Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
182
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (3rd), Data Quality (1st), Business Process Management (BPM) (13th), Business-to-Business Middleware (4th), API Management (8th), Cloud Data Integration (3rd), Data Governance (2nd), Test Data Management (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (1st), Data Masking (2nd), Metadata Management (1st), Test Data Management Services (3rd), Product Information Management (PIM) (1st), Data Observability (2nd)
Microsoft MDS
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Master Data Management (MDM) Software (2nd)
 

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 16.3%, up 14.1% compared to last year.
Microsoft MDS, on the other hand, focuses on Master Data Management (MDM) Software, holds 12.4% mindshare, down 13.4% since last year.
Data Management Platforms (DMP)
Master Data Management (MDM) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Raj Sethupathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers profiling and address standardization but can be complicated
Informatica Data Quality has its data warehouse, primarily using Oracle and some SQL databases. You need a database to host the data. The cleansed version of the data is stored in the data warehouse. It integrates with PowerCenter and other Informatica tools. The integration details can be complex, but a regional setup is involved in this process. Profiling smaller datasets, such as 10,000-50,000 records, worked fine. However, unexpected issues could arise with larger datasets, such as thousands of records or more, especially with tables containing many columns. Handling tables with fifty or more columns can be challenging, even in Excel. A mismatch in data types could cause the entire system to crash. Continual enhancements are being made to address these issues, which can be unique to specific industries like finance and healthcare.
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 most valuable feature of Informatica Axon is features, interfaces, and data mapping. It represents clusters nicely."
"I do a quite a lot of data transformations, and the fact that I can do them without changing any of my SQL queries from the code, using the inbuilt tools, is very helpful."
"The most valuable feature of Informatica MDM is hierarchy management. It's not something that's typically available and effective within ERPs."
"It is a scalable product."
"The solution's technical support is pretty good, especially since the turnaround time is good."
"We use parts and standardization for most of our testing. We purchase the US Postal Service address database, which is updated periodically. Many useful tools, such as Google Maps, can detect and mark new businesses or changes in business locations. Informatica captures and updates this information. Some periodic maintenance is involved, but setting it up is not overly complicated."
"The feature of auto-onboarding of the assets, enterprise assets via EDC is good."
"The MDM solution is capable of integrating multiple systems, so it helped us to solve the purpose of centralizing the depository as well as the standardization of mass data. It takes away all the ambiguity around data integrity issues or all the process challenges which happen when every stage of a process uses a different source as master data."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft MDS is its management."
"The tool is easy to use."
"One of the main features I have found useful is the integration with Azure active directory."
"It has been a long-standing tool in our organization since it was free."
"What I like about Microsoft, is that it has a huge database with many users."
"It is very easy to deploy and provision a machine."
"Technical support is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the administration console."
 

Cons

"I would like to see support for more data sources."
"We promote our code changes from a lower to a higher environment, which is highly complex when working with a multi-domain MDM like Informatica. This is the biggest obstacle for Informatica MDM, and I think they should change it because that's very time consuming."
"Data integration should be improved."
"User/group administration could use improvement."
"Permissions, scalability, and connection with other informatic tools are the main areas that need development. Integration with other tools, such as IDQ, is challenging. The management of data discovery is highly challenging because many data points have identical definitions."
"Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog could improve by having a much better user interface. It is not user-friendly."
"With the solution, we had some issues, and we have every day, and we used to open a ticket. Sometimes, there are data issues and transformation issues."
"Informatica Axon does not provide complete transparency about the level of detailing you need and the logic used in ETL."
"The Microsoft license cost could be lower."
"Microsoft MDS is outdated and lacks modern capabilities."
"Stability can be fragile at times. If you are not attentive or make a mistake, it can cause problems."
"Microsoft MDS' language should be simple so everyone can use it easily."
"The stability could be improved."
"More generic related things can be included in the services."
"The solution could be better integrated into Microsoft's other products."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is neither too high nor too low."
"The pricing structure is good, but having to pay for extra drivers to be used in an ICS environment makes me a little nervous."
"My understanding is that Informatica is quite expensive compare to other tools that are available in the market."
"Informatica Axon is a costly solution. I rate Informatica Axon a four out of ten for its pricing."
"It is expensive. That's probably the biggest drawback. The business has heartache paying the license, but that's mainly because they don't realize what value it brings. The key thing about the MDM solution is that it is in the backend, and no one sees what it is actually doing. You don't know it is a problem until it is not there."
"I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is the cheapest and ten is the most expensive. The product is a bit expensive."
"Its pricing model can be improved."
"Informatica MDM is very expensive. Apart from licensing fees, they have broken down their products into multiple products, and they charge for each and every product. If the data is huge, they charge for the data. At times, we have to use third party services for data cleaning, and they charge for that as well."
"Product licensing is very complicated. It would be helpful to have an online calculator to estimate the cost of a license."
"The solution does require a license and we have enterprise licenses."
"MDS is a part of the SQL Server enterprise license. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"I would like to see better pricing."
"With Microsoft, we buy everything though an agreement, so we purchase volume licensing every year."
"Microsoft MDS is an expensive solution."
"SAP is more expensive than Microsoft."
"The pricing of this solution is good."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Management Platforms (DMP) solutions are best for your needs.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is free. Currently, there is no pricing concern with the tool.
What needs improvement with Microsoft MDS?
Microsoft MDS is outdated and lacks modern capabilities. It is too slow and does not support automated mapping or AI-based functionalities. Although I created Python scripts for some machine learni...
 

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, Oracle and others in Data Management Platforms (DMP). Updated: March 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.