What is our primary use case?
The major use cases I have dealt with are customer, vendor, and mostly product data. Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud [Private Offer Only] is majorly focused towards these domains because they provide few tables and objects already created. Then later we can enhance them and create a certain number of our own objects as well. However, it is not like a multi-ERP system which was available in the on-premises version, where we could create anything however we liked. Over here, it is more towards business entities, which are enhanceable and we can create a certain number of things. Still, the earlier on-premises version allowed us to use a third party to connect between two different domains. Here, that particular thing is already there with 360 view. However, when it comes to other domains, such as retail or reference or anything else which is not directly given by Informatica, that becomes a slightly workaround situation, not an out-of-the-box situation.
They are leading in multiple different parts because they are one of the MDM providers which have been in the industry for a very long time. Other than Stibo, SAP MDM, IBM MDM, Talend MDM, or Ataccama, they have an edge from the bugs and market requirements. They have a huge number of customers who give feedback when they are not able to process something in a direct way. They are able to prioritize a certain number of things according to customers' needs. When multiple customers ask for the same thing, they are able to prioritize it faster. Because they have more reach, that is the biggest leverage what they have from the market, and this is actually being used as a positive leverage by Informatica. The tool is stable. You can create it over AWS, Azure without any issues. It is scalable because the entire thing is on Informatica with the scalability and everything.
Maintenance is also a significant advantage. Whether it is a hotfix, upgrade version, or anything else, you are just paying for the license and the entire upgrading process remains on Informatica. They upgrade when they have a stable, updated version, which is good. Informatica agent can be installed in either way. You can go on the on-premises way, hybrid way, or put the Informatica agent towards the Informatica servers as well. So you can directly use it in any of those three directions. I have used it in a hybrid scenario because I have used hybrid and on-premises a lot since my projects were mostly towards financial and manufacturing. Manufacturing companies were already having AWS and Azure cloud structures, so they said, "We already have that structure. We do not want this to go to Informatica. We will manage it ourselves." Financial institutions were more focused on not pushing their data into the cloud for any kind of compliance or processing calculations. So they went with the premises version. It is a wholesome product.
What is most valuable?
Data catalog is good, but not great because when one particular company gives everything, they have to cut corners. If you go with Collibra, they actually give you a data governance feature, which includes data product, data cataloging and all that. You can see the entire lineage and everything. With Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud [Private Offer Only] it is smooth because you have one particular product which is being integrated into everything. That is great, but when talking about features, there are a certain number of processing time efficiency features which Collibra gives that Informatica does not. Because when you are specializing in one thing and giving everything, you have to be a little bit limited towards it. In that way, it is good, but it still needs work.
If you have a data steward role which just wants to read the data or determine what kind of updates you have to do and what kind of modules you would have access to, you will only be able to access that. The others, you can see them but you cannot go into them because you have been restricted access. You can even remove those things or create a different dashboard for role-based persons as well. Identity Access Manager (IAM) is good on Informatica side. It can use your Azure Active Directory or AWS Active Directory for getting those permissions. You can create your own role-based things which can be utilized for it. You can determine what kind of objects you have to look into, what domains you can look into if you have multiple domains, what kind of objects and attributes you can update. These things are there. You can modify those accordingly. This Identity Access Manager is good on Informatica's part.
It is actually good when you have to build a transactional system. When there are any changes, because normally in MDM you do not pull the transaction data, but whenever there is an update on the slowly changing dimension which is the master data, it can be synchronized back to the real system within very few minutes or few moments, depending on how you configure it. Normally how we configure it is using queues, Kafka queues or regular message queues. One time I even built a web service which was polling those message queues every five seconds. So it was a kind of batch, but it was near to real time because it was every five seconds polling.
I have worked with it and it is a great part what they did. Now that can learn the matches. It can give you good matches when earlier we had to tweak the match rules to get the correct matches. However, AI is doing the phonetic and fuzzy matches pretty much well. There are few modules, and if you put up those APIs for those modules, then it can go into the internet as well for getting the correct names in the correct standardized format, whatever is there on the internet. It can search that and give you a suggestion. That is actually good on the part of Claire, which is basically Informatica's AI.
What needs improvement?
I would say it can be a little bit easier to do the configurations because there are a certain number of points where we have to configure the endpoints and the plugins, and what kind of config it would be using. If it would be a little bit similar to on-premises where we do not have to put 10,000 different small things at 10 different places, then it would be a great tool to use. When it comes to integration, there are a certain number of places where we have to put twice those configurations to run them. Sometimes these are being missed and that is not the first thing you check because it has been assumed that the developer has done it. At the end of the day, if we are not able to find it in the first 30 minutes, then we always go into those areas, the plugins where it has to run, the environment variables and everything. Once that is sorted, then we do something else. The first 30 minutes is always spent going into the mapping if it is not running or anything. Then we go to environment variables. That is a little bit an overhead on the developer side. However, other than that, it is a good tool.
It would be much easier if few environment variables are straightforward so that once configured, we do not have to configure them for every integration workflow. They should be global environment variables where we can put those tokens into them, config files into them, and that can be utilized by every single workflow which we create.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started approximately three and a half years back dealing with Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud [Private Offer Only]. I am still using it in a couple of projects whenever it is there. This one is MDM related, and it is like Stibo, Reltio, and Informatica, which are a certain number of things I am dealing with now and then, approximately every two to three months, or if there is something, people pull me into meetings as well.
My earlier company was a partner. Before that, all my three companies were partners with Informatica. One was Gold and the other ones were Platinum as well. I have been dealing with it as a partner of Informatica. I am raising requests on support tickets and being over there in the support calls. I got hotfixes from them and created a certain number of alternate workflows using the user exits when it was on-premises version. Now, with the cloud version, I have dealt with them for few things which were plugins. Then towards data governance, Axon, which was already merged. Everything is now merged onto SaaS platform. There is only one single dashboard, where scheduling, integration, MDM, and data governance, all these things are present.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is responsive. It takes time for response. Some bugs take time to understand because with the logs and everything, sometimes it is understandable, sometimes you have to run it once or twice because sometimes it is through a situation.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There is scalability because they do not care about how many records you are creating, how many objects you are creating. They have that only with their users, like 10 users or 20 users, but they give a good amount of users to play with. So it is perfectly fine with that. They do not care about how much data you are storing because that is not in the licensing what I know about. If they have changed the licensing agreement, then I am not sure about it, but when I dealt with it, the objects, records, and data were not limiting factors. So I am talking about with my own experience in this particular part. That gives you a huge leverage because it does not matter if your data being processed is 30 million records or three million records, they do not care about it.
How are customer service and support?
Informatica support is helpful, but sometimes it becomes a little bit time taking because you have to do the exact same thing multiple times. Informatica support is a solid nine.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have worked with Profisee, but very early, not recently. I have worked with Reltio. Right now I am working with Simple MDG, which is our own product. This particular company's product will be releasing a newer version soon. We are still trying to get more customers for it. It is a better tool than SAP MDM in multiple different ways. It is cheaper than SAP MDM. However, I can only state this much because I have to learn the tool. It has not been three weeks yet. It is my third week in this particular company, so I yet have to understand what things are there and what are not.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud [Private Offer Only] is super easy. We did not even go with them because we were managing our own Azure cloud. To install the Azure Informatica user agent over there, it was quite simple.
What about the implementation team?
I deal with it as a partner for Informatica.
What was our ROI?
Because they have more reach, that is the biggest leverage what they have from the market, and this is actually being used as a positive leverage by Informatica. The tool is stable. You can create it over AWS, Azure without any issues. It is stable on that front. It is scalable because the entire thing is on Informatica with the scalability and everything. Maintenance is also a significant advantage. Whether it is a hotfix, upgrade version, or anything else, you are just paying for the license and the entire upgrading process remains on Informatica. They upgrade when they have a stable, updated version, which is good. Informatica agent can be installed in either way. You can go on the on-premises way, hybrid way, or put the Informatica agent towards the Informatica servers as well. So you can directly use it in any of those three directions. I have used it in a hybrid scenario because I have used hybrid and on-premises a lot since my projects were mostly towards financial and manufacturing. Manufacturing companies were already having AWS and Azure cloud structures, so they said, "We already have that structure. We do not want this to go to Informatica. We will manage it ourselves." Financial institutions were more focused on not pushing their data into the cloud for any kind of compliance or processing calculations. So they went with the premises version. It is a wholesome product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is a pricey one. I dealt with it in my earlier time, not recently. The SaaS is a lot pricey. If you understand the entire pricing for 10 years down the line, then it becomes a lot pricey in comparison to the premises version. I know that people will say or Informatica will say that they are managing the entire server and everything. However, one particular person can manage your 10 customers. So it is fine, but at the end of the day, it is the customers who are paying. Everything what you do, I know it is matured and it is the leading one, but at the end of the day, it is pricey. It is too much pricey than any other MDM tool I have been with.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have been working with Stibo. It is a great tool and it is a cheaper one, but with licensing, it is a different case because they deal with objects and the number of objects, rather than years or perpetual licenses or any other thing. They go with how many objects you can create in that particular license. Every user counts as an object, every table counts as an object, every record counts as an object. If you do it in that particular way, then it becomes a little bit towards that. However, it is a great tool. You cannot see the backside table. Even in Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud [Private Offer Only], you cannot see the back-end table. However, at the end of the day, it is a good tool, but you cannot delete many things quickly. They say that they have this thing that they go ahead and take the entire formats they are stating that they use that for integration. However, the reality is they do take it, but is it efficient enough? It is not. If you put 100,000 records, which is nothing when we come to data integration and MDM world, 100,000 records is nothing. If you use an Excel for it, it is going to take time. If you use iDoc files, it is going to take time. However, if you use their own XML format, it would be so quick. It can finish within two to three minutes, but if it would be in CSV, Excel, or any other format, it is going to take time.
What other advice do I have?
We have KPIs for these things. We normally create scorecards with the data what we have on the premises or basically on the legacy system which we have to pull into MDM. With that, we normally state what kind of impact it would create because of how many systems are linked together. If we are merging two records, what kind of impact it will provide. All these things come into part with the impact analysis that if there are some changes which business has asked us to do. We have to first do an impact analysis that if this particular feature which business is asking for, what impacts it will give to the current configuration what we have done. We have to do those kinds of impact analyses. The data impact and the configuration impact by the business user and what requirements they have are the two impacts which we normally do.
Informatica support is helpful, but sometimes it becomes a little bit time taking because you have to do the exact same thing multiple times. My overall rating for this product is 8.5 out of 10.
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