Informatica PowerCenter vs SSIS 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.

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a Microsoft platform designed to build enterprise-level data integration and data transformation solutions. Users now have the ability to solve intricate business queries by downloading and copying files, cleansing and mining data, loading data warehouses, and managing SQL Server objects and data through Integration Services. SSIS is a component of the Microsoft SQL Server data software used for many data migration tasks.

SSIS loads data into one or more destinations by extracting and transforming data from a wide variety of sources such as XML data files, flat files, and relational data sources.

Integration Services include:

• An SSIS catalog database to manage, store, and run packages.
• An ample set of built-in transformations and tasks.
• Graphical tools for building packages.
  

Create packages programmatically and code custom tasks through programming the extensive Integration Services. With graphical Integration Services, you can create solutions without writing any code.

Benefits of SSIS

There are many benefits of SSIS, such as:

• Solve complex business problems - encrypt files with SSIS and send them to various network locations.
  
  
• Migration of DTS packages to SSIS - users can migrate DTS packages to SSIS while choosing to run DTS packages using DTS runtime or incorporate DTS packages into SSIS.
  
  
• Development of ETL processes - Microsoft’s SSIS packages provide the ability to extract, transform, and load data into data warehouses. This service takes data from various sources, like CSV files, XML files, flat files, and relational data sources and transforms and loads them to their destinations.
  
  
• Data migration from other databases - with Integrations Services, users can transform data to make sure it complies with the rules of the database they are migrating to.
  
  
• Managing and automating SQL server objects - SSIS packages can manage and automate SQL server objects which will help save you time and resources.

Reviews from Real Users

The SSIS platform stands out among its competitors for a variety of reasons. Two major ones are its debugging capabilities during data flow execution and its easy connectivity with other Microsoft tools.

Muhammad J., a senior manager software developer at Techlogix, notes, "The debugging capabilities are great, particularly during data flow execution. You can look into the data and see what's going on in the pipeline."

Ismail L., a data engineer at a tech service company, writes, "The most valuable thing is that it is easy to connect with Microsoft tools. In Europe, particularly in France, a lot of companies use Excel, SQL Server, and other Microsoft tools, and it is easier to connect SSIS with Microsoft tools than other products."