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Databricks vs Informatica PowerCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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
6.6
Organizations experience mixed returns from Databricks, with benefits from cost savings and efficiency, but challenges in initial migration.
Sentiment score
8.1
Informatica PowerCenter offers flexibility and stability, optimizing data handling and decision-making, ensuring high-quality investment returns.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks customer service is generally effective with prompt responses, though some report issues mainly with third-party support channels.
Sentiment score
6.9
Informatica PowerCenter's technical support is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, though customer service is perceived less favorably.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
I like the technical support provided by Informatica.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for efficient scalability and cloud compatibility, allowing easy resource adjustment across diverse projects and industries.
Sentiment score
6.8
Informatica PowerCenter efficiently scales data management with flexible cloud options, despite cost concerns and on-premise limitations.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is stable and efficient for large data, with minor issues during updates and occasional connectivity challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
Informatica PowerCenter is praised for reliability and performance, with minimal issues and high stability ratings from users.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Cluster failure is one of the biggest weaknesses I notice in our Databricks.
Informatica PowerCenter is stable and can scale well.
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks users desire improved UI, enhanced data visualization, better integration, clearer error messages, robust support, and comprehensive documentation.
Informatica PowerCenter struggles with high costs, complex UI, outdated features, scalability issues, and lacks modern technology integration.
We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly.
If I could right-click to copy absolute paths or to read files directly into a data frame, it would standardize and simplify the process.
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
Utilizing more stored procedures from Oracle databases in an easy way would significantly boost performance.
 

Setup Cost

Databricks pricing depends on usage, with flexibility in licensing, and can vary in competitiveness compared to other solutions.
Informatica PowerCenter is a powerful but costly data solution, ideal for large enterprises but challenging for smaller ones.
I find that the pricing and licensing for Informatica PowerCenter align with its quality.
 

Valuable Features

Databricks provides a unified platform for data engineering, machine learning, seamless cloud integration, and robust data management capabilities.
Informatica PowerCenter offers robust data integration, real-time processing, and user-friendly interfaces, enhancing decision-making and enterprise data management.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
Developers can share their notebooks. Git and Azure DevOps integration on the Databricks side is also very helpful.
The system supports real-time integration, which is essential for many of my tasks.
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Informatica PowerCenter
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (2nd), Data Visualization (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 7.8%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
Informatica PowerCenter, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 9.9% mindshare, down 12.1% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Lars Borchers - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user90069 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
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...
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
PowerCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Informatica PowerCenter and other solutions. Updated: February 2023.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.