Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) Reviews

You have to deal with a minimum of five, even if you want to go and check only a particular logic, making it an area with issues where improvements are required.

Certain shortcomings in the product's UI make it an area where improvements are required. The tool should provide ease of use and flexibility.

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

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

I see that my company faces frequent challenges in the tool when it comes to the area of UI and related to the area of characters. In my company, we have experienced some issues that occur when upgrading the tool.

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

Enterprise-sized customers can choose Informatica Cloud Data Integration.

The technical support for the solution is helpful, but it takes them time to figure out the issue. The time taken to close the ticket depends on the support that Informatica gets from their backend technical team. It takes a long time to close a ticket. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

The product's initial setup phase was not difficult.

The product's deployment phase can be carried out by linking a .exe file provided by the solution with your server.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

Against Informatica Cloud Data Integration, I recommend SnapLogic, which is a cheaply priced product. People know about SnapLogic, as it comes with very good features and ease of use.

The feature of the product that I find the most beneficial for data warehousing tasks is the use of the tool for extracting and loading purposes, which depends upon the connector's availability. Many connectors in Informatica are not free or out of the box, and you have to purchase them. The tool has quality connectors.

I haven't used the tool for real-time data analytics, but I have used it in my company for batch-oriented purposes. Data integration will not be supported in real-time in Informatica Cloud Data Integration. For real-time data integration, you have to go with either the application integration or other products like Informatica PowerExchange.

In Informatica Cloud Data Integration, the transformation feature was almost the same as that of Informatica PowerCenter. In Informatica Cloud Data Integration, the transformation features may offer a couple of more functionalities.

In terms of the ease of learning that the product provides, I would say that those who have experience with Informatica PowerCenter can easily adopt Informatica Cloud Data Integration. A person who has worked on Informatica Cloud Data Integration may not be comfortable with Informatica PowerCenter. In terms of ease of use, I consider Informatica PowerCenter to be easier than Informatica Cloud Data Integration.

I rate the ease of use experience attached to the tool a six out of ten.

Only after considering the use cases of people can I recommend the product to them. If a person only wants a product for extraction and loading purposes, then I feel that there are many cheap products in the market that can satisfy their needs. Suppose someone is looking at a tool that offers widespread features, like application integration and real-time functionalities. In that case, all of it comes under Informatica, which can be a good option.

The tool is the most expensive one compared to any of the other products in the market, especially in terms of ETL functionalities or integration features.

My company has integrated SAP, many databases, and APIs into Informatica Cloud Data Integration.

I can see that the performance of the product keeps improving with every new release, especially in the area of job executions, even though the hardware may be the same.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

We use the tool to collect, integrate, and process the data from different sources. Later, we direct the processed data to the required solution for analysis purposes.

It is a cloud service integration platform providing flexible and scalable data management architecture. It enables seamless integration with large data ecosystems, including Hadoop and NoSQL databases. It supports real-time data streaming platforms as well.

They could provide more robust performance for data integration processes. It would help in improving the data quality more efficiently.

We have been using Informatica Data Integration Hub for the past six months.

I rate the platform’s stability a seven out of ten. The complexity depends on the types of data. It has a robust software architecture.

The product offers two types of scaling mechanisms. We can add more nodes, integrate the service grid, and distribute workloads across multiple processing units. Also, we can add more resources, including CPU memory. It enhances the capability to handle large data volumes.

We can even utilize the load-balancing feature while handling high volumes of data. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten for efficient adaptability, pricing, and performance.

The technical support services are good.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on several factors, including types and volumes of data. It also depends on the data integration and configuration.

Working with a healthcare client with diverse locations, we faced the challenge of analyzing data in isolation, making it difficult to generalize findings across different areas. With the help of Informatica Data Integration Hub, we can collect data from various locations and enhance business insights.

We are familiar with centralized publishing and subscription models. It ensures the enforcement of data governance policies across all data sources and consumers, promoting data consistency and quality.

The automated artificial data synchronization facilitated by the data integration hub has proven invaluable in supporting our daily operations. It ensures the continuous updating of data, preventing delays and inaccuracies that may arise from using outdated information in analyses. This capability became particularly crucial during the sudden changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing us to adapt swiftly to the evolving business landscape. However, they could provide us with real-time data to increase the efficiency of manufacturing processes.

I advise others to understand the different data resources available in the organization before making the purchase decision. I rate it an eight out of ten.

It's about mastering various domains. For example, an organization might want to master customer data residing within their IT landscape. This includes all master attributes related to customers, like name, email ID, phone number, address, and potential information like stores they visit. Ideally, if the organization also stores data related to those stores, all that information, files, and everything would be included. So, these master attributes would lie within the MDM system.

Here's where things get interesting. I'd bring this data from disparate sources. For example, accounting systems hold phone numbers, email addresses, and maybe even bank information (just an example). 

But another system, like the ER system, might have different information, like the customer's spouse. So, I'd likely get streams from both these systems, but there might be an additional attribute in the ERP system, like the spouse's name.

Now, looking at all these different attributes lying in different systems, one system might have my name as "Raja S.," while another might have it as "Raja Soni." So, the question becomes: are Raja S. and Raja Soni the same person? How do you identify them from these records?

They try to match these records based on phone numbers or any other common attribute between the two systems. Then, I would have a complete record in MDM, which is called the "Golden Record" - the single version of truth within the system.

Furthermore, MDM can also contain additional attributes that the ERP or accounting systems didn't have. So, imagine ten different applications or data sources feeding customer information. I can gather all of that information and create a single version of the truth for a particular customer within the MDM system.

Additionally, if I want my customers to update any information, I can provide a form where they can enrich their data. For example, they could potentially enter their Social Security number (although this wouldn't be common practice). This is just an example of how someone might want to collect this information. So, I can create a form and say, "Okay, can you directly feed this into the MDM system?" This becomes an enrichment opportunity as well.

With Informatica MDM, before you consume the data, you need to check what kind of data it is. There could be some systems where the first name is missing, or the last name is listed as "missing." 

This is where, before consuming or ingesting data into any MDM system, I can filter it out or rather do profiling using Informatica's data quality tool, which is a different tool called IDQ. I can profile the data, okay, and see the current state of the data from our system, any other database, or any source system. 

This is where I'll identify issues like missing phone numbers, incorrect cities, and other things.

So, when I see that the data is incorrect or incomplete (not just incorrect, but also incomplete), I can go back to the source system based on these profiling reports. I would say, "Source XYZ, you have missing data. Can you please ensure that you send it?" So, when I ingest data into the MDM system, I will only ingest it with certain rules. 

These rules define that only records with a first name, last name, city, phone number, and email address should get into MDM. If any of this is missing, I'm not going to let it get into the system.

I would ask the business to review those and then probably ask the system to correct them and then feed them again until the defined criteria are achieved. That's how I improve data quality using Informatica MDM.

Plus, I can also decide that once the data is in MDM, it can feed back to these source systems from where it was originally consuming the data. So, whatever is corrected gets looped back to these sources if they allow me to publish it to them. 

Then, this automatically becomes a cycle: data comes in, gets a data quality check, then enters MDM, and then can be fed back to the source systems if they accept it.

First and foremost, data profiling is a very important aspect, because it allows me to understand the state of the data from the different source systems and applications I'm going to pull into MDM. This is crucial, as it helps me understand the existing data landscape.

Next, Informatica MDM allows you to perform fuzzy matching. Like the example of Raja S and Raja Soni mentioned above. With fuzzy matching, I can define a threshold, and the system will let me know whether these two records are the same or not. 

This is where I think MDM shines - with its strong fuzzy matching algorithm. This is the essence of Informatica MDM. Based on these results, I can write our match conditions and then perform the corresponding data management activities.

When it comes to how data is governed - how accurate it is, what's missing, and what's not.

There are other Informatica tools involved: Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog (EDC) and Informatica Axon, which is specifically a governance tool. With these tools, users can understand data quality. 

Data quality, Informatica EDC, and Axon work together - they "talk" to each other. The moment Axon identifies that data is bad, incomplete, incorrect, or whatever, the governance tool allows you to monitor all of these things and feed them back into the organization.

For example, if someone within the organization is using the governance tool, which is connected to data quality, they might realize: "This particular source isn't giving me certain information, like city data. But I need city information for my XYZ data usage. So, I should focus on another data source or application where customer cities are available." Based on this, data governance can be implemented, and workflows can be established.

MDM also provides workflows. When records come in or if a customer wants to update a record directly in MDM, different personas can be defined. 

A workflow would then be triggered, and someone could review the data being fed through these forms or sources. They might reject or accept it based on predefined criteria. This is how data entering MDM is governed, ensuring everything is correct and meets organizational standards.

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 future releases, I would love to have more reports and dashboards available within Informatica MDM specifically for master data reporting. 

Currently, there aren't many reporting functionalities offered. While it's true that reporting isn't a core feature of any MDM system, they do have basic dashboard reports. I'd like to see them made more customizable and offer more options for creating reports.

I have been working with it for more than ten years. 

Stability-wise, it's also pretty decent and stable. So, I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It's pretty good because mastering data across various domains like suppliers is crucial. Informatica is probably the best when it comes to multi-domain solutions.

There are around 500 end users. 

The quality of resources is good, and the time is acceptable. However, the initial quality of resources assigned to support tickets could be better.

Neutral

I'd rate Informatica higher. The biggest reason is the multi-domain capability. Not all vendors offer that flexibility. 

Additionally, Informatica is actively working on a clear, built-in AI engine for its tools. The SaaS version functions well, and they've introduced CLAIRE AI engine for on-premise versions. This engine learns from usage within your organization, further enhancing the experience.

The complexity of the setup depends. For example, it is different for the on-premise version. Now, Informatica has mostly shifted towards a SaaS model, which is essentially plug-and-play. You just need to log in and start using it, making it very simple. 

However, for the on-premise version, the setup process requires some expertise. It's not something just anyone can do. You need experts in place to handle the setup effectively.

Within the organization, businesses have benefited significantly. Tasks that used to take four to six weeks now only take three to four days.

Pricing can vary because Informatica doesn't have a standard price across the board. It depends more on the sales representatives in different regions. They essentially call the shots and decide the discount percentage for each customer.

So, it's quite flexible, like a bargain, in a way, but it depends on the salesperson.

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

I absolutely recommend it. If you're looking to implement a Master Data Management (MDM) solution, Informatica MDM is the most flexible tool available in the market. Compared to its competitors, it offers several advantages.

Firstly, it provides the option to move seamlessly between on-premise and SaaS versions. If you start with the on-premise version, you can easily transition to the SaaS model later, if needed. 

We use Informatica Cloud Data Integration to migrate to the cloud, upgrade our data warehouse, and implement master data management. It helps us with in-depth analysis, leveraging shared history, and addressing data governance questions.

The most valuable features of Informatica Cloud Data Integration for our clients are the AI capabilities within Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services. It excels in mapping development, searching for contracts in data governance, creating data quality rules, and designing merging processes. The ability to identify duplicates and automate analysis coverage is particularly beneficial. Additionally, the cost-effective option of using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for smaller projects or departments has made it more accessible and attractive for experimentation.

One area where Informatica Cloud Data Integration could improve is in providing more accelerators for certain functionalities. For example, for master data management, having additional accelerators could streamline implementation. Additionally, enhancing compatibility with metadata sharing across different applications, similar to what is achievable with PowerCenter, would further enhance the product's capabilities.

I would like to see more connectors for on-premise databases in the next version of Informatica Cloud Data Integration. Currently, CDI free is a great option for cloud integration, but expanding the connectors to include databases like Oracle or MySQL for on-premise environments would make the tool more versatile and accessible for smaller businesses or those not fully in the cloud.

I have been working with Informatica Cloud Data Integration since 2016.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration has been generally stable, with occasional editor issues. However, SLAs are consistently respected, and we typically experience minimal downtime, averaging around two to three hours per month.

The scalability of Informatica Cloud Data Integration is high. With advanced pushdown optimization, it performs well in various environments like Snowflake and AWS. It is suitable for companies of all sizes; for small to medium enterprises, starting with fewer IPUs is cost-effective, and scalability allows for growth as needed.

I would rate Informatica's vendor support as a seven out of ten. It is generally good, but there is room for improvement, especially as they shift focus from on-premise to the cloud. We often find answers in the community for software issues, but sometimes we encounter challenges that require official support tickets.

Neutral

The initial setup for Informatica Data Integration is straightforward. Deployment is simple, involving exporting and importing development processes. The ability to pilot the Informatica Data Integration platform from various APIs makes continuous integration and deployment easy to manage through API calls.

I would rate Informatica's pricing as an eight out of ten in terms of affordability. Starting with a small IPU volume is cost-effective, and as we grow, the pricing adjusts favorably based on consumption, which makes it reasonable for our needs.

I would rate Informatica Cloud Data Integration overall as an eight out of ten. It is a comprehensive platform covering data integration, API integration, data quality, data governance, master data, and privacy tools—all within one platform. The accessibility to all functionalities with the purchase of IPUs is a significant advantage compared to the past where certain features required additional payments and permissions.

A wide range of solutions exist because data is primary, and my company looks over many overall data management solutions, from which Informatica Data Quality becomes one of our biggest priorities.

I cannot just go into details of the product's features randomly because if you look at a very wide range of overall requirements, be it Informatica or Talend or more data lake solutions like Snowflake. My company goes through an entire range of areas, making it difficult for me to just speak about the features.

Accuracy is one of the key areas a client looks at before using a solution. Considering internal data from legacy systems, it is quite difficult to know if Informatica Data Quality meets that high level of accuracy criteria. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the solution.

I have been a consultant for Informatica Data Quality for two years in my company. I don't directly use the solution.

From a stability point of view, I haven't heard of any complaints about the solution from any of my company's clients who use it.

I don't go into the technical side of Informatica Data Quality much since I mostly work on the procurement side and market knowledge area related to the product. Scalability remains one of the requirements of the clients who buy the product, especially for future growth. My company caters to a mixture of clients, consisting of small, medium, and enterprise-sized businesses.

I do not go into the complete deployment areas of Informatica Data Quality.

The solution is deployed on a hybrid cloud.

Informatica Data Quality is a product that is worth the money.

I rate the product's pricing a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is the lowest price and ten is the highest price.

I do look at a number of data quality tools, but Informatica, Talend, and Ataccama are a few of the top solutions I have come across.

My company deals with Informatica Data Quality since Informatica is a big vendor in the overall data management area.

I won't be able to speak on how I can recommend the solution to others since my suggestions will have to be based on the product's features and technical details. I wouldn't be able to point out anything about the product in detail, especially since I am not much of an end user.

Based on the feedback that I have received about the product from my company's customers, I rate the overall product a seven or eight out of ten.

My company does not specifically focus on selling the solution to a particular sector. My company generally sells the solution to various sectors, including manufacturing and finance.

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is a compact tool. Many products operate as a data system solution or as a data catalog tool. The product is helpful when it comes to data transformation. If you would like to solve specific data-related problems, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog can serve as a useful product.

I cannot specifically point out an area in Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog that needs improvement since it properly functions as a data catalog tool. You cannot use something like Atlas to get catalog ranges, making Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog a comparatively powerful tool. The UX and UI of the solution are areas with certain shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future.

If I want to get some extra features in the product, I can contact Informatica's research and development team, who can add some new features to the product and make the tool available in the market.

I have been using Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog for more than ten years. My company has a partnership with Informatica.

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

Though there are some bugs in the solution, Informatica's research and development team, along with Informatica's customer service team, supports my company in solving such bug-related issues.

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

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog can be a good solution that is really easy to use when it comes to enterprise-sized companies, but it may pose some challenges for small and medium-sized companies.

Most companies to whom my company provides the solution are enterprise-sized businesses.

I rate the technical support a ten out of ten. My company has a partnership with Informatica, and we provide Informatica's products to the end users or customers. Informatica has to provide my company with good support in order to hold on to its customers who deal with my company.

Positive

I rate the product's initial setup a nine and a half to ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Most of the companies to whom my company provides the solution deploy it on an on-premises model. My company also sells the cloud version of the solution while also offering our customers the option to move from on-premises to the cloud version of the solution.

My wife runs a pharmacy, and she uses an ERP solution for sales-related activities, the data of which I can move to the cloud in ten minutes if she chooses Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog.

With Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, measuring the return on investment can be hard. I rate the return on investment a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is zero return on investment, and ten is a hundred percent return on investment.

The price of the product is something that may vary from customer to customer. I rate the product's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

If a customer or business wants to easily maintain their data domains, they can opt for Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog.

I rate the overall product an eight to nine out of ten.

We use Informatica MDM to enable the master data for getting the customer's product 360.

Informatica MDM has data quality, mastering the data's capability.

Inserting the GenAI into the master data management will reduce the overall effort of operational activities.

I have been using Informatica MDM for five to six years.

Informatica MDM is quite a stable solution. I rate Informatica MDM a nine out of ten for stability.

Informatica MDM is quite a scalable solution. Most of our clients for Informatica MDM are enterprise businesses.

Usually, it takes six to eight months to deploy Informatica MDM.

Master Data Management is always only 20% implementation; the remaining 80% defines all other components. So, if users have the right process, the tool will do its job. The tool will do whatever we give input for.

Informatica MDM is quite a good product in terms of mastering all the data and ensuring that we will be able to get a 360 degree of the master data.

Overall, I rate Informatica MDM a nine out of ten.

The primary use case is for data governance, data quality, data lineages, and data cataloging.

It is used by an internal team for data discovery. However, we are not able to provide business area-level access to other users because of data security.

It's a good product, and the features for data quality, data cataloging, and UI are excellent. It has a lot of advantages.

The major points of improvement are stability, integration, and permission to sub-folders or categories of data. If you want to provide access to a particular type of data discovery to a team, it exposes a lot of data points which in turn makes Axon not that useful for them.

Permissions, scalability, and connection with other informatic tools are the main areas that need development. Integration with other tools, such as IDQ, is challenging. The management of data discovery is highly challenging because many data points have identical definitions.

Mostly, this will come under the data security permission level or admin access.

I have been using Axon for a year, but I have been using other solutions from Informatica for five years now. 

I currently use the latest version of Axon.

I would rate the stability a three or four out of ten. It's not loading at all and it keeps on getting down.

I would rate the scalability a six out of ten. There is room for improvement. 

We developed something on IDQ on the data quality side. If there is a huge data or a big workload, it takes a lot of time to run and we don't get the result in Axon. 

There are around 10 to 15 end users using Axon in our organization. 

There is a different team for platform maintenance, management, and deployment. There are around ten people on the team. It's a mix of engineers and developers.

The platform team had some difficulties with admin-level things and keeping Axon up all the time because it's on-premises. 

The solution is expensive.

Not on the governance, but I have used Databricks, Azure Synapse, Oracle, and other services by Azure.

Databricks is my personal favorite because of the scalability and the runtime it takes to load a large amount of data from a data engineering and data science perspective. 

I'll probably look for another solution because it has stability issues. When it's needed, it's usually unavailable.

However, it is a good product the way it's designed. It's a very good product, and it has a lot of features that are required for data governance. It moved all the Excel work to our web page, which can be accessible to everyone. It's a good product, but it needs some improvement.

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

In my company, we use Informatica Cloud Data Integration because I work in the insurance sector, where we use the tool for data migration from one environment to another. We also use Informatica Cloud Data Integration in scenarios where the clients switch from their legacy system to Informatica Cloud using Azure Synapse, because of which we have to migrate all the data to Azure Synapse.

The most valuable features of the solution are pushdown, optimization, and partitioning, which can be used for frequent data loading, especially when we have a huge data volume in our company.

While my company operates on the cloud, we have seen that Informatica Cloud Data Integration has some performance issues causing it to lag. I feel that Informatica is still in the process of improving its cloud. Sometimes, there are connectivity shoes in the product causing it to have multiple issues, because of which the solution hangs or lags. The product may have issues because they are new to the market and are trying to improve their services.

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

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

The solution can be easily scaled up since we just need to take the aid of some PIM processor and increase the data volume as per what we want.

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

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I have an experience of more than ten years with Informatica PowerCenter.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration's on-premises version is very good, considering the faster performance and efficiency it provides. Informatica Cloud Data Integration's cloud version is also getting enhanced since Informatica has been regularly doing some patching to increase the product's performance. Considering the current scenario, Informatica PowerCenter is a good product, especially its on-premises version.

The deployment doesn't take much time, and only a few minutes are needed to deploy the solution.

I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is the cheapest and ten is the most expensive. The product is a bit expensive.

In the cloud, Informatica has migrated to a different environment in a single platform named IDMC, on which one can have cloud data migration, cloud application integration, data quality, and data governance, making everything combined with a single platform. Earlier in our company, we had to rely on different software or platforms for each functionality, but now we can use a single URL and work on a single platform.

I would like to speak about Informatica Cloud Data Integration's performance, which is too slow but works overall as a tool. To those planning to use Informatica Cloud, I would say that it is the second-best product in the marketplace, and soon it will become the leading product.

On a daily basis, the product has been increasing their overall availability and performance .On a weekly basis, the product gives out some new updates while fixing its old defects. It will be a good product in the coming years. Improvements in the current product will continue for some time.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

Informatica MDM is a multi-domain product for any master data management. We could use it for customer master data management or supplier data. Given the nature of the business, we can apply Informatica MDM to master the core data entities within an organization.

Informatica MDM has a defined data model we can customize with user and developer options. The solution's user interface allows users to work with the master data model. Another feature I like is that the solution can integrate with various data cleansing engines, such as address cleansing or data quality-related packages or functionalities.

From a data or master data management perspective, the solution is pretty evolved. But from a business process automation workflow standpoint, it could be a bit more intuitive, rather than technically complex, such as in workflow alteration using ActiveVOS. The solution also needs adaptive rules elaborating AI/ML technologies.

I have been working with Informatica MDM for ten years now.

The solution is robust and stable enough.

With master data, we don't usually talk about tons of data. There could be a lot of records, but then it's not that huge. Now that Informatica is shifting towards the cloud as part of their software, they would have considered the scalability perspective, which is not too huge. Like transactional databases, we would expect less data there. The solution is mature enough to cater to a wide range of users.

We have a huge dependency on support all the time. If something is required or unclear or doesn't work, we have to raise a ticket and follow a process to resolve it. The turnaround time is long sometimes.

Even for simpler questions, we still have to be put on hold and wait for someone to pick up and respond. Even if the problem is critical, support does not treat it with the same urgency we would anticipate or expect.

Neutral

One would need professional services from Informatica to get MDM installed, and there has to be a contract with professionals all the time after that to manage the data model and any changes to the data. Moreover, there is a huge dependency on their professional services to work with the product in the long-term perspective.

The setup is not complex for professionals, but people without a technical background would not be able to set up the solution by themselves.

Once the installations are complete, there are two aspects to the solution. One is the back-end, which is the model, then setting up integration to load the data and configuring the MDM system to perform its master data capability. The other part is the front end, which is deploying the user interfaces and ensuring the user roles are defined and set up.

When deploying the solution, the whole project team needs to be around because the developers, the users, and everybody on the project team must come together because once it is deployed, it needs to be tested. Maintenance teams would be separate. They need to focus on any minor enhancements to the solution and provide support with any bugs, issues, or questions users might have with the data.

I have heard from customers that the product comes with a huge license cost. Under contractual terms, Informatica does not let us have full control of our own datasets, but that comes down to how the billing and licensing work. The licensing is a bit complex and expensive.

I have experience working with Informatica MDM. However, I have been comparing it against MS MDS to see how each stands. More from a costing perspective, a licensing standpoint, or any roadmap from a product's perspective, for which MS MDS has no plans to expand or evolve to a newer product with more capabilities. That's something I am checking in the background. Given the current landscape in my organization, both tools coexist, but we are trying to see if we need to replace one with the other.

At the moment, Informatica is the market leader within the MDM space, expanding into the latest data integration and management advancements. I don't see MS MDS in these areas. But then again, MS MDS has been treated as a legacy system within the organization, and we're trying to find a roadmap to replace it with Informatica by understanding what it offers comparatively.

The solution is pretty evolved from an MDM perspective, and it seamlessly integrates with its product suite.

We work with the on-prem version. We have seen the cloud version, but we're not there yet because it takes a long time to onboard all the businesses onto the cloud. The cloud version is still at a proof of concept stage.

Before purchasing the solution, the user must understand the licensing and cost structure, as well as their professional support. All these aspects are important on an ongoing basis. Depending on the wide suite of products they offer, it's best to understand which products would suffice the business needs rather than having to roll out a full-blown MDM solution, which is not the case with all the clients.

I rate the product a seven out of ten.