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 47 AWS Glue reviews

9,044 Views
6,563 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Informatica PowerCenter

Read 80 Informatica PowerCenter reviews

18,129 Views
15,555 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

AWS Glue

Informatica PowerCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Informatica PowerCenter and AWS Glue are competing in the data integration market. AWS Glue often holds the upper hand due to its cost-effectiveness and extensive feature set, particularly appealing to those prioritizing functionality and budget.

Features: Informatica PowerCenter offers advanced data transformation capabilities, complex workflow handling, and comprehensive metadata management. AWS Glue is known for its serverless architecture, instant scalability, and seamless integration with AWS services.

Room for Improvement: Informatica PowerCenter can improve its deployment complexity, initial setup costs, and flexibility in handling serverless operations. AWS Glue could enhance support for non-AWS ecosystems, add more granular error handling capabilities, and improve its feature set for traditional on-premise use cases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Informatica PowerCenter provides flexible deployment options for both on-premise and cloud environments, with robust customer support services. AWS Glue facilitates quick deployment within the AWS ecosystem, offering automated maintenance that users find user-friendly and seamless for integration tasks.

Pricing and ROI: Informatica PowerCenter generally incurs higher initial costs due to customization and licensing, leading to a longer period for ROI realization. AWS Glue’s serverless model lowers entry costs with a pay-as-you-go approach, allowing quicker ROI and significant savings on infrastructure expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

AWS Glue

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Integration (1st)

Informatica PowerCenter

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (2nd), Data Visualization (9th)

Featured Reviews

Muthuvel Sivaraman

AVP at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Handles a huge volume of data and is serverless, but it can be considered costly by some users

We use Amazon's services to provide technical support for the product. If you want to have support, Oracle and others offer a single support, and other tools have a direct support window. For Amazon, we need to pay 10 percent of my billing amount for the tool to get support services. Whether to raise a support ticket or not is an issue since ten percent is a huge amount. My company ends up using all the options without help from support. It is very difficult for any common man to understand why there is a need to pay ten percent for support. If I find an issue in the product, and I need to get support from AWS to fix it, then I need to pay ten percent of the tool's bill amount to Amazon. AWS is a very tricky tool because everything is evolving nowadays. AWS engineers are getting hired from other places, and even after that, if I am not getting any technical support, then things will be very nasty. There are some good engineers who help users outside the normal support cycle, but it doesn't meet their needs. I rate the technical support a four out of ten.

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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

"Its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and highly secure architecture are some of the most valuable features."

"AWS Glue is very quick to start without cold starts, unlike AWS Lambda."

"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."

"I like that it's flexible, powerful, and allows you to write your own queries and scripts to get the needed transformations."

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

"It's fairly straightforward as a product; it's not very complicated."

"The solution integrates well with other AWS products or services."

"We no longer had to worry much about infrastructure management because AWS Glue is serverless, and Amazon takes care of the underlying infrastructure."

More AWS Glue pros

"The solution is stable."

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

"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."

"If the systems get migrated or upgraded, the amount of resources required are very minimal. We can change the connections and establish a new connection. It's very helpful."

"It works with any multi-databases, so it works with Sybase, SQL Server. Also, the performance is really good and it is easy to use."

"The setup is straightforward."

"It provides everything I need. Nothing is missing. PowerCenter is a good tool for on-premise databases."

More Informatica PowerCenter pros

Cons

"The product has only a few built-in transformations."

"The solution should offer features for streaming data in addition to batching data."

"The drawbacks associated with the product stem from the fact that, based on the data volume, it can become very costly."

"There is a learning curve to this tool."

"The process of entering environment variables in AWS Glue requires navigating to a different page, which could be streamlined."

"Only people who can code, either in Java or Python, can use the product freely. Those who don't know Java or Python might find using AWS Glue difficult."

"The product is expensive for data streaming. This area needs improvement."

"The mapping area and the use of the data catalog from Glue could be better."

More AWS Glue cons

"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."

"The pricing could be improved."

"The licensing is difficult."

"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."

"The performance of Informatica PowerCenter could improve."

"Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user."

"If we could have the option of performance improvement within Informatica, and if it could have more features, that would be ideal."

"If you want to transfer a ZIP file, it is a pain. You need to use Command-Line. Sometimes we just want to transfer a file. It should be easy to move them from A to B."

More Informatica PowerCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on DPUs so it is a good idea to optimize use or it can get expensive."

"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."

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

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

"Technical support is a paid service, and which subscription you have is dependent on that. You must pay one of them, and it ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per year."

"The current cost is around forty to fifty thousand a month."

"I rate the product's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

"The overall cost of AWS Glue could be better. It cost approximately $1,000 a month. There is paid support available from AWS Glue."

More AWS Glue pricing and cost advice

"The price of Informatica PowerCenter is expensive, but it does give value."

"Its licensing is expensive in terms of scaling."

"Its maintenance is expensive."

"The price of this solution is high."

"We have found the pricing very cost-effective. The licensing is CPU and data source-based."

"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."

"The license model is CPU based."

"Since the solution's cost is higher, I rate the pricing as a five out of ten."

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

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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...

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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...

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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 35% 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 4% 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 14% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 9% 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

January 2025

Download AWS Glue product report

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter

January 2025

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

January 2025

Free Report: AWS Glue vs. Informatica PowerCenter

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