help us address that issue. If it cannot be solved with that particular version, they will consider it and try to solve it with the next patch or hotfix. AI Initiatives: Our company also has organizational AI or machine learning initiatives. However, Informatica PowerCenter doesn't fit into AI-related things because it's an on-premise tool. It doesn't have a significant role in the field. It is just a small ETL on-premises tool. So basically, in the AI field, Informatica PowerCenter is not going to be that impactful. Informatica has launched IICS and IDMC (Informatica Data Management Cloud and Informatica Cloud), where their AI comes into the picture. But for Informatica PowerCenter, AI does not come into the picture at all.
NitinGoyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a plug-and-play model and provides good robustness and scalability
The solution's community support could be improved. I don't know why the Spring Cloud Data Flow community is not very strong. Community support is very limited whenever you face any problem or are stuck somewhere. I'm not sure whether it has improved in the last six months because this pipeline was set up almost two years ago. I struggled with that a lot. For example, there was limited support whenever I got an exception and sought help from Stack Overflow or different forums. Interacting with Kubernetes needs a few certificates. You need to define all the certificates within your application. With the help of those certificates, your Java application or Spring Cloud Data Flow can interact with Kubernetes. I faced a lot of hurdles while placing those certificates. Despite following the official documentation to define all the replicas, readiness, and liveliness probes within the Spring Cloud Data Flow application, it was not working. So, I had to troubleshoot while digging in and debugging the internals of Spring Cloud Data Flow at that time. It was just a configuration mismatch, and I was doing nothing weird. There was a small spelling difference between how Spring Cloud Data Flow was expecting it and how I passed it. I was just following the official documentation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a Data Catalog that uses the Model repository."
"Among all the solutions I have used, I found Informatica PowerCenter to be much more stable in terms of application."
"The functions in Informatica PowerCenter that I have found most valuable are the way it manages the volume of data, the push down optimization, and the performance aspects of it, mostly related to parallelism techniques."
"I like the completeness of the way I can build ETL workflows."
"The reliability of the product and the way of orchestration of different services is valuable to us."
"Once you have learned Informatica, it is very easy to use."
"Informatica PowerCenter provides multiple transformations in one particular toolset. You don't need to apply any coding."
"The support is valuable. There are also open-source ETL products, which work very well, but there is no support. When we face a production problem, being able to get support is valuable, and it brings efficiency. With an open-source solution, we can't engage anyone to resolve the problem as quickly as possible."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it allows us to use different batch data sources, retrieve the data, and then do the data processing, after which we can convert and store it in the target."
"The best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
"The most valuable features of Spring Cloud Data Flow are the simple programming model, integration, dependency Injection, and ability to do any injection. Additionally, auto-configuration is another important feature because we don't have to configure the database and or set up the boilerplate in the database in every project. The composability is good, we can create small workloads and compose them in any way we like."
"There are a lot of options in Spring Cloud. It's flexible in terms of how we can use it. It's a full infrastructure."
"The ease of deployment on Kubernetes, the seamless integration for orchestration of various pipelines, and the visual dashboard that simplifies operations even for non-specialists such as quality analysts."
"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."
 

Cons

"I found it is kind of weird that not all of the mapping changes are treated as true changes."
"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 future, I would like to see Informatica PowerCenter integrate a more powerful dashboard."
"The reputation of Informatica is that it is expensive."
"We had to take on a large volume of data from the legacy Sybase system. This was taking a very long time, i.e., more than a day. We were trying to improve it with partitions to gpload, but we were told that we can't go more than four partitions."
"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."
"The documentation could be improved."
"There can be scalability issues. Huge amounts of data ingestion will impact performance."
"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or refreshing the dashboard."
"The solution's community support could be improved."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."
"The configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."
"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow could improve the user interface. We can drag and drop in the application for the configuration and settings, and deploy it right from the UI, without having to run a CI/CD pipeline. However, that does not work with Kubernetes, it only works when we are working with jars as the Spring Cloud Data Flow applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license model is CPU based."
"Informatica PowerCenter is reasonably priced. It is less expensive than Pentaho. There is a standard version fee in Taiwan. It is a one-time yearly subscription price that is approximately $3,010 US dollars for three users."
"Price-wise, it's more expensive than SSIS, but it's a better tool, so it has more features. Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Its licensing is expensive in terms of scaling."
"Since the solution's cost is higher, I rate the pricing as a five out of ten."
"It is for big enterprises. We have leveraged Informatica for big enterprises but not for small and medium enterprises because it is a very costly product as compared to other products. We propose this solution only for enterprise customers. For small to medium enterprises, we would propose the Microsoft solution. Its licensing is currently bundle-wise. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise."
"The price could be better. It's very expensive. On a scale from one to five, I would give Informatica PowerCenter's price a one."
"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"If you want support from Spring Cloud Data Flow there is a fee. The Spring Framework is open-source and this is a free solution."
"The solution provides value for money, and we are currently using its community edition."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
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Comparison Review

it_user90069 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 20, 2014
Informatica PowerCenter vs. Microsoft SSIS - each technology has its advantages but also have similarities
Technology has made it easier for businesses to organize and manipulate data to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with their business. Notably, ETL tools have made managing huge amounts of data significantly easier and faster, boosting many organizations’ business intelligence operations…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
18%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free compo...
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 needs improvement with Spring Cloud Data Flow?
There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or r...
What is your primary use case for Spring Cloud Data Flow?
We had a project for content management, which involved multiple applications each handling content ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and storage for different customers independently. We want...
What advice do you have for others considering Spring Cloud Data Flow?
I would definitely recommend Spring Cloud Data Flow. It requires minimal additional effort or time to understand how it works, and even non-specialists can use it effectively with its friendly docu...
 

Also Known As

PowerCenter
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica PowerCenter vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
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