Informatica PowerCenter Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is at a Russian bank.

The goal was to integrate DWH with a banking core system that used Pervasive SQL 2000 DB. The bank as our client in the field of Data Warehousing asked us to extract data from their core banking system and build a Data Mart for preparation of regulatory reports.

Informatica PowerCenter moved forward the technology level of ETL-process management of the bank with visualization and standardization of ETL development instead of a huge volume of scripting used previously. Moreover, the task of integration of systems based on different technology platforms was successfully solved.

The most complex task, in this case, was to read and transform BLOB data, and Java transformation in Informatica Power Center was a great solution. The second task that was solved with Java transformation was the correct transformation of the Amount field (each amount in PSQL 2000 is stored in three different fields). These tasks were solved by using PSQL 2000 Java SDK library imported to Informatica PowerCenter Java Transformation.

I hope that the next release of this solution will:

• Work with HADOOP and other BigData solutions.
• Have an ability to compile code to run it quicker.
• Include new features for parallel job execution.
• Include more instruments for LOGs analysis, interpretation, and job corrections.

It works stably but needs a dedicated professional admin in the project team.

It's scalable and can be supplemented by a Data Quality solution.

We used the vendor's distant support and the expertise was excellent.

As we are a consulting and data management company, the instruments we have to use during the project are chosen by our customers.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward.

We implemented this solution at the customer's site as consultants. 

We are also using IBM DataStage, Oracle Data Integrator, SAP Data Services. From project to project it's up to the customer.

ETL ; Extract Transform Load from data base to data warehouse based on specific business rules.

Informatica PowerCenter satisfies our customers need; thus making Extract Transform Load from data base to data warehouse based on specific business rules.

There are two valuable features. The first is the main typical functionality that the PowerCenter gives, that is the ETL. The ETL is able to extract transform load from/to a variety of sources, like Oracle, Microsoft's SQL Server, and Big Data. 

The second is the capabilities of the GUI interface; drag and drop solution. 

It's a powerful tool and might be the first ETL tool based on Gartner to extract, transform, and load data operations.

The licensing cost for Informatica is very high. Other all-in-one solutions offer much lower prices. 

Also, sometimes with data capture, the solution doesn't support some data types so you must find an alternative, Informatica Data Replication, for instance. You end up buying two very expensive products to get just a little bit more functionality. They need to offer an all-in-one package.

I'd like Informatica to provide more use cases. We have a huge knowledge base, but use cases in specific domains like healthcare, banking, and financial transactions would be helpful. There are some tools that exist for making predictions in different domains. I want something like that in Informatica so we can see use cases that showcase better management, better quality, and better governance, in different domains.

The solution needs better support and training. Informatica can do a better job in making it clear at the beginning what is supported and not supported, and what the licenses include and do not include. That way we are better able to communicate with the clients and to get assistance from support. It would also save us time in raising issues with support if we knew what was covered.

The stability is mainly written in Java programming language. If someone is working as a data engineer and he is not from a computer science background, he may fear there are some errors, specifically in Java packages that Informatica has built. It is not yet stable, but some hotfixes in the big data edition of Informatica, in versions 10 and 10.1, work well to patch any issues.

The solution is very scalable but at the same time, it is very expensive. It's a scalable platform and is distributed, but on the other hand, you have to pay for many separate things. For instance, a real-time integration like a cloud connector for grabbing data from the cloud may be advantageous, but the disadvantage is that the whole package would cost a very huge amount of money for the license. 

Technical support and their approach is good. They have a support portal and support tickets. If you open a ticket it has multiple levels of severity from level one to very high or critical. 

Also, you can buy a support policy for 24/7 support. 

Sometimes, we've had issues where customers complain so we have to keep pressuring support and escalating the matter to upper management to get things fixed in a timely fashion. However, this doesn't happen too often. The process as a whole is good.

Our company has many locations, in the Middle East and Africa, but we're mostly based in Cairo, and have about 100 engineers using the solution.

In terms of advice, I would give to others considering using the solution, I'd say this: they should start with a datasheet of every product on Informatica. Licensing is expensive, so you should study the needs of the customer or your business and make a compliance matrix between the products and what the company needs. You'll run into big problems if your customer's needs aren't met in the Informatica products you choose.

I would rate the solution at a seven or eight out of ten. They're still far away from offering a holistic solution for better management, and there can be more enhancements in use cases, but it's a good solution.

The stability of the solution is one of its best features. The user interface is also very good.

The cost and set up of the licenses could be improved. You need a lot of different licenses, depending on your setup, and it gets expensive. For example, we're connected with Oracle, be we need licenses for that plus the core server, Terradata, etc. It gets costly.

There's also a feature that exists on IBM DataStage called CDC. It's not on Informatica PowerCenter, but if they could add a feature similar to this in the next release, it would be useful.

The solution is very stable.

It is easy to scale the solution.

I don't get in touch with technical support very often, but I would rate them as medium in their level of efficiency in dealing with issues. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

We use the on-premises version of the solution.

I'm a consultant, and I largely work with enterprises.

I would recommend the product for integration. It's one of the best tools in the integration field.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for Informatica PowerCenter is for insurance and enterprise data warehouse creation.

The features I find most valuable is that the solution is very user-friendly and the graphical design is very easy to understand.

I would like to see an improvement in the digital adoption. It would be nice if they could be cheaper, because the training is very expensive as they do everything online.

Compared to other solutions, Informatica PowerCenter is very stable.

The solution is scalable. They have a cloud version for a small company. So nowadays start-ups or small companies are using the cloud version, while the big companies like banks and insurance companies are using the full-fledged enterprise version. We have about 100 users in our company and we plan to increase our usage of Informatica PowerCenter.

The technical support is very, very good. They make sure to come on site and help us to fix any issues we may have.

We previously used a Microsoft solution but that was not very scalable. That is why we switched to Informatica, as it is much more scalable. 

The initial setup was really straightforward and easy and it took us about 15 minutes. Three people are enough to do the maintenance. 

I rate this solution an eight out of ten and I will recommend others to use it, even though it is a little expensive, compared to other solutions.

We are implementing our master data management integration solution. The idea is to have the data cleaned, and have a catalog set up so that we have a library we can consult to see what type of data is being used. At the same time, have a tool to provide a three hundred and sixty-degree view of our customer data. We will also have a unique repository and a data link that we're setting up in Azure.

We will be moving all of our storage to the cloud so that we have a single repository, and this data will be accessible by our tools such as Tableau, for integration with our reporting. 

Currently, we are in a hybrid-cloud environment, but our intention is to be cloud-based using Azure.

The two most important components are the building and integration. On top of that, you can clean and analyze your data to make sure that you don't have any corruption. In the end, you have structured, proper data for use in an integrated BI solution.

I would like to see the inclusion of a tool that allows you to report performance metrics. For example, it can determine whether the connectivity is correct, or how long it's taking the integration to move data from one place to another. This would allow administrators to govern the performance and better maintain the solution. Having a tool that can work is nice, but we're not sure if it works accurately without something to evaluate performance.

Integration with Artificial Intelligence would benefit this solution. The system should start to learn the behavior of your connections, and understand where your data is coming from to ensure that the process is being done correctly. As the system learns the stages, it will be able to easily identify problems. For example, if I have different databases where I want to store information, such as pictures in one and PDF files in another, it will be able to distinguish that.

We are still launching this solution so I cannot tell you if it is stable or not. We believe that with the support and resources we are getting, it will be. Our vision is to be as stable as possible, and we do not want to lose any data.

We performed some testing with our Asian platform and it was working fine. We are working in several countries at the same time, integrating their products, and we are hoping that it goes as smoothly as the one from Asia. This tool should allow us to scale, but we will have to wait and see.

We have between fifty and sixty people using this solution.

Informatica is assisting us with the implementation and they know what we are trying to accomplish. They have visibility as to what our company does, and having people like that helps a lot. Overall, at the moment we are very happy with the support and their contribution.

We did not have another solution in place before this. We knew that it was something that we needed to do. Since we are moving from on-premise to the cloud, we needed something to help us with the integration.

We hired somebody from Informatica to help us with the implementation. We have no complaints about their service.

Choosing this solution was a little bit complex for us because there are a lot of different vendors in that space. We had to do a proper evaluation and negotiation to get to the solution that we needed. Some vendors offer a certain package, whereas others offer another package, and there are certain components from one vendor that we needed in the other one. There is where the complexity came from. In the end, we choose the one that we thought was the proper solution for us.

There is a lot of competition in the space, and the vendors want to get good companies where they can implement their solution. It doesn't mean that every product fits every organization. My advice for anybody researching this type of solution is to meet with all of the vendors, discuss the proof of concept based on what the company has, and see if the solution is really the proper one for them. The vendors need to be honest in evaluating whether the product can really fit the needs, and they should be able to justify it.

Overall, we are satisfied with the product so far, as well as the support. In any tool, there's always something to chase and always something that can be done better.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for data integration.

The performance and design of Informatica have been very valuable. I find the performance faster than, Oracle Data Integrator or DataStage.

As a connector to big data, it is not well developed. We've had problems connecting Informatica with Hadoop. The functionality to connect Informatica with Hadoop is not good. Right now, we use Informatica to connect with the tools of big data. We have been able to connect Informatica with Teradata. I use Informatica to integrate the data of Teradata. Although we have a lot of functionality in Teradata, when you use Informatica as a connector, the compatibility with Teradata and Informatica it's not sufficient.

In future releases, they need to have a good version of the cloud.

We run the solution on our servers, not the cloud.

I would rate this solution seven out of ten.

The solution has the best user interface and it's the most user-friendly of all data integration tools.

Now they are migrating to a new version, and they have something that is called Informatica Developer. Previously, they just had PowerCenter. Now, when they move everything to Informatica Developer it's not as good or stable like it was when it was PowerCenter, though it has some nice features. 

I would like the solution to offer better metadata management. 

The solution is really stable. 

For scalability, all you have to do is buy licenses for more cores, so it's about licensing. If you want to add more CPU cores you have to pay more licensing. All of the providers of ETL tools have different licensing models, and it's something that is typical. So, if you have to process more data then you have to pay for more licenses. That's natural. 

We have about 50 users and they're developers and consultants.

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.

Initial setup is very easy. It's straightforward. They have really good manuals. They have a great installation manual. They have user manuals as well, so you just have to follow instructions. Everything is fine.

Usually, we have system administrators do the implementation.

Price-wise, it's more expensive than SSIS, but it's a better tool, so it has more features. Licensing is on a yearly basis.

We looked at IBM DataStage, Microsoft SSIS, and Oracle Data Integrator.

We have some projects on call. I work for a professional services company, so we have different clients that have different types of infrastructure. For us in our region, most of the clients have an on-premise infrastructure. Usually, we have on-premise deployments.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten. It's almost perfect.

Our primary use case is to process semi-structured and structured files using business rules to create CSV files for data warehouse loading and reporting.

This solution has allowed my client to see the real benefits of dynamically reading the profile to verify the file structures.

The most valuable features are the dynamic reading of the file metadata profile, and the ability to define business rules that are used to verify and validate the uploaded files.

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.