IBM Cloud Pak for Data vs Informatica Enterprise Data Lake comparison

IBM and Informatica are both solutions in the Data Integration category. IBM is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.0, while Informatica is ranked #41 with an average rating of 7.0. IBM holds a 1.8% mindshare in DI, compared to Informatica’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Informatica users who would recommend it.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Read 13 IBM Cloud Pak for Data reviews

2,646 Views
1,868 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Informatica Enterprise Data...

Read 1 Informatica Enterprise Data Lake review

227 Views
204 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Informatica Enterprise Data...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cloud Pak for Data and Informatica Enterprise Data Lake based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Talend and others in Data Integration.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Integration Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Data Integration

May 2025

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Helped 852,764 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Ranking in Data Integration

25th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (3rd)

Informatica Enterprise Data...

Ranking in Data Integration

41st

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Informatica Enterprise Data Lake is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Michelle Leslie

Data asset management engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Starts strong with data management capabilities but needs a demo database

What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated. There are so many components to data management, and more often than not, people understand one thing really well. They may understand DataStage and how to move data around, but they do not see the impact of moving data incorrectly. They also do not see the impact of everyone understanding a piece of data in the same way. I would love Cloud Pak to come with a demo database that illustrates the different components of data management in a logical way, so I can see the whole picture instead of just the area I'm specializing in. It would be great if Cloud Pak, from a data modeling point of view, allowed us to import our PDMs, for example. It would be ideal to import and create business terms in Cloud Pak. The PEA would be great to create the technical data. The association between the business and the technical metadata could then be automated by pulling it through from your ACE models. The data modeling component is available in Cloud Pak. Additionally, when it comes to Cloud Pak, even though it has the NextGen DataStage built into it, there is Cloud Pak for data integration as well. Currently, I do not think we have a full enough understanding of how CP4D and CP4I can enhance each other.

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reviewer2330691

Data Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

A scalable tool that needs a lot of maintenance due to its unstable nature

Governance, data dictionary, and data cataloging are not available in Informatica Enterprise Data Lake. A lot of businesses are facing issues related to understanding the area revolving around insights of data. At Informatica Enterprise Data Lake's level, in our company, we have a lot of redundant data in a lot of our core systems. The basic thing that our company wants is for the product to develop a reporting layer and access data from the document layer so that we can avoid duplication in projects, databases, and data. There is a lot of maintenance to be done owing to the instability users may face every time because of the huge processing capacity as the company has around more than 50 nodes, which causes a lot of maintenance issues because of which a lot of people don't benefit from the platform as it functions in a slow manner. Informatica Enterprise Data Lake's setup process was complex since it doesn't support a lot of real-time systems. Every time, we have to find different tools we can use in our company with the solution since it doesn't support many real-time systems. Even if our company invests in some tools, Informatica Enterprise Data Lake creates too many small files with some issues, which we cannot read because we invested in HBase and Kudu, but performance-wise, the process is slow.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I found most helpful in IBM Cloud Pak for Data is containerization, which means it's easy to shift and leave in terms of moving to other clouds. That's an advantage of IBM Cloud Pak for Data."

"The most valuable features are data virtualization and reporting."

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten."

"I love the way that I can start at a very basic level with my data management journey by capturing my policies, justifying my data, and putting them into different categories to say this is data relating to individuals, for example, or data relating to geography."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cloud Pak for Data are the Watson Studio, where we can initiate more groups and write code. Additionally, Watson Machine Learning is available with many other services, such as APIs which you can plug the machine learning models."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Cloud Pak for Data is the Modeler flows. The ability to develop models using a graphical approach and the capability to connect to various sources, as well as the data virtualization capabilities, allow me to easily access and utilize data that is dispersed across different sources."

"IBM Watson Catalog and data pipelines are the most valuable features of the solution."

"Cloud Pak is a very, very, very good system."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data pros

"The process of using the tool's scalability option is well documented."

Cons

"There is a solution that is part of IBM Cloud Pak for Data called Watson OpenScale. It is used to monitor the deployed models for the quality and fairness of the results. This is one area that needs a lot of improvement."

"The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem."

"One thing that bugs me is how much infrastructure Cloud Pak requires for the initial deployment. It doesn't allow you to start small. The smallest permitted deployment is too big. It's a huge problem that prevents us from implementing the solution in many scenarios."

"The product is trying to be more maturity in terms of connectors. That, I believe, is an area where Cloud Pak can improve."

"Cloud Pak would be improved with integration with cloud service providers like Cloudera."

"What I would love to see is an end-to-end, almost a training demo database of some sort, where one of the biggest problems with data management is demonstrated."

"The solution's catalog searching or map search needs to be improved."

"The interface could improve because sometimes it becomes slow. Sometimes there is a delay between clicks when using the software, which can make the development process slow. It can take a few seconds to complete one action, and then a few more seconds to do the next one."

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data cons

"Informatica Enterprise Data Lake's setup process was complex since it doesn't support a lot of real-time systems."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloud Pak's cost is a little high."

"IBM Cloud Pak for Data is expensive. If we include the training time and the machine learning, it's expensive. The cost of the execution is more reasonable."

"The solution's pricing is competitive with that of other vendors."

"The solution is expensive."

"I don't have the exact licensing cost for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, as my company is still finalizing requirements, including monthly, yearly, and three-year licensing fees. Still, on a scale of one to five, I'd rate it a three because, compared to other vendors, it's more complicated."

"For the licensing of the solution, there is a yearly payment that needs to be made. Also, since it is expensive, cost-wise, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten."

"It's quite expensive."

"I think that this product is too expensive for smaller companies."

"The licenses attached to the solution are highly priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

DataStage allows me to connect to different data sources.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

The setup cost is very expensive. The cost depends on the pieces of the solution I'm using, how much data I have, and whether it's on the cloud or on-prem.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

See all answers

What do you like most about Informatica Enterprise Data Lake?

The process of using the tool's scalability option is well documented.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Informatica Enterprise Data Lake?

The licenses attached to the solution are highly priced. Informatica has licensing models for every product and for every feature, like the web service feature, which is something my company doesn'...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Informatica Enterprise Data Lake?

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 40% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 16% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 11% of the time

Denodo vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 11% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Cloud Pak for Data Competitors

SSIS vs Informatica Enterprise Data Lake

Compared 100% of the time

More Informatica Enterprise Data Lake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

May 2025

Download IBM Cloud Pak for Data product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Integration

May 2025

Download Informatica Enterprise Data Lake product report

Also Known As

Cloud Pak for Data

Informatica Intelligent Data Lake, Intelligent Data Lake

Overview

IBM Cloud Pak® for Data is a fully-integrated data and AI platform that modernizes how businesses collect, organize and analyze data to infuse AI throughout their organizations. Cloud-native by design, the platform unifies market-leading services spanning the entire analytics lifecycle. From data management, DataOps, governance, business analytics and automated AI, IBM Cloud Pak for Data helps eliminate the need for costly, and often competing, point solutions while providing the information architecture you need to implement AI successfully.

Building on the streamlined hybrid-cloud foundation of Red Hat® OpenShift®, IBM Cloud Pak for Data takes advantage of the underlying resource and infrastructure optimization and management. The solution fully supports multicloud environments such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud™ and private cloud deployments. Find out how IBM Cloud Pak for Data can lower your total cost of ownership and accelerate innovation.

IBM

The Intelligent Data Lake enables raw big data to be systematically transformed into fit-for-purpose data sets for a variety of data consumers. Data scientists and analysts can quickly find the data they’re looking for using semantic and faceted search. They can see data profiles, lineage, and other relationships to know whether they can trust the data and whether it’s fit-for-use in their analytic projects.

Informatica

Sample Customers

Qatar Development Bank, GuideWell, Skanderborg Music Festival

Information Not Available

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Talend and others in Data Integration. Updated: May 2025.

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