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Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Microsoft MDS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Informatica Intelligent Dat...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
185
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (3rd), Data Quality (1st), Business Process Management (BPM) (10th), Business-to-Business Middleware (5th), API Management (7th), Cloud Data Integration (3rd), Data Governance (2nd), Test Data Management (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (2nd), Data Masking (1st), Metadata Management (1st), Test Data Management Services (3rd), Product Information Management (PIM) (1st), Data Observability (2nd)
Microsoft MDS
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Master Data Management (MDM) Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Data Integration and Access solutions, they serve different purposes. Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) is designed for Data Management Platforms (DMP) and holds a mindshare of 12.7%, down 16.3% compared to last year.
Microsoft MDS, on the other hand, focuses on Master Data Management (MDM) Software, holds 11.9% mindshare, down 12.6% since last year.
Data Management Platforms (DMP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)12.7%
Palantir Foundry21.8%
Cloudera Data Platform6.9%
Other58.6%
Data Management Platforms (DMP)
Master Data Management (MDM) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft MDS11.9%
SAP Master Data Governance18.2%
TIBCO EBX11.6%
Other58.3%
Master Data Management (MDM) Software
 

Featured Reviews

SaurabhGaonshindhe - PeerSpot reviewer
Modular structure and AI features stream new reporting processes
One of my clients has a requirement; they want to integrate metadata into the process, which means, for example, if I just want to implement a new field into my database, that field needs to be reflected throughout, let's say, 200 mappings. This highlights the need for a data-driven approach. My experience with technical support from Informatica is quite interesting; I would rate it as nine out of ten for Informatica PowerCenter kind of products or the Informatica integration products, because my team can do some hands-on using their free licenses or one-month kind of products. However, for products Master Data Management or related to MDM or Data Governance, there is no way by which we can directly practice, and my team struggles at that point.
Satyam Saxena - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced data management and cost effective with flexible integration capabilities
If Microsoft MDS were part of Azure, it would be significantly more helpful. Additionally, integrating fuzzy duplication within MDS itself, rather than relying on SSIS, would streamline operations. The current requirement to store data in Azure tables after processing it in MDS, due to its lack of direct Azure integration, is a drawback.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The data mapping capability is a valuable feature."
"The product improves data quality."
"The profiling feature in Informatica Data Quality is incredibly effective for data governance."
"It gives you accountability to centralize your data and have it available to different applications."
"The most valuable features of the solution are pushdown, optimization, and partitioning, which can be used for frequent data loading, especially when we have a huge data volume in our company."
"We can scan anything."
"I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The interface has a great look and feel, and the functionality is so easy."
"It's very easy to use."
"Technical support is very good."
"The solution is easy to install."
"What I like about Microsoft, is that it has a huge database with many users."
"The most valuable feature is the administration console."
"Compared to other databases, it is easier to manage and administer."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft MDS is its management."
"More generic related things can be included in the services."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement at the highest level in terms of useability and connectors for various types of new applications. The row processing performance could be better because you experience some latency dealing with high volumes of data. Most organizations will be dealing with multiple cloud applications, so you could see performance issues moving from one system to another."
"It can be improved in terms of performance and execution. I'm expecting better performance. It currently has some restrictions in terms of execution. For example, if we want to run it in the command mode and execute it, there are some restrictions, and we are facing some issues with a huge volume of data. These restrictions are not there in Informatica PowerCenter because we are able to execute a huge volume of data, and there are more ways to execute it."
"Exploring the possibility of incorporating AI capabilities that can suggest additional rules would significantly streamline our data analysis process following data profiling."
"The integration process is not easy."
"The configuration process is pretty lengthy and challenging and could be made easier to understand."
"I feel the out-of-the-box APIs or the API management could be improved slightly from their current state. It could be more user-friendly."
"I would like to see better visuals for business users, such as a dashboard where they can precisely track where problems are."
"I need to have some insight into the tool's cloud capabilities."
"Microsoft MDS isn't getting strong support because Microsoft is focusing more on cloud solutions."
"It would be a better option to have an on-cloud version."
"The program's navigation tools could be improved."
"The Microsoft license cost could be lower."
"Most of the Microsoft partners, especially digitally, are separate. Personnel are business people, and they do not have technical expertise, so you end up as a company spending a lot of money training your staff and your engineers."
"From my understanding, MS, as of 2021, will not maintain the product going forward."
"Stability can be fragile at times. If you are not attentive or make a mistake, it can cause problems."
"The only drawback is that it does not have the matching, merging, and all true MDM components. For these, you have to use another competent called Data Quality Services (DQS). You need to plug it in and use it along with MDS for true MDM. Both of these are integrated together, but you have to do them separately, whereas, in Profisee, there are a couple of screens where you can configure the matching process, create matching rules, and other things, and everything is in one product, which is not the case with MDS. In order to implement a true MDM, you need MDS, DQS, and SSIS. You have to use MDS to store your golden records, DQS to configure and standardize all your rules and matching percentages, and SSIS to load the data to DQS and MDS. At the same time, you also need Melissa Data to clean up your addresses to validate and standardize the addresses. That's the main component of true MDM. It would be good if they can create a true matching component inside MDS and merge MDS and DQS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Informatica MDM recently changed its pricing model. It's usage-based but I don't have much insight into the current pricing."
"Comparatively, their prices are a little bit too high."
"You pay for this solution based on IPUs, Informatica Processing Units. This depends on how much data you process and how much memory you consume from the cloud provider, and you pay as you go."
"A yearly subscription is paid based on the number of people using the solution. Price-wise, it falls under the medium range since it is neither very costly nor too cheap."
"The price of Informatica Cloud Data Integration could be reduced."
"I have no idea what the price actually is. It is probably not going to be the cheapest, but it is a pretty stable and robust platform from the backend standpoint."
"I'm not sure about the most recent pricing trends, but I don't believe it's significantly different from PowerCenter. I believe it is nearly the same."
"The price is very high and has become a big concern for our customers who require the solution in order for their business to function smoothly."
"Product licensing is very complicated. It would be helpful to have an online calculator to estimate the cost of a license."
"SAP is more expensive than Microsoft."
"MDS is a part of the SQL Server enterprise license. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"Microsoft MDS is an expensive solution."
"I would like to see better pricing."
"With Microsoft, we buy everything though an agreement, so we purchase volume licensing every year."
"The solution does require a license and we have enterprise licenses."
"The pricing of this solution is good."
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Answers from the Community

RT
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022
Hi @Richard Tibbetts, There's no short answer to your question. Nearly all existing MDM solutions on the market offer a broad range of patterns to ingest master data from various sources and distribute cleanse and consolidated information, also to the Azure stack. Many vendors offer prebuilt connectors for the most common sources (databases, various file types, storages, business applications i...
2 out of 3 answers
InitZero - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 14, 2022
Hi @Richard Tibbetts, There's no short answer to your question. Nearly all existing MDM solutions on the market offer a broad range of patterns to ingest master data from various sources and distribute cleanse and consolidated information, also to the Azure stack. Many vendors offer prebuilt connectors for the most common sources (databases, various file types, storages, business applications including MS Dynamics, Salesforce, etc.), but also support a generic way of ingesting/exposing data via Rest APIs, file drops, etc. MS MDS is an extension of the MS SQL server 2016. I don't know Microsoft plans to extend it, but I know that Profisee and CluedIn are very active in promoting their solutions as-built having Azure in mind and being a part of the stack. Informatica MDM has three types of offerings these days: on-prem, hosted MDM, and cloud-native option - they differ in the functionality and integration options. Obviously, there are many more MDM tools on the market particularly good in various data domains (products, customers/suppliers - so yours, multi-domain, etc). I think that you should start your MDM journey by answering which current challenges you try to solve or what new capabilities you need to enable to the organisation. Once these questions are answered and based on your organization's Enterprise Architecture principles, look for the best fitting tool. It may (or may not) be the one that fits the best into the Azure Reference Architecture. I hope this helped.
GM
Feb 4, 2022
I agree with @InitZero...  I would add that there's no future roadmap for MDS and they don't have an Azure solution for it.  Since it's a free product with an SQL license, don't expect Microsoft to invest in it.   Even though we are highly dependent upon it currently I'm starting to look towards the future where we need to find a replacement - hopefully, a PaaS solution. It would be great if Microsoft came out with something in Azure but I'm not hopeful at this point.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Media Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise134
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...
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...
What are the biggest benefits of using Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
When it comes to cloud data integration, this solution can provide you with multiple benefits, including: Overhead reduction by integrating data on any cloud in various ways Effective integration ...
What do you like most about Microsoft MDS?
More generic related things can be included in the services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft MDS?
Microsoft MDS was pretty affordable. We implemented the solution without a problem.
What needs improvement with Microsoft MDS?
I cannot really give specifics about disadvantages. From what we have seen, speaking to customers, Microsoft MDS was sometimes a bit slow. The frustration they had was just around usability and use...
 

Also Known As

ActiveVOS, Active Endpoints, BPM, Address Verification, Persistent Data Masking, Cloud Test Data Management, PIM, , Enterprise Data Catalog, Data Integration Hub, Cloud Data Integration, Data Quality, Cloud API and App Integration
Microsoft Master Data Services, Microsoft MDM, Microsoft SQL Server Master Data Services, MS MDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The Travel Company, Carbonite
ETA a.s., Apeejay Surrendra Group, Blue Star Infotech, Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation, The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, New Belgium Brewing
Find out what your peers are saying about Palantir, Informatica, Cloudera and others in Data Management Platforms (DMP). Updated: September 2025.
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.