Informatica PowerCenter vs Oracle Analytics Cloud comparison

Informatica PowerCenter is a data integration and data visualization tool. The solution works as an enterprise data integration platform that helps organizations access, transform, and integrate data from various systems. The product is designed to support companies in the full cycle of a project, from its initial rollout to critical deployments. Informatica PowerCenter allows developers and analysts to collaborate while accelerating the work process to deploy projects within days instead of months.

The Advanced edition of the product provides an additional real-time engine which allows companies to have always-on enterprise data integration. This ensures seamless collaboration and increment of data lineage visibility and impacts analysis.

The Premium edition of the solution offers an early warning system that detects unexpected behaviors or incorrect utilization of resources in the workflows and alerts companies in the case that these occur. This version of the product also offers automatic data validation, which ensures data accuracy and reduces testing time and expenditure of resources for by up to 90%.

Informatica PowerCenter Features

The product provides users with various features which allow them to execute data integration initiatives such as analytics, data warehousing, data governance, consolidation, and application migration. The features of the solution include:

• Collaboration: Informatica PowerCenter offers role-based tools and processes which enable business self-service while benefiting from high-quality IT resources.
  
  
• Automation: Through various automations and easy-to-use software, users can utilize graphical and codeless tools and initiate effective data integration without additional knowledge.
  
  
• Scalability: The tool provides high scalability to users, which ensures seamless performance and minimum downtime. PowerCenter also has adaptive load balancing, pushdown optimization, and dynamic partitioning.
  
  
• Monitoring: Through the extensive monitoring feature, the operations and governance of the solution are easily overseen by users. The tool also provides alerts that can prevent damage to the system.
  
  
• Real-time data: Through real-time data, users can monitor applications and analytics, ensuring their efficient operation.
  
  
• Prototyping: Informatica lets its users collaborate with information technology to prototype, profile, and validate results in a timely manner.
  
  
• Connectivity: Users can access and integrate data from different types of sources through high-performance connectors.
  
  
• Automated data validation testing: The product offers script-free automated and repeatable audit and validation of data.
  
  
• Data transformation: This feature allows users to use comprehensive parsing of JSON, PDF, XML, Microsoft Office, and the Internet of Things (IoT) for non-relation data.
  
  
• Cloud applications connectivity: The product allows for seamless connection to cloud application sources and targets.

Informatica PowerCenter Benefits

The benefits of using Informatica PowerCenter include:

• The tool can work over a wide range of systems and platforms and also allows for lean integration.
  
  
• It enhances the quality and speed of performance and optimizes the cost of the process for your organization.
  
  
• PowerCenter supports multiple databases, including TPump, Parallel Transporter Fastload, and Teradata MLoad.
  
  
• The tool is very easy to monitor and maintain, which simplifies the data integration process for companies.
  
  
• The centralized error logging system allows users to locate errors in a timely manner and correct them.
  
  
• The tool can convert data from an application to another format, as it serves as one of the most powerful data transformation solutions.
  
  
• PowerCenter can also serve as middleware between two applications.
  
  
• The solution offers both parallel processing and load balancing.
  
  
• PowerCenter is a tool with a high level of security, which also minimizes essential administration activities.
  
  
• The solution ensures the quality of information, as it does not allow invalid or unwanted data to be uploaded to the source.

Reviews from Real Users

Yahya T., a developer and architect at L'Oreal, says the product is stable, provides good support, and integrating it with other systems is very fast.

Mohamed E., a senior manager for Data management and data governance at a tech company, says PowerCenter is stable, mature, and offers flexibility in building the pipeline and has a drag-and-drop mode because it's GUI-based; technical support is brilliant.

Oracle Analytics is a complete platform with ready-to-use services for a wide variety of workloads and data.

Oracle Analytics allows businesses to add AI and machine learning capabilities to any application—and as part of our integrated suite of cloud services to comply with data security and connected without disrupting business operations.

Offering valuable, actionable insights from all types of data—in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid deployment—Oracle Analytics empowers business users, data engineers, and data scientists to access and process relevant data, evaluate predictions, and make quick, accurate decisions.

Oracle Analytics Cloud Features

Oracle Analytics Cloud has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Intelligent search
• Smart data discovery
• Smart data preparation
• Natural language
• Auto suggest
• Visualization
• Dashboarding
• Global transformation policies
• Smart collaboration
• Integrated data science
• Enterprise architecture and security
• Platform extensibility
• Smart data connectors
  

Oracle Analytics Cloud Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Oracle Analytics Cloud. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Flexibility: Oracle Analytics Cloud gives you the flexibility to grow and change as your business does. At the same time, it puts you in complete control of your analytics environment by allowing you to analyze data and accommodate changing demand easily.

• Scalable: Oracle Analytics Cloud is a single, centralized solution that provides everything you need in a scalable environment to support varied user requirements for your organization right now and in the future as well.

• Comprehensive analytics: With Oracle Analytics Cloud, existing services are combined with new ones to deliver comprehensive analytics in the cloud. It provides everything you need for analytic agility, from fast, fluid self-service discovery to data loading and blending, inline data prep, data enrichment, automatic visualizations, data storytelling, and more.

• Cost-effectiveness: The solution is cost-effective and reduces your total cost of ownership (TCO).
  
• Innovation: Use the latest data analytics technologies, such as AI, machine learning, and natural language processing. Oracle Analytics has been recognized by industry experts for its innovations and robust architecture.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Oracle Analytics Cloud solution.

Fabricio Q., Data Analytics Manager, says, “The main functionality is great and everything is pretty standard and easy to use. It's great for consolidation and creating one source of truth. The initial setup is pretty straightforward.”

PeerSpot user, Eric B., Independent Consultant - Oracle BI Applications at Desjardins, mentions “It's really an enterprise solution. It has standard dashboarding functionality. It also has reporting capabilities for producing pixel-perfect reports, bursting large volumes of a document if you need to. It has interactive data discovery functionality, which you would use to explore your data, bring your own data, and merge it with maybe the data from an enterprise data warehouse to get new insights from the pre-existing data. It has machine learning embedded in the solution.”

Gaurav S., Vice President Credit Risk Management at a financial services firm, explains, “From a financial or bank perspective, this product is secure enough. The dashboards, analytics, visualizations, and different reports are valuable for business analytics. The AI/ML enablement is useful, as many reporting tools do not offer machine learning models as of now, without writing customized code.”

Another reviewer, Trinh P., Delivery Manager at Sift Ag, comments, "The specific capability I find important in Oracle Analytics Cloud is that it allows the basic user to easily drag and drop data. I also like that the solution allows the user to decide what to measure and what to see in the reports."