Informatica PowerCenter Reviews

Informatica PowerCenter is purely an ETL tool used for data integration.

Informatica PowerCenter has many features compared to Talend, DataStage, and Airflow. Among all the solutions I have used, I found Informatica PowerCenter to be much more stable in terms of application. Also, one won't face issues related to bugs when using Informatica PowerCenter.

Compared to solutions offering similar functionalities, Informatica PowerCenter is not very flexible regarding customized integrations. It's not a very customizable solution.

I have been using Informatica PowerCenter for approximately nine years. So, I work for different consulting companies, and their customers use it. My job role is of a consultant and architect.

Since one does not have to face sudden issues while using the solution, I would say that it is a stable solution compared to similar solutions in the market.

It is not a very scalable solution. It is usually used in enterprise-sized organizations.

The solution is easy to deploy and manage. I also usually help my customers to implement and configure the product. The time taken for the implementation process depends upon how big of an implementation process has to be carried out. So, for a single customer, it took around three days to deploy the solution. However, three months were required for the customization part. The solution gets deployed on-premises and on the private cloud.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

The solution is basically used for anything and everything that we process, for example, from the SQL Server, from other application sources like Oracle, from Flatfiles, or loading into these kinds of sources. We use it for pretty much everything.

It's the best ETL tool that one can have.

The initial setup is easy.

It's stable.

We can scale the product.

Support has been helpful in the past.

If we could have the option of performance improvement within Informatica, and if it could have more features, that would be ideal. For example, we have a DTM buffer, and sometimes we face issues where we are creating the cache in Informatica, and it keeps on adding onto that particular directory. Even though we deploy code to remove that cache, somehow Informatica DTM does not remove the cache, and it keeps on piling up, filling up the whole server unless we manually remove that.

There are some functionalities in Informatica, however, after some time, they stopped working. That has been an issue that has added up to operational costs. If we could have the consistent working of all the functionalities that Informatica offers, not just during the start of the project or for around six months, that would be ideal. We find that it stops working due to some issue, due to some process not getting started or getting in a hung state.  

From 10.1, to 10.1.1, to 10.5.1, there is a feature in the expression transformation where users have the option to evaluate the expression. It works only when you do not have variables in that, yet only some values (hard-coded values). For example, if you have column one and column two and put in column three, then when you evaluate the expression, and you only get column one plus column two, and it even does not work. It says you can't pass the variables, pass the values, and then that feature that was introduced is of no use. 

I've used the solution for almost 14 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. I'd rate it 9.5 out of ten in terms of stability. There are no bugs or glitches.

The solution is scalable. However, it depends on the server. 

You can scale unless the server on which it is hosted does not have enough resources to handle the additional load.

In our organization, most developers are on the product. There are around 50 people at least using it. 

I have not used technical support yet in this organization. That said, in my prior organizations, I have. When we had a new tool, for example, we had OneConnect for an SAP Field Glass Connector and we were not sure how to connect to it. Therefore, we had some connectivity-related questions that we were not able to explore on our own since there wasn't much online expertise available. We had to reach out. All questions were addressed and answered by Informatica.

The level of assistance we received was as expected. We were happy with their response time and their answers provided solutions to our questions.

The initial setup takes time sometimes. It can take around two days if you have a prior code. That said, if you are starting it from scratch, then more than four hours, so it is easy - if someone has experience in it, of course, and the proper manual to follow.

I don't recall the exact cost o the solution. That said, it is one of the costliest products that one can have. They are costly ETL products. When it comes to Oracle, we have cheaper options since Oracle provides its ODI fee of cost if someone buys any of their modules for business intelligence. That is something that Informatica does not have.

Still, if you have large data volumes and you do not want to be at risk for your daily loads, then it is worth the money.

I'm an end-user.

I'd advise new users to go through proper training and get at least one to two years of proper work experience in it before they actually go to customers to suggest its implementation - especially if they will be the primary point of contact.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

The product is primarily used for building the data warehouse as an ETL tool for our hospital.

In general, it is a great tool. 

The initial setup is not very complex. 

There are many features available. It has very rich transformation tools. You can have union integration. There are many kinds of set operators, aggregators, and plate operators. 

Graphically you can define a lot, and you can also inject variables too. If you define one transformation, you can replicate it with several sources. 

It has very good monitoring and process monitoring. 

There is an excellent scheduler. 

The integration capabilities are pretty good. 

We've found the solution to be very stable. 

It's a product that scales well.

It doesn't have the change data capture feature. That's why we have been exploring some alternatives.

The licensing is difficult. It prevents us from accessing all of the features.

Since I haven't used the latest version, it's hard to comment on what needs to be added. 

I've been using the solution for more than ten years. 

It's a stable product. I'd rate the stability at five out of five. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

You can easily scale the solution if you need to.

I'd rate the ability to scale 4.5 out of five. 

We have around 100 or more sources using the solution. 

We don't really use technical support. However, we did initially find it quite good. 

We did not previously use another solution. 

The solution is pretty straightforward to set up. It is not complex.

We got some training on the transformations and the ETL process itself; however, the implementation of the things was done by then. The strategy was to have teamwork on the building and accumulating data from the hospitals and then build a data warehouse around it. 

The full deployment took two months for us. We had two engineers working on the implementation. 

Our team handles the maintenance. One or two people are handling it. Other than running some interim tasks, everything is scheduled, and then some operational monitoring is required. Otherwise, there are no other maintenance jobs to worry about.

The deployment was handled in-house. We did not need any installation help from integrators or consultants. 

Licensing is frustrating as you have to pay for some additional features. It would be ideal if it were all under one cost.

We usually have a license that lasts a year or two.

We do not pay for technical support. You have to pay for it separately every year.

At the time, around ten years ago, we compared the product with the Oracle Data Warehouse builder, however, PowerCenter was a much better tool.

Many of its current competitors came into the picture after we installed this tool.

We're end-users.

We are not using the latest version of the solution. We are using one of the previous versions. It's around version 10. I don't know the EMEA number.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I'm using it in my company, in the sense that some of our clients use it as their tool for their day-to-day development.

It has good standard features for ETL development. I mostly like the transformation simplicity, which is very good. It has common features that are very similar to all similar tools.

It is stable and reliable. 

Technical support is good.

This product is going to decommission in the next couple of years. Therefore, I don't have anything specific to say something has to be improved.

The pricing is pretty high.

I've worked with the solution for more than eight years. 

The solution is stable. It's reliable, and the performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

Scalability is limited since it's on-premise. PowerCenter is mostly implemented on-premises only, so it's all based on how we configure it, the number of nodes, et cetera. Few people can even deploy it in the cloud VMs, where they can scale up and scale down in the background. For Informatica, the license is based on the number of cores. You have to scale within the number of cores only.

We have more than ten people working on the solution currently.

The technical support is very good. 

I have used other solutions in the past. For example, I've used SSIS, Talend, and SnapLogic.

It's a use-case question, which solution would make the most sense. We cannot say straight away which will fit in, or which is the best product. However, both PowerCenter and SnapLogic are very good compared to SSIS and Talend.

The initial setup has a moderate level of difficulty.

If it is a simple first-time implementation, no one will face issues. However, when people keep upgrading from one version to another, there can be some compatibility issues. It all depends on how you write the code. For example, a few of the code migrations when we were upgrading did or did not work, and that's where we faced some challenges.

The product can be costly. Price can change according to negotiations, so it may be a bit flexible. However, a basic setup can be from $100,000 and up annually.

I'm not a partner or reseller.

I've worked with various versions, from 8.6 to 10.1.

PowerCenter is going to be decommissioned by 2025. Already, people have started migrating from PowerCenter to Informatica Cloud. 

It may be better not to implement that right away. It is better to go straight away with Informatica Cloud or any other tool like SnapLogic. Even Informatica Cloud has some issues in terms of migrating PowerCenter to Informatica Cloud. At this point, however, every solution gives similar output. Regarding cost, you can go with some other tools like SnapLogic that may be less expensive.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Informatica PowerCenter is used for data integration.

To me, what's most valuable in Informatica PowerCenter is the flexibility in building the integration pipeline. Usually, you need to have a platform to be able to integrate with different technologies, including legacy data such as the mainframe. The platform should also be rich enough to transform the data per your business requirement, with no restrictions.

Rich integration and rich transformation capabilities are the two key capabilities in Informatica PowerCenter. The solution also offers ease of use.

Another valuable feature of Informatica PowerCenter is the drag-and-drop integration because it's GUI-based, similar to IBM and Oracle.

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.

I've been using Informatica PowerCenter for six or seven years.

I'm still using it as my company has many solutions that leverage Informatica PowerCenter, though the solution isn't that active nowadays because Informatica has a different strategy to promote the cloud-based data integration offering.

Informatica PowerCenter is still in the market, and what my company is using is the on-premise version.

Informatica PowerCenter is a stable solution, and I would rate its stability seven out of ten. There's a small improvement needed in terms of stability because it's linked to the clustering and high availability. Somehow you'll need a lot of automation to get Informatica PowerCenter to handle the workload, and in certain situations, there could be failures.

I found the technical support for Informatica PowerCenter brilliant. I'm even giving it a rating of four out of five just because I can't give it a five. Informatica support is even awarded for customer satisfaction if I remember correctly.

The initial setup for Informatica PowerCenter was simple. It was a straightforward setup, and it wasn't complicated at all.

Pricing for Informatica PowerCenter isn't cheap, but if I compare it with IBM, it's as expensive as IBM, however, Informatica PowerCenter is more innovative, especially when compared to a giant company such as IBM that has thousands of products.

Informatica PowerCenter is limited only to data management, but it has new features that come out every quarter. Points for ease of use and flexibility go to Informatica PowerCenter, but price-wise, IBM and Informatica are equal because they're both expensive.

I evaluated Talend, which is an open-source data engineering and data integration platform. Comparing the two solutions, Informatica PowerCenter is still more robust and has an extendable platform. You can add other capabilities, such as data quality and so on, but if you'll be focusing only on data integration, Talend, especially coming from an open-source mindset, would be a good competitor.

My preference, because I had experience with IBM and Talend, would be Informatica PowerCenter because of the ease of use, flexibility, and features that come with it.

Informatica PowerCenter is an on-premise data integration solution, but two or three years ago, Informatica introduced a new, intelligent data platform. That new platform is the equivalent of Informatica PowerCenter in terms of capability, but the only difference is that it's a fully on-cloud solution.

Informatica PowerCenter is best for big enterprises. Technically, you can use it for any scale, but practically you will get the most output when you're dealing with high volumes and heavy processing. This is from a technical aspect. Price-wise, it's not a cheap platform, so only enterprises with a bigger data management budget will be able to afford to invest in a data management platform such as Informatica PowerCenter.

My rating for Informatica PowerCenter is eight out of ten. Eight is a fair rating because it's a very stable and very mature product.

My company has a partnership with Informatica and other vendors. I'm a system integrator.

I use this solution for everything from real-time processing to complex, high-volume batch workflows. 

In terms of performance improvement and tuning, there should be a bit more guidance and documentation. I would also like to see improvement on some of the installation, especially to the adapters. The setup for the SAP adapters is a bit complex.

I have been using this solution for the past eight years.

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. Around 50 employees are using the solution every day at our company. We would like to continue using it and also evaluate using the cloud version.

I would rate the technical support as a four out of five. 

Positive

The initial set up was easy. It wasn't cumbersome. 

Deployment took about a day, and we handled it ourselves. 

I would recommend that others considering the solution go ahead and use it for any batch and high volume loads with complex transactions. Informatica performs very well. I would rate it as an eight out of ten. 

Informatica PowerCenter is an ETL data integration platform.

It's all part of the data warehouse's extract, transform, and load process. Data is extracted from all source systems, transformed, and loaded into a data warehouse.

It is very robust, scalable, and simple to use.

It is very comprehensive in terms of connector and transformation capabilities from both a source and target perspective.

I believe that people are shifting to more agile, flexible platforms not only in this era but also in the last two or three years. This is happening not only on data management platforms but also on analytics platforms. Platforms for visualizing data dashboards. We used to have very rigid tools like Cognos and MicroStrategy, but Tableau and Power BI have recently taken over. The same can be said for data management. 

Informatica, in my opinion, is very rigid and not very flexible, whereas platforms like Alteryx or Matillion are very flexible and agile.

I have over 15 years of experience working with Informatica tools, and we have worked with Informatica PowerCenter in the last 12 months.

Informatica PowerCenter is stable. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate it a ten.

I haven't had any problems with jobs or projects failing or anything like that.

You can definitely scale it as the data volume increases. You have many options for scaling up.

The technical support is great.

They are responsive and simple to contact.

While I have not implemented it, I am familiar with Informatica PIM.

We have also used Informatica Cloud in the last 12 months.

The installation and configuration are both well-documented and straightforward.

I am not sure about the most recent price, but I think it should be $100,000 or more.

It's obviously the best.

I would rate Informatica PowerCenter a ten out of ten.

My experience is in the semiconductor industry with our customers using the Azure supply chain. We have built-in the AIS system, IBM and Db2. We transfer data from SQL Server to MongoDB and transfer the data to Db2.

Security is very important, the solution is deployed to the private cloud. We assigned five people to build the project.

Informatica PowerCenter is built into the technology supply system. I use the solution to transfer the MS data system to the supply chain system.

We use Informatica PowerCenter to transfer the transitional database to and from the data warehouse. This is very efficient as it enables us to quickly find our data reports and the data, so we can build AI models.

In the future, I would like to see Informatica PowerCenter integrate a more powerful dashboard.

I have been using Informatica PowerCenter for 3 years.

In my experience Informatica is stable, however, it depends on our customer's environment.

This solution is scalable. For example, we have set two data warehouses for one of my customers, we use Informatica PowerCenter to join several PV tables separate to data warehousing. This allows us to divide, separate and exchange our data warehousing to the schema and the people in the schema.

In my last job, I used Pentaho. 

The initial setup of the solution is easier than Pentaho. Informatica was set up by me with the help of two supply chain consultants, in one day. 

To implement Informatica PowerCenter you need to understand your customer's systems first and what their requirements are. It is important to understand their existing system and find the data. By understanding their logic, you can know how to extract the data and transfer the data to the data warehouse.

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.

This is my first experience with this kind of tool, I would rate Informatica PowerCenter a nine out of ten.