AWS Glue vs Informatica PowerCenter comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Informatica are both solutions in the Cloud Data Integration category. Additionally, 91% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Informatica users who would recommend it.

AWS Glue

Read 45 AWS Glue reviews

10,182 Views
7,213 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Informatica PowerCenter

Read 80 Informatica PowerCenter reviews

20,440 Views
17,451 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

AWS Glue

Informatica PowerCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Informatica PowerCenter and AWS Glue are leading in data integration platforms. Based on user reviews, AWS Glue holds an upper hand due to its adaptability and scalability, yet Informatica PowerCenter shines with its comprehensive data transformation capabilities.

Features: Informatica PowerCenter includes extensive data processing capabilities, rich metadata management, and strong data transformation functionalities. AWS Glue features a serverless architecture, seamless cloud integration, and automation capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Informatica PowerCenter could enhance integration with modern cloud platforms and streamline its interface for ease of use. AWS Glue needs improvements in debugging, monitoring, and an enhanced customer support structure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Informatica PowerCenter offers reliable deployment models but has a steeper learning curve. AWS Glue allows quick setup due to its cloud-native architecture. Users find Informatica’s customer service more responsive and supportive.

Pricing and ROI: Informatica PowerCenter comes with higher initial costs, delivering strong ROI through efficient data handling. AWS Glue provides a cost-effective entry with pay-as-you-go pricing, offering a scalable solution for budget-conscious users.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter

October 2024

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Helped 816,406 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

AWS Glue

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Integration (1st)

Informatica PowerCenter

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (2nd), Data Visualization (8th)

Featured Reviews

Ajaykumar Myana

Senior Software Developer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Provides serverless mechanism, easy data transformation and automated infrastructure management

We no longer had to worry much about infrastructure management because AWS Glue is serverless, and Amazon takes care of the underlying infrastructure. This allowed us to focus on the code and application logic without concerns about scaling, CPU management, or handling fluctuations in flow. The serverless nature of Glue jobs relieved us from these infrastructure-related worries.

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Lars Borchers

Senior BI Backend Developer at ALD Automotive Portugal

A stable and reliable product that provides a variety of features for data integration

The solution is not for newcomers. It has an old touch. The solution must improve the integration with new services. It was part of the program at Informatica when they moved to their cloud platform. It is integrated. However, from an on-premise perspective, we need to buy licenses for PowerExchange. If we want a native driver to access a special service, we need to extend our license to those services. It is expensive. I don't like that it's not all included in the solution.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution helps organizations gain flexibility in defining the structure of the data."

"The AWS Glue Data Catalog provides metadata management and schema discovery. AWS Glue simplifies data transformation with automatic schema detection, incremental data updates, and integration with other AWS services."

"AWS Glue's best features are scalability and cloud-based features."

"AWS Glue is a good solution for developers, they have the ability to write code in different languages and other software."

"Glue is a NoSQL-based data ETL tool that has some advantages over IIS and ISAs."

"You do not need many frameworks to run Glue."

"The key role for Glue is that it hosts our metadata before rolling out our actual data. This is the major advantage of using this solution and our clients client have been very satisfied with it."

"The most valuable feature of AWS Glue is its ease of use and good documentation. Additionally, we can do all the transformations that we need."

More AWS Glue pros

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

"The setup is straightforward."

"It provides monitoring and we can therefore be aware of what is happening when we are handling jobs."

"Informatica PowerCenter has good user feedback. The developers can easily make mappings in the solution."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring tools and the reporting manager."

"Once you have learned Informatica, it is very easy to use."

"The most valuable feature is the new Data Lake feature, which provides the basic capabilities needed."

"It's a complete package, which is why we use this solution."

More Informatica PowerCenter pros

Cons

"AWS Glue's error handling is difficult."

"The start-up time is really high right now. For instance, when you start up a new job, you have to wait for five or eight minutes before it starts. If the start-up time is reduced to one or two minutes, it will be great. It will be better to have a direct linkage to Redshift in AWS. If we can use data catalogs from Redshift, it will be so easy to create some data catalogs. Currently, we can only use data catalogs from S3."

"The price of the solution could improve."

"The solution’s stability could be improved."

"Overall, I consider the technical support to be fine, although the response time could be faster in certain cases."

"While working on AWS Glue, I could not find any training material for it."

"Setting up pipelines is challenging, especially with version control and testing requirements."

"If there's a cluster-related configuration, we have to make worker notes, which is quite a headache when processing a large amount of data."

More AWS Glue cons

"The solution could have better documentation on basic steps or blocks that specify what to do."

"We had stability issues, mostly with JVM size."

"I would like to see it be able to import data from NoSQL."

"There is a need to buy a separate license if one wishes to connect with some kind of SAP system, such as SalesForce."

"I would like to see an improvement in the digital adoption."

"The solution's commercial cost is very high. Other open-source tools can do the tool's functions for free. The world is moving to the cloud, but the solution hasn't updated its drivers. I presume that its downfall will start soon. The tool is trying to cross-sell or upsell without helping customers derive benefits from the existing products. They have multiple tools and licenses. It is better to bring the smaller tools in one umbrella."

"The only problem with this product is the level of complexity with the number of levels of transformation that you have to go through."

"While Informatica is great for data-integration, it does not have any analytics features. Thus, organizations have to always look for another product for their BI needs."

More Informatica PowerCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is good. We pay as we go or based on the usage, which is a good thing for us because it is simple to forecast for the tool. It is good in terms of the financial planning of the company, and it is a good way to estimate the cost. It is also simple for our clients. In my opinion, it is one of the best tools in the market for ETL processes because of the fact that you pay as you use, which separates it from other big tools such as PowerCenter, Pentaho Data Integration, and Talend."

"AWS Glue is a high-priced solution that bills the client $150,000 to $250,000 annually."

"AWS Glue uses a pay-as-you-go approach which is helpful. The price of the overall solution is low and is a great advantage."

"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."

"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."

"I rate the tool an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is expensive."

"I rate pricing an eight out of ten."

"AWS Glue is a paid service that doesn't come under the free trial of AWS."

More AWS Glue pricing and cost advice

"The licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"Licensing costs are excessive and pose an obstacle to someone who lacks familiarity with the solution and wishes to have a proper understanding of it."

"I am not sure about the most recent price, but I think it should be $100,000 or more."

"We are satisfied with the pricing."

"It's much more expensive, almost three times more expensive than most other solutions."

"We are using an annual license for Informatica PowerCenter."

"Our client has purchased the license, and we are using it."

"The price could be better. It's very expensive. On a scale from one to five, I would give Informatica PowerCenter's price a one."

More Informatica PowerCenter pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user90069

BI Expert at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 20, 2014

Informatica PowerCenter vs. Microsoft SSIS - each technology has its advantages but also have similarities

Technology has made it easier for businesses to organize and manipulate data to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with their business. Notably, ETL tools have made managing huge amounts of data significantly easier and faster, boosting many organizations’ business intelligence operations…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?

AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.

See all answers

How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?

We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...

See all answers

What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?

AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Database Migration Service vs AWS Glue

Compared 34% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs AWS Glue

Compared 7% of the time

SSIS vs AWS Glue

Compared 5% of the time

Talend Open Studio vs AWS Glue

Compared 5% of the time

SnapLogic vs AWS Glue

Compared 4% of the time

More AWS Glue Competitors

SSIS vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 16% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 14% of the time

Databricks vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 13% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Data Services vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 2% of the time

More Informatica PowerCenter Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue

November 2024

Download AWS Glue product report

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter

November 2024

Download Informatica PowerCenter product report

Also Known As

No data available

PowerCenter

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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Informatica

Overview

AWS Glue is a serverless cloud data integration tool that facilitates the discovery, preparation, movement, and integration of data from multiple sources for machine learning (ML), analytics, and application development. The solution includes additional productivity and data ops tooling for running jobs, implementing business workflows, and authoring.

AWS Glue allows users to connect to more than 70 diverse data sources and manage data in a centralized data catalog. The solution facilitates visual creation, running, and monitoring of extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines to load data into users' data lakes. This Amazon product seamlessly integrates with other native applications of the brand and allows users to search and query cataloged data using Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, and Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

The solution also utilizes application programming interface (API) operations to transform users' data, create runtime logs, store job logic, and create notifications for monitoring job runs. The console of AWS Glue connects all of these services into a managed application, facilitating the monitoring and operational processes. The solution also performs provisioning and management of the resources required to run users' workloads in order to minimize manual work time for organizations.

AWS Glue Features

AWS Glue groups its features into four categories - discover, prepare, integrate, and transform. Within those groups are the following features:

Automatic schema discovery: AWS Glue crawlers connect to the organization's source or target data source through a prioritized list of classifiers to determine the schema for users' data. This feature creates metadata in companies' AWS Glue Data Catalog.
Schemas for data stream management: The AWS Glue Schema Registry enables users to validate and control the evolution of streaming data through registered Apache Avro schemas for no additional charge.
Automatic scaling based on workload: This feature dynamically scales resources up and down based on workload. The feature controls job resources, removing them depending on how much the workload can be split up.
FindMatches: This feature is for machine learning-based data deduplication and cleansing, and works by finding records that are imperfect matches of each other to remove useless data copies.
Edit, debug, and test ETL code: This feature helps users who have chosen to interactively develop their ETL code by providing development endpoints for editing, debugging, and testing the code it generates for them.
AWS Glue DataBrew: An interactive, point-and-click visual interface for specialists to clean and normalize data without the need to write any code.
AWS Glue Interactive Sessions: This feature simplifies the development of data integration jobs by enabling data engineers to interactively prepare and explore data.
AWS Glue Studio Job Notebooks: This AWS Glue feature provides serverless notebooks with minimal setup, allowing developers to start working in a timely manner.
Complex ETL pipeline building: This feature allows the product to be invoked on a schedule, on demand, or based on an event, allowing users to start multiple jobs in parallel or specify dependencies to build complex ETL pipelines.
AWS Glue Studio: This AWS Glue feature allows users to visually transform data through a drag-and-drop interface. The product automatically generates the code for ETL processes for users' data.

AWS Glue Benefits

AWS Glue offers a wide range of benefits for its users. These benefits include:

Users of other AWS products can easily onboard with AWS Glue, as it is integrated across a wide range of the company's services.
The solution is serverless, which allows for a lower total cost of ownership.
AWS Glue offers more power for users, as it automates much of the effort in building, maintaining, and running ETL jobs.
The product allows customers to easily discover and search across all their AWS datasets through AWS Glue Data Catalog.
AWS Glue does not require additional payment for managing and enforcing schemas for data streams.
The solution facilitates the authority of scalable ETL jobs for beginners and non-coding experts through a drag-and-drop interface.

Reviews from Real Users

Mustapha A., a cloud data engineer at Jems Groupe, likes AWS Glue because it is a product that is great for serverless data transformations.

Liana I., CEO at Quark Technologies SRL, describes AWS Glue as a highly scalable, reliable, and beneficial pay-as-you-go pricing model.

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.

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter

October 2024

Free Report: AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter

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