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IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer vs Melissa Data Quality comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

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 Infosphere Information ...
Ranking in Data Quality
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Melissa Data Quality
Ranking in Data Quality
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Scrubbing Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Quality category, the mindshare of IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer is 2.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Melissa Data Quality is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Quality
 

Featured Reviews

Tirthankar Roy Chowdhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Accessible from anywhere and easy to learn even for non-technical users, but needs more connectors and faster issue resolution from technical support
What could be improved or added to IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer is more connectors. This solution comes in a package with IBM InfoSphere DataStage and is missing a lot of connectors to various, new data sources, so IBM needs to work on that area. Compared with competitors such as Informatica and Alation which acquired other small companies to work on the connectors, IBM has not done any testing and has tried to develop the connectors in-house, but that's taking a lot of time. As a result, my company is unable to connect to a lot of data sources, particularly modern data sources.
GM
SSIS MatchUp Component is Amazing
- Scalability is a limitation as it is single threaded. You can bypass this limitation by partitioning your data (say by alphabetic ranges) into multiple dataflows but even within a single dataflow the tool starts to really bog down if you are doing survivorship on a lot of columns. It's just very old technology written that's starting to show its age since it's been fundamentally the same for many years. To stay relavent they will need to replace it with either ADF or SSIS-IR compliant version. - Licensing could be greatly simplified. As soon as a license expires (which is specific to each server) the product stops functioning without prior notice and requires a new license by contacting the vendor. And updating the license is overly complicated. - The tool needs to provide resizable forms/windows like all other SSIS windows. Vendor claims its an SSIS limitation but that isn't true since pretty much all SSIS components are resizable except theirs! This is just an annoyance but needless impact on productivity when developing new data flows. - The tool needs to provide for incremental matching using the MatchUp for SSIS tool (they provide this for other solutions such as standalone tool and MatchUp web service). We had to code our own incremental logic to work around this. - Tool needs ability to sort mapped columns in the GUI when using advanced survivorship (only allowed when not using column-level survivorship). - It should provide an option for a procedural language (such as C# or VB) for survivor-ship expressions rather than relying on SSIS expression language. - It should provide a more sophisticated ability to concatenate groups of data fields into common blocks of data for advanced survivor-ship prioritization (we do most of this in SQL prior to feeding the data to the tool). - It should provide the ability to only do survivor-ship with no matching (matching is currently required when running data through the tool). - Tool should provide a component similar to BDD to enable the ability to split into multiple thread matches based on data partitions for matching and survivor-ship rather than requiring custom coding a parallel capable solution. We broke down customer data by first letter of last name into ranges of last names so we could run parallel data flows. - Documentation needs to be provided that is specific to MatchUp for SSIS. Most of their wiki pages were written for the web service API MatchUp Object rather than the SSIS component. - They need to update their wiki site documentation as much of it is not kept current. Its also very very basic offering very little in terms of guidelines. For example, the tool is single-threaded so getting great performance requires running multiple parallel data flows or BDD in a data flow which you can figure out on your own but many SSIS practitioners aren't familiar with those techniques. - The tool can hang or crash on rare occasions for unknown reason. Restarting the package resolves the problem. I suspect they have something to do with running on VM (vendor doesn't recommend running on VM) but have no evidence to support it. When it crashes it creates dump file with just vague message saying the executable stopped running.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can also schedule and run data quality on the critical data elements on the databases."
"What's most useful in IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer is you can access it from anywhere. It's also pretty easy to learn, so even non-technical business people use it and found the solution easy to learn."
"We are able to send out client mailings with the most accurate addresses possible."
"Standardizing allows me to more effectively check for duplicate/existing records. Verifying increases the value of the data."
"By using Melissa Data, we are able to scrub and verify, then better validate the end customer's address to ensure a more consistent delivery of products."
"Address verification ensures our customers get their packages, and we aren’t charged for incomplete address information."
"​It has a straightforward, easy setup."
"Provides simplicity, ease of use, combined with overall accuracy of data."
"Through more accurate data, our marketing department has been able to increase delivery and conversion rates through email direct marketing initiatives."
"There have been tangible benefits in combating fraudulent transactions. The information from Melissa Data is fed straight into our fraud system. This creates efficiency but also removes the need for manual address checks."
 

Cons

"What could be improved or added to IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer is more connectors. This solution comes in a package with IBM InfoSphere DataStage and is missing a lot of connectors to various, new data sources, so IBM needs to work on that area. Compared with competitors such as Informatica and Alation which acquired other small companies to work on the connectors, IBM has not done any testing and has tried to develop the connectors in-house, but that's taking a lot of time. As a result, my company is unable to connect to a lot of data sources, particularly modern data sources."
"The solution is outdated and is not on cloud."
"Address validation and parsing in a few countries have room for improvement."
"Needs more/better search tools are needed. Also, state and local tax data would be nice."
"More countries should be supported by Melissa."
"The tool needs to provide resizable forms/windows like all other SSIS windows. Vendor claims its an SSIS limitation however all SSIS components are resizable so that isn't true. This is just an annoyance but needless."
"The billing structure does not seem very accurate. We’ve had issues with miscounted batch records processed"
"There are some companies out there using Google or other sources to check / confirm if addresses are residential. If Melissa is not doing this, that could be an improvement."
"It really hasn't given us a phone number for the owner of the property, and that's one thing I'd really like to be getting. Either a phone number or email."
"Speed of delivery/ease of use. They advertise a 24-hour, next business day turn time on data annotation, but I’ve found it is usually closer to 72 hours. This is still excellent, just make sure you add in the appropriate fluff to your delivery timelines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the licensing cost of IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer, I have no information on the exact cost, but as it's bundled with other IBM products such as IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog and IBM InfoSphere DataStage, the bundle is expensive when compared to competitor pricing."
"I think it's worth the value for me to run it."
"NCOA address verification was a requirement from USPS to send out the mailers. This was the only option that charged per address which was extremely helpful since we are a small non-profit school."
"Pricing is very reasonable, no licensing required."
"Fully understand your volume, both monthly and annually. Speak with a Melissa account manager, they will put together an effective solution to meet your needs."
"​We are concerned that our own pricing is going up every year for Melissa Data products, but we highly recommend the services for people who are routinely sending out mailings."
"Pricing is very reasonable."
"Cloud version is very cheap. On-premise version is expensive."
"The only complaint that I have towards it is they sell licenses based on a range of usage, and I feel those ranges are too large."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
Insurance Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Also Known As

Information Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Integra LifeSciences, Longjiang Bank Corp., Webster University, Swedish Armed Forces, Edith Cowan University, Premier, PRISA Digital, TIAA CREF
Boeing Co., FedEx, Ford Motor Co, Hewlett Packard, Meade-Johnson, Microsoft, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble, SAAB Cars USA, Sony, Walt Disney, Weight Watchers, and Intel.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer vs. Melissa Data Quality and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.