We performed a comparison between Informatica PowerCenter, Quest SharePlex, and webMethods Integration Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Oracle and others in Data Integration."Technical support is great. It's one of the reasons we really like them. When you compare support from IBM and support from Informatica, Informatica is much better."
"It is easy to use, and it is quick for developing things. It is fairly powerful, and it can integrate with a lot of different platforms without much hassle."
"Easy, scalable, robust platform to integrate heterogeneous source platform's data into the unified data warehouse."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"Complex transformations can be easily achieved by using PowerCenter. The processing layer does transformations and other things. About 80% of my transformations can be achieved by using the middle layer. For the remaining 15% to 20% transformations, I can go in and create stored procedures in the respective databases. Mapplets is the feature through which we can reuse transformations across pipelines. Transformations and caching are the key features that we have been using frequently. Informatica PowerCenter is one of the best solutions or products in the data integration space. We have extensively used PowerCenter for integration purposes. We usually look at the best bridge solution in our architecture so that it can sustain for maybe a couple of years. Usually, we go with the solution that fits best and has proven and time-tested technology."
"I found the map links, work links, and workflows valuable. They are important features."
"Informatica PowerCenter is a very good ETL tool."
"It has a Data Catalog that uses the Model repository."
"The core features of the solution we like are the reliability of the data transfer and the accuracy of data read and write. The stability of the solution is also excellent."
"The core replication and its performance. Performance is crucial, and SharePlex is by far the fastest. The way it handles replication to multiple targets along with basic filtering, as well as from multiple sources to a single target, is very efficient."
"There are some capabilities within SharePlex where you can see how the data is migrating and if it still maintains good data integrity. For example, if there are some tables that get out of sync, there are ways to find them and fix the problem on the spot. Since these are very common issues, we can easily fix these types of problems using utilities, like compare and repair. So, if you find something is out of sync, then you can just repair that table. It basically syncs that table from source to target to see if there are any differences. It will then replicate those differences to the target."
"I like SharePlex's Compare and Repair tool."
"Because of the volume of the transactions, we heavily use a feature that allows SharePlex to replicate thousands of transactions. It's called PEP, Post Enhancement Performance, and that has helped us scale tremendously."
"How simple it is to create new solutions."
"The tool is very powerful and user-friendly."
"Best feature is Insight for monitoring, and as a debugging tool. It has saved us a lot of time during crisis situations."
"Application integrations are offered out-of-the-box, and that is extremely important to us. This is one of the main use cases that we have for it. It is about 60 to 70 percent of the workload in our application today."
"Application integration, business process integration, and B2B partner integration are valuable. But among these, I feel B2B partner integration is the most valuable. This module integrates two business partners and exchanges data through electronic data interchange messages in the form of specific standards, without any manual process needed."
"All of the components are very independent but are tied together to give the business value."
"They are the building blocks of EAI in SAG products, and they offer a very good platform."
"It has a good integration server, designer, and a very good API portal."
"PowerCenter could be improved by having more big data components. Normally, we prefer Informatica as a relational database, but nowadays, companies are trying to understand and use big data components. I think it would be useful if we had more chances to create a hub ecosystem because customers try to use some data integration tasks by SQL, Spark and Spark codes, and Scala, but at the end of the day, the company will understand that we need to trace all the steps. An ETL tool is a must for that company, if we're talking about the regulated industries like finance, telcos, etc. If Informatica's biggest ecosystems feature were okay, I would prefer to use it."
"PowerCenter could integrate better with cloud applications. We had to do a lot of configuration work using API integrations to connect with cloud applications. Informatica Cloud Data Integration has a generic connector that you can use directly, so it's much easier."
"The developer tool documentation can be enhanced with a more clear explanation of each utility, accompanied by relevant examples, so that developers are able to create programs with ease."
"The UI is a little outdated."
"Support could be better."
"Its licensing can be improved. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise. A bundle will definitely be costly. In addition, we might use one or two features. That's why the pricing model should be based on the features. The model should be flexible enough based on the features. Their support should also be more responsive to premium customers."
"This solution needs the functionality to do batch processing of data. It also lacks connectivity to NoSQL, unstructured data sources."
"Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user."
"For its function in relation to replication (i.e. filtering), I'd give it a six or seven out of 10. GoldenGate has much more functionality by comparison."
"I would like the solution to have some kind of machine learning and AI capabilities. Often, if we want to improve the performance of posting, we have to bump up a parameter. That means we need to stop the process, come up with a figure that we want to bump the parameter up to, and then start SharePlex. Machine learning and AI capabilities for these kinds of improvement would tremendously help boost productivity for us."
"I don't know how easy it would be to change the architecture in an already implemented replication. For example, if we have a certain way of architecting for a particular database migration and want to change that during a period of time, is that an easy or difficult change? There was a need for us to change the architecture in-between the migration, but we didn't do it. We thought, "This is possibly complicated. Let's not change it in the middle because we were approaching our cutover date." That was one thing that we should have checked with support about for training."
"I would like more ability to automate installation and configuration in line with some of the DevOps processes that are more mature in the market. That would be a considerable improvement."
"The reporting features need improvement. It would be very good for users to have a clear understanding of the status of replication."
"Need to see more API portal features like monetizing APIs and private cloud readiness."
"I'd like to see the admin portal for managing the integration server go up a level, to have more capabilities and to be given a more modern web interface."
"The certifications and learning resources are not exposed openly enough. For instance, they have a trial version which comes with only a few basic features, and I think that community-wise they need to offer more free or open spaces where developers can feel encouraged to experiment."
"It is quite expensive."
"Technical support is an area where they can improve."
"Business monitoring (BAM) needs improvement because the analytics and prediction module very often has performance problems."
"In terms of improvement, it would be better if it adapted quicker to open standards. It took a while for API specification before the last version was available. The spec of version two was rather quick."
"Documentation needs tuning. There is a lot of dependency with SoftwareAG. Even with the documentation at hand, you can struggle to implement scenarios without SAG’s help. By contrast, IBM’s documentation is self-explanatory, in my opinion."
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