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Informatica PowerCenter vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.1
Informatica PowerCenter is valued for its flexibility, stability, and effectiveness in handling diverse and complex data for reports.
Sentiment score
7.0
Tableau Enterprise delivers rapid returns through efficiency, cost reduction, quick insights, and enhanced decision-making within six to twelve months.
It also plays a vital role in revenue calculations, net asset valuations, and other key factors that support customer data and investment data pipelines.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
The ROI of using Tableau extends to its seamless integration across various platforms, as it's from Salesforce and thus not limited to any specific cloud provider.
Tableau is saving me time, money, and resources, which I would rate as ten.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Customer service and technical support receive mixed reviews, highlighting varying levels of responsiveness, resource availability, and user experiences.
Sentiment score
6.1
Tableau Enterprise support is praised for professionalism and multilingual assistance but needs improvement in response times and technical expertise.
I like the technical support provided by Informatica.
I have occasionally needed to communicate with the technical support of Informatica PowerCenter, especially when raising cases for complex mappings and performance optimization to identify bottlenecks in transformations.
They provide quick email and phone responses and have Thai-speaking personnel.
There should be consistent standards for all users.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Informatica PowerCenter excels in scalability and versatility for data management, though costs and setup complexity are concerns.
Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau Enterprise's scalability varies, effective with design and configuration, but big data performance concerns and costs remain.
In the cloud, scaling up and down becomes easy when working with cloud providers.
For scalability, I would rate Informatica PowerCenter between eight to nine.
Tableau is easy to use across various dimensions, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.
Tableau is easy to scale.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Informatica PowerCenter is highly rated for stability, with few issues, mostly resolved by hotfixes, ensuring reliable performance.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau Enterprise is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues mainly related to large datasets or server configurations.
Informatica PowerCenter is stable and can scale well.
The product is very stable with very few issues encountered in production.
The application hangs after continuous use due to the buildup of cache.
I rate the stability a five or six because Tableau updates very often with new versions or patches.
 

Room For Improvement

Informatica PowerCenter users seek improved affordability, a modern interface, better integration, and scalability for enhanced efficiency and user-friendliness.
Tableau Enterprise users seek better data integration, improved performance, cost-effective pricing, and enhanced analytics and collaboration features.
With Informatica PowerCenter, I am looking for an AI interface that looks at the underlying data model of the databases and the metadata of the tables, allowing the developer to provide instructions on what data sources to connect to and how to apply or create Transformations.
Utilizing more stored procedures from Oracle databases in an easy way would significantly boost performance.
Informatica Cloud and its support becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
The product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role.
It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly.
 

Setup Cost

Informatica PowerCenter, although costly, is valued by large enterprises for its comprehensive features and effective complex data handling.
Tableau's pricing is high yet competitive, with increased costs for added features, posing challenges for small organizations.
I find that the pricing and licensing for Informatica PowerCenter align with its quality.
The price of Informatica PowerCenter is high, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.
Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.
A license for 150 users costs around $17,000 USD per year.
Looker is known to be quite expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Informatica PowerCenter provides robust, scalable ETL solutions with user-friendly design, supporting extensive databases and seamless data integration.
Tableau Enterprise excels in data integration, visualization, and analytics, offering customization, real-time processing, and advanced capabilities for decision-making.
The system supports real-time integration, which is essential for many of my tasks.
The functions in Informatica PowerCenter that I have found most valuable are the way it manages the volume of data, the push down optimization, and the performance aspects of it, mostly related to parallelism techniques.
The most valuable features of Informatica PowerCenter that I have found so far include transformations, the ease of connectivity with different source systems, and the parameter files.
A significant feature for me is the real-time connection to data sources because it effectively manages large data sets.
Tableau serves as a stable dashboarding tool for higher management, aiding in quick decision-making.
Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.
 

Categories and Ranking

Informatica PowerCenter
Ranking in Data Visualization
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (4th)
Tableau Enterprise
Ranking in Data Visualization
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
307
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Informatica PowerCenter is 1.4%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 19.2%, down from 29.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise19.2%
Informatica PowerCenter1.4%
Other79.4%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Garima Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported complex data pipeline creation but performance tuning and monitoring responsiveness need improvement
Sometimes, I see various performance issues with Informatica PowerCenter, including caching concerns, whether it's a joiner transformation or other transformations, so I believe the team can enhance the performance perspectives of these transformations. Additionally, sometimes the Informatica Monitor hangs or takes time to open the current run or logs, which the team can also look into. Informatica is transitioning to cloud solutions and discontinuing on-premise support after 2026, so when we discuss Informatica Cloud and its support, it becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing. Informatica Cloud Intelligence's pricing is notably high.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.
report
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise72
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free compo...
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...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Also Known As

PowerCenter
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica PowerCenter vs. Tableau Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.