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Databricks vs Informatica PowerCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Databricks efficiently lowers costs with cloud services, though ROI varies by sector and integration, particularly with Azure.
Sentiment score
8.1
Informatica PowerCenter is valued for its flexibility, stability, and effectiveness in handling diverse and complex data for reports.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
It also plays a vital role in revenue calculations, net asset valuations, and other key factors that support customer data and investment data pipelines.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks support is praised for prompt, professional service, comprehensive resources, and effective communication, enhancing overall user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.9
Customer service and technical support receive mixed reviews, highlighting varying levels of responsiveness, resource availability, and user experiences.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
I rate the technical support as fine because they have levels of technical support available, especially partners who get really good support from Databricks on new features.
I like the technical support provided by Informatica.
I have occasionally needed to communicate with the technical support of Informatica PowerCenter, especially when raising cases for complex mappings and performance optimization to identify bottlenecks in transformations.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for its scalability, enabling easy adaptation to large data and user loads with efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
6.8
Informatica PowerCenter excels in scalability and versatility for data management, though costs and setup complexity are concerns.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
I would rate the scalability of this solution as very high, about nine out of ten.
In the cloud, scaling up and down becomes easy when working with cloud providers.
For scalability, I would rate Informatica PowerCenter between eight to nine.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is stable and robust, with minor issues, handling large data volumes and earning high stability ratings.
Sentiment score
7.9
Informatica PowerCenter is highly rated for stability, with few issues, mostly resolved by hotfixes, ensuring reliable performance.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
Informatica PowerCenter is stable and can scale well.
The product is very stable with very few issues encountered in production.
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks requires visualization improvements, pricing clarity, user-friendliness, expanded integrations, and simplification for non-technical users to enhance usability.
Informatica PowerCenter users seek improved affordability, a modern interface, better integration, and scalability for enhanced efficiency and user-friendliness.
Adjusting features like worker nodes and node utilization during cluster creation could mitigate these failures.
We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly.
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
With Informatica PowerCenter, I am looking for an AI interface that looks at the underlying data model of the databases and the metadata of the tables, allowing the developer to provide instructions on what data sources to connect to and how to apply or create Transformations.
Utilizing more stored procedures from Oracle databases in an easy way would significantly boost performance.
Informatica Cloud and its support becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers view Databricks as moderately pricey, with high setup costs, though discounts and licensing flexibility are available.
Informatica PowerCenter, although costly, is valued by large enterprises for its comprehensive features and effective complex data handling.
It is not a cheap solution.
I find that the pricing and licensing for Informatica PowerCenter align with its quality.
The price of Informatica PowerCenter is high, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.
 

Valuable Features

Databricks excels in scalability, integration, and user-friendly features, making it ideal for data processing and AI across industries.
Informatica PowerCenter provides robust, scalable ETL solutions with user-friendly design, supporting extensive databases and seamless data integration.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
The system supports real-time integration, which is essential for many of my tasks.
The functions in Informatica PowerCenter that I have found most valuable are the way it manages the volume of data, the push down optimization, and the performance aspects of it, mostly related to parallelism techniques.
The most valuable features of Informatica PowerCenter that I have found so far include transformations, the ease of connectivity with different source systems, and the parameter files.
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Informatica PowerCenter
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (4th), Data Visualization (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 8.3%, up 5.9% compared to last year.
Informatica PowerCenter, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 6.0% mindshare, down 11.0% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks8.3%
Snowflake17.7%
Dremio8.9%
Other65.1%
Cloud Data Warehouse
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Informatica PowerCenter6.0%
SSIS5.7%
Azure Data Factory5.2%
Other83.1%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Garima Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported complex data pipeline creation but performance tuning and monitoring responsiveness need improvement
Sometimes, I see various performance issues with Informatica PowerCenter, including caching concerns, whether it's a joiner transformation or other transformations, so I believe the team can enhance the performance perspectives of these transformations. Additionally, sometimes the Informatica Monitor hangs or takes time to open the current run or logs, which the team can also look into. Informatica is transitioning to cloud solutions and discontinuing on-premise support after 2026, so when we discuss Informatica Cloud and its support, it becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing. Informatica Cloud Intelligence's pricing is notably high.
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Comparison Review

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

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise72
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free compo...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
PowerCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Informatica PowerCenter and other solutions. Updated: February 2023.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.