Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) Reviews

I use the solution for financial institutions, where we push our data into the warehouses and analytics platforms. We query the Kafka messaging services and see whatever message we get. We used to take the API responses and load them into different target systems, some cloud-based and some on-prem. For some security reasons, we used to push the data to the on-prem and then the cloud versions.

In Informatica, we can export the metadata in XML format, and then we can see what all are available. Metadata querying is right now not there in Informatica Cloud Data Integration. Informatica Cloud Data Integration needs to make metadata querying available in the tool, and Informatica needs to put more reports to get the lineage details and then the source system, if at all there is a need for us to identify them. It is an area where we face big challenges. I started using Informatica Cloud Data Integration recently.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for two years.

The solution's technical support is pretty good, especially since the turnaround time is good. When we raise tickets with the tech support team, we get support within the shortest span. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have used IBM Cloud Paks and Informatica Cloud Data Integration. Sometimes, we have to go with our client's perspective, especially if they have pre-existing licenses and get any discounts. My company has suggested IBM Cloud Paks, but with the existing things that our clients work on in Informatica, sometimes they prefer the same vendor. We did PoCs for both IBM Cloud Informatica Cloud Data Integration to help clients figure out the overall run time cost and then the number of credits that they are after, based on which they have opted for Informatica.

I have previously worked with IBM Cloud Paks and Snowflake, and both of them were client-specific tools for which we had to choose. If some tool was already in place, then it has already been paid for as a part of the procurement process, so we should continue with it. If it is a new proposal, then we have to go for it and list out to our customers all the things that we have in our pocket, and where we can take care of all the accesses, billing per hour for users, number of hours, and all such related details. After that, we suggest to our customers to take a call depending upon the amount of budget that needs to be allocated for the technical stuff.

For the last few months, I have been working only on Informatica Cloud Data Integration. Some people are interested in the Azure Databricks for their pipelines. Some of the partners who are providing tools to customers are also interested in Azure Databricks.

Instead of Informatica, I recommend IBM products to others, especially if someone already has other products from IBM's family or has purchased some information catalog. My company suggests that such customers go with IBM Cloud Paks since it allows you to lift and shift some of the existing jobs or processes to the IBM Cloud Catalog. If somebody wants to go for a cross-platform, then there was a time when my company used to suggest they go for Azure Databricks. It all depends on the existing infrastructure and a user's broader plan. Based on it, we used to suggest tools to customers. My company also used to look at what our customers were using and what their target was.

When it comes to the impact of the mapping and transformation features on data integration processes, Informatica has an existing license system where we directly map it to the existing cloud and then run it over the cloud. Any new development activities that we are doing are done directly on the cloud. Informatica has provided this migration tool for lift and shift purposes. With the tool, almost 80 to 90 percent of things are directly convertible from on-prem to cloud services, but through reports, we figured out that 10 percent can't be done, so we have to redo such areas in the cloud.

Speaking about the ease of use and learning curve of Informatica, I would say that my total experience is close to thirteen years with ETL tools. I have worked on multiple ETL tools on different clouds. I don't see much difference between IBM Cloud Paks and Informatica Cloud Data Integration. For me, these are more or less similar tools, with just a change in cosmetics.

Speaking about Informatica Cloud Data Integration's performance and scalability and how it meets our company's project needs, I would say that we have to buy CPU units. Initially, we had some 10,000 CPU units, and with that, we knew how many credits there were. Most of our systems are in production, so only with the peak loads, our threshold is not going beyond 60 to 70 percent of utilization.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration is associated with a bigger integration part where we have around 200 mappings and it works well. I don't see many issues in the tool except in the area of metadata querying. If I want to figure out a particular column of the table that is impacting the number of mappings, previously, we used to go for query, or we used to query in XML format. Currently, we have to call the APIs, but the information that we are after is not that precise.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration can be integrated with Salesforce. We can also have some other API integrations. If you have any specific systems, then considering whatever ERPs or legacy systems we have used with the tool, we don't see many issues.

I would recommend the tool to others. I would recommend the product to mid-sized companies. At the end of the day, everything is about the number of CPUs or the units that are needed to run it. Everything depends on the number of mappings of the growth prospect of the ETL pipelines that one is going to build. If it is mid-level and companies are above the mid-level zone, Informatica and IBM Cloud Paks are preferable to the other tools.

I rate the tool a seven and a half to eight out of ten.

It improves the workflow.

In terms of the user experience, it's very Integrated, and the implementation is very fast. You can integrate the platforms for different services to deliver all the banking needs.

It is expensive.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for two years.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

The scalability is impressive. Implementing something is easy, and there's no need to wait for licenses or other potential roadblocks. It is a highly efficient and smooth process, which makes it even more appealing.

The main reason for the switch was the cost. IBM solutions are quite expensive, and migrating to the cloud platform is complicated. Another significant expense comes from the database, as IBM typically recommends DB2 when implementing DataStage, and using Db2 can be costly. The company considered moving to a more versatile platform that supports different databases and cloud providers. With IBM, there are limitations, and the cloud strategy is more rigid, which influenced the decision to explore other platforms.

Deployment is straightforward. I have experience implementing the platform for various customers here in Brazil, where I live, and I can confirm that it's quite easy to implement. It takes around six months to deploy.

Data has been migrated from IBM DataStage to Informatica Cloud. In this process, we worked with NextPath MSA, which generated new metadata based on the iDMC platform. After this, the company produced the data, and here at the bank, we are validating the conversion from this process. In some cases, adjustments or parameterization were needed with Informatica to refine the processes. The company is responsible for translating the code and generating the required information for each project. We migrate this to the development environment, then to the test environment for validation, and finally to production, where about sixty percent of the projects are implemented for data integration. The entire process, from creation to production, has taken approximately six months.

We are reviewing all components and executions, and overall, the migration process has been a success, with only minor adjustments. It’s interesting to see how the company has successfully converted the original metadata to the new metadata, showcasing its expertise in the process. We have 40-50 professionals involved.  We have different levels of specialists across various areas involved in this project. For example, we have experts with extensive knowledge of IBM DataStage, others with experience in IBM CA, and some professionals specializing in databases. Each group brings expertise and experience with these solutions, contributing significantly to the project's success.

They do have additional costs in terms of usage.

The bank acquired the platform and utilized almost all its services except MDM. We use APIs, messaging, data governance, and data integration for the enterprise. The platform's full range of services is involved. The combination of data integration with application integration is precious to us. It allows us to acquire information through APIs, treat this information via data integration, and generate files or intermediary databases for future consumption by messaging systems. This type of usage is efficient and straightforward to implement. The implementation and usage are simple and effective for our needs.

In our daily operations, we receive data from external and internal systems for Kuzena and generate information in real-time for various departments within the bank, such as the risk and human resources departments. The platform’s ability to efficiently deliver this information is precious.

When a platform provides data from external systems and other sources, combined with HEP implementation and fast integration, the platform ensures high data quality and the ability to deliver information efficiently. This simplicity allows all departments in the bank to adopt and explore this type of usage easily.

I know of other companies using Informatica Cloud, like Ferrero in Chicago. They used Informatica Cloud for three years but migrated to SAP CPI this year. While I know why they made the switch, it's hard to justify it fully. For context, Ferrara produces candies and is owned by Ferrero Rocher in Italy. The IT team in Italy used SAP CPI for data integration, closing their operations with Informatica products. It's surprising, especially because Ferrero had given us positive feedback about Informatica Cloud regarding usage, implementation, and cost.

Its open platform allows it to connect with everything you need, making it very versatile and efficient for various integrations.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for ETL.

It's a powerful tool to create data warehouse solutions for our clients. We take unstructured data and use Informatica Cloud to structure it in various ways, making it usable on a reporting front end. This enables clients to make informed business decisions based on the data.

It's the accessibility and the range of features that stand out. Before using Informatica Cloud, we were working with Informatica PowerCenter. The transition from PowerCenter to Cloud wasn't entirely effortless, but it was seamless enough for our developers to adapt and continue their work smoothly.

Our main issue is transitioning from on-premise to cloud data storage. As many clients move their data to cloud platforms like Azure, Snowflake, and AWS, we're encountering problems with Informatica. Errors that were straightforward and clear with on-premise databases now appear ambiguous in cloud environments. Our developers spend significant time reducing these generic errors, often simple issues like a column not accepting null values. This lack of clarity is causing unnecessary delays as they have to sift through logs or contact support to diagnose problems that would have been more easily identified in an on-premise setup.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration as a financial partner for over five years.

We have about seven developers. It is a scalable solution.

When errors arise, contacting support can be frustrating. Sometimes, the technician can't solve the issue and transfers us to someone else. This makes us less confident that the person helping us is truly equipped to resolve the problem.

Neutral

The initial setup is simple and depends on the task. However, it usually takes a couple of hours if development is complete and we're moving from the development environment to production.

ROI is strong because we have a structured portal that ensures development is done correctly. It is shareable, scalable, and equipped with enough monitoring tools to quickly address any issues. Ultimately, the client doesn't care what tools we use. They just want problems resolved quickly. Informatica provides the necessary tools and features to help us do that effectively.

It has premium pricing. Depending on what we're working on and which features we're using within Informatica, there can be additional costs. It's mostly data integration, but you might need to upgrade your license to include other aspects of Informatica. Certain connectors require a license upgrade to access.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is used for our SharePoint data, and it is used for our financial data, so we prepare some kind of data lakes about data. And for a lot of financial things. For example, when somebody has to put the user, like, what we have in your organization. You have a user, and some joint venture partners are there. So, we use it for multiple financial master data. Basically, financial master data, we use it.

We are basically partners, IT partners because a lot of data is being used in multiple applications for Informatica. So, basically, we have partners. It's like Shell. So, it's an end user, but as well as a partner.

It's helpful in integration, and it can be moved around in SharePoint.  So, from the SharePoint View, data integration and reporting, it help a lot in that way.

The speed with which the data should be moved could be improved because of the firewall. It's becoming quite slow. And the integration with Teams or with Microsoft is not so smooth. So these are the areas of improvement. 

So, probably, they might even look for some upgrades or some changes over there. But these are the two key areas that we are facing issues with. One is the data moves a bit slow, and the integration within Microsoft products.

Maintenance is another issue that takes a lot of time and money. It can be a challenge in the long term.

I have been using this solution for six to seven years. 

It is stable, I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. Because of the maintenance issue, we want to scale it up, but we're not able to do so because of the maintenance issue and delayed response.

It breaks down quite often, and it takes time and money to get the issue fixed. These are challenges that need to be addressed from a global perspective, not just from my process.

The support from IBM might not be good, or the IBM people might have to contact Informatica for the solution. That could be a reason. But the resolution takes longer than expected.

There is room for improvement in the support. The response time could be faster. 

Neutral

It is easy to install because our laptops come pre-configured. There were no issues. However, it is not easy to maintain. 

We have a team that IBM handles for maintenance work. If there are issues, we raise a ticket, and they get sorted out, but it takes too long. It is not quick enough. The resolution takes more time than expected. 

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. This aligns with our company's initiative to implement a data lake strategy and drive digital transformation.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog was used by our company as proof of concept for projects related to comprehensive data governance. 

The solution has multiple valuable features for metadata collection from multiple data sources or technologies. The solution manages data and acts as a central hub for setting up data governance processes. 

The automated scanning of metadata from data sources is one of the most vital features of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The solution comprises attribute features and AI capabilities for automatic relationship discovery between different datasets.

Another powerful feature of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is data lineage. The whole path of data transformation from one location to another using certain technologies is represented in Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The solution integrates seamlessly with other products from the vendor and allows the creation of comprehensive data governance processes.

The aforementioned integrations facilitate the coverage of semantic layers in addition to the technical data. There is another business glossary product from Informatica that easily integrates with Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog to consume data harvested by Data Catalog, which makes a powerful combination. 

The user interface of the product needs to be improved. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog captures huge amounts of data and along with this data, the interface becomes comprehensible only for users with advanced technical knowledge. Even for advanced users, it becomes challenging to move around vast amounts of data collected by the solution. 

Some competitors of Informatica are trying to implement some brilliant ideas, but they lack the coverage provided by Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The data lineage feature can also be further improved.

While using the solution, the data is being transmitted outside the client's network to the Informatica cloud, which can be a security concern; the vendor can solve this by enabling the product as part of a public cloud like Azure, AWS, or Google. The aforementioned scenario can be a concern for institutions like banks where there are legal restrictions and data needs to be fully under control. 

I have been using Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog for a year. It was used in two different projects in our company, each of them concluded in six months. 

I would rate the stability of the product as seven out of ten. 

The customer support is satisfying, but the turnaround or response time is quite long as the vendor needs to support a huge number of customers daily. At our company, we have noticed that there are experts in the support team who can provide effective solutions. 

The tool's initial setup is complex. I had experience with the on-prem deployment of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, but I believe the cloud version is easier to set up. The solution's deployment takes around three to six months.

About four to five professionals are required, including technical administrators and data governance experts, for the on-prem deployment of the solution; for cloud deployment, three professionals might be enough. 

It's a very expensive solution. 

Informatica covers the widest area of technologies in comparison to other vendors and they also have a network of partners who develop add-ons for extending functionalities or data source technologies which could be integrated with Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The solution provider has a wide partner ecosystem to provide features on APIs and special custom formats that could be imported or integrated into varying processes. 

The solution's features can be extended and the vendor provides useful documentation and training on it. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is a reliable platform due to its extensibility and cooperation with other partners. I would overall rate the product an eight out of ten. I would definitely recommend others to use the solution, given that there isn't a requirement for in-depth analysis. 

The critical data lineage feature acts as a link between every aspect of data governance, including an explanation of the data journey and its history which reflects the business growth. The powerful AI capabilities of the solution allow you to automate the management of massive amounts of data, especially the aspect of associating technical metadata with business terms.

When dealing with millions of data attributes its not possible to manage data manually, therefore Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is needed to automate 60 to 80 percent of data association between business terms and harvested technical terms.

If the Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog deployment is carried out efficiently, it can greatly impact your organization and enable business capabilities to further improve business processes. 

The use cases attached to Informatica MDM may vary for different industries. Suppose I talk about industries related to healthcare and life sciences. In the aforementioned scenario related to healthcare and life sciences, there have been situations where a lot of sales representatives have issues while trying to set up calls with different physicians. Informatica or any MDM solution usually helps people in the healthcare industry optimize their business processes, especially when setting up calls with different physicians. Typically, Informatica MDM helps to reduce the number of duplicate details related to a physician or the data related to a particular organization data so that the sales representatives don't end up sending duplicate call invites to the same physician, especially those physicians who have probably different versions of their own name.

I think the integration feature is probably one of the key features in Informatica MDM. When compared to other Indian products, Informatica MDM has an edge due to its integration capabilities.

I don't see any area of improvement required when it comes to Informatica MDM since it is one of the leading products in the market. Some unification in Informatica MDM's UI side would probably make it better. I find Reltio more intuitive when compared to Informatica MDM's UI. Informatica MDM's UI is not intuitive enough. Informatica MDM's UI can be made a bit more intuitive.

I think all the latest up-to-date features are made available in Informatica solution. When it comes to Informatica MDM, all the features are mostly included, because of which there is nothing that needs to be added.

The long response time taken by the technical team of Informatica can be considered for improvement.

I have experience with Informatica MDM. I currently work for a company that has an alliance partnership with Informatica. I use Informatica to develop MDM solutions for my company's clients. I work as a solution provider since my company wants its employees to work as middlemen for Informatica products. In my company, we use Informatica to build solutions for clients. I use the latest version of Informatica MDM.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a highly scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

If it is for a single region deployment, the number of users who use the solution can vary somewhere between ten to fifteen, but if it is for a global deployment, then there could be hundreds of users who would use the solution.

The solution is used on a daily basis in my organization.

If there is a super high-priority issue, then the technical team of Informatica is super responsive. However, if it is a low-priority issue, they usually take a little longer than their usual response time. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

When it comes to Informatica MDM, it is mostly a cloud or SaaS-based product, because of which the configuration or setup phases may not pose a challenge. Most of the MDM solutions are now SaaS-based products that the product vendor maintains, and so such products are mostly accessed through web URLs over the cloud. Right now, any configuration or setup is not challenging, which used to be the case several years ago when these solutions were deployed on an on-premises model, because of which installation and other such procedures were required. Currently, most products are SaaS-based solutions, so there are no such challenges with respect to setup.

I rate the initial setup phase of Informatica MDM as a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

Predominantly, Informatica MDM gets deployed on a public cloud. There is a provision to go ahead with if any of our company's clients want the product to be deployed on a private cloud, but it comes at a very high cost.

The time taken for the end-to-end deployment process depends on the complexity of the project that you are working on, but if I have to give you a standard answer, it would be approximately six months to start from scratch until production goes live.

Considering the members from the production and UAT departments, the UAT department dealt with the product for three weeks, and the overall deployment process took place over a month to a month and a half. Around eight staff members were required for the deployment process, including an Informatica developer responsible for configurations, a lead developer, two people for integration, a project manager, and one solution architect.

One of the in-house teams in my company carried out the deployment process.

I would say that the return on investment from the use of the solution is fairly good.

I rate the product's ROI a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is zero percent return on investment, and ten is one hundred percent return on investment.

I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price. The product does come at a certain cost since it is one of the best products in the market. The payments for the solution are made on a subscription-based model, meaning it is a pay-as-you-go model. In general, the costs attached to the solution depend on its usage.

The costs, in addition to the standard licensing fees for the solution, depend on users' requirements.

The people required for the maintenance of Informatica MDM depend upon the requirements of the clients who use the product.

I would say that a team of five people that includes a solution architect who operates in a partial capacity would be good enough to take care of Informatica MDM's maintenance phase.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

We use the product to store data. We have established a structured system where we store all relevant information, including donor details, images, and series, ensuring easy accessibility for users.

The product's most valuable feature is the ability to select the data flow and lineage.

Informatica Axon's response times and certain aspects of the admin panel could be enhanced for better usability.

We have been using Informatica Axon for more than one year.

I rate the platform's stability as seven out of ten.

We have around 400 Informatica Axon users in our organization. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The technical support services at the moment are impeccable. The support team has answers for everything. They have maintained this level of quality as we progress. There aren't many issues currently, although we're awaiting the migration to the cloud.

Positive

The implementation process could be simplified.

The platform has a premium cost. I rate the pricing as seven out of ten.

The product needs to be adequately supported in the current setup. I advise others to conduct a proof of concept (POC) and assess how it progresses. The learning curve can be steep, but with sufficient time investment, they can also impart knowledge to the users, which is crucial for effective change management.

I recommend it to others and rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution helps with cataloging and obtaining the data lineage. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog also helps in identifying vital datasets, including the critical data elements and cataloging them. In our company, we have to manage the life cycle of the critical data elements and maintain the business glossary.

The definitions of the critical data elements, their linkage, lineage, as well as the relationships are managed using the solution. Informatica has been in the industry for decades, so they are one of the top SMB partners. 

At our company, along with the solution, we also use Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services REST API for app and system integrations in the packaging industry. Of our total portfolio, we integrated applications for about 20%, but we did not have any cloud presence; only a setup application was in the cloud. But for all the on-prem projects, the key components of the customer's product were integrated and governed by using Informatica. 

Data lineage is a valuable feature when, at our company, we design the physical elements and the logical components and need to identify the relation between them. 

The duplicate identification feature for two tickets, synonymous fields, or attributes is another vital aspect of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The categorization of whether data is critical or not in the business glossary is another vital feature of the tool.  

The product is difficult for an untrained professional to operate. Specialized skills need to be acquired by learning the tool and executing it for data operations. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog needs to be more user friendly, the UI is extremely complex.

For instance, if I have to view the tool, the first deterrent is that it gets highly technical. Thus, a limited number of professionals can understand the tool processes. Unless you are a data professional, it's very difficult to use Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The tool operates with Power BI sometimes.  

I have been using Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog for eight years. 

At our company, we haven't faced any downtime or business issues with the solution. The solution allows a limited number of users, so it's easier for the vendor to manage stability. 

I believe the solution is scalable and integrates satisfactorily. Our company was successful with scalability because, for the majority of our applications, where the key data was being hosted, we could integrate the apps quite easily with the cloud.

If Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is being used, scaling the data up or down shouldn't be a problem. The solution's cloud integrations make scalability easier, unlike the on-prem version, which requires implementing complex security protocols. 

I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten. The product's support team has been highly responsive while solving the issues faced by our organization. 

Positive

At our company, during the product deployment, we had to asses our applications and APIs that would be connected, whether they were available out of the box or not. But the capabilities of customer connections are available with similar tools.

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog offers custom connectivity. Therefore, the deployment process has been troublesome for our organization except for the mainframe. But as we kept using the tool we realized the integrations could be smoothly completed. At our company, we implement the product if customers are convinced to integrate the tool and make it their central, single source of data management for integrators and technicians. 

The deployment of the solution took more than a year in our organization, which included upgrades, contract renewals, and demonstrations similar to IDMC, provided by the same vendor. For deploying the on-prem version of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, a team of five engineers was needed in our company to manage the whole deployment and support process.

A couple of business analysts are needed to gather the users' requirements. Our organization has about ten members who provide on-call support on Informatica for its customers, comprising developers, business analysts, and testers. 

In our organization, we were able to derive about 70% of the critical data lineage. 

It's a costly solution. I would rate the pricing of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog as six out of ten. 

The automated data lineage feature utilization depends upon the integration, which is why, in our organization, we had all our key applications integrated that derived automated lineages. But there were unknown applications as well, which, due to the lack of integrations, needed to be manually plugged in.

The mainframe integration with Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is highly complex. At our organization, due to the aforementioned complexity, we had to import all the data of the mainframe into Informatica. If you are able to integrate the tool with your core applications and systems, then the data lineage duration is pretty simple and this structure is the same for competitor tools as well. 

In our company, we might explore in the near future how Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog can assist with AI capabilities. I would overall rate the solution as eight out of ten. To anyone looking to use Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, I would say if they are willing to understand the company data, then the professional should gather sufficient technical knowledge about the product or take assistance from an Informatica expert because it's not a straightforward tool.