Informatica PowerCenter vs SSIS comparison

Informatica and Microsoft are both solutions in the Data Integration category. Informatica is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.9, while Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.7. Informatica holds a 11.0% mindshare in DI, compared to Microsoft’s 8.9% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Informatica users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 79% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Informatica PowerCenter

Read 80 Informatica PowerCenter reviews

18,129 Views
15,555 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SSIS

Read 72 SSIS reviews

13,383 Views
10,644 Comparison Views

79% willing to recommend

Informatica PowerCenter

SSIS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Informatica PowerCenter and SSIS are competing data integration solutions. While SSIS is known for its competitive pricing and easy integration within Microsoft ecosystems, Informatica PowerCenter stands out due to its comprehensive feature set and robust data management capabilities, favoring larger, more complex projects.

Features: Informatica PowerCenter offers advanced scalability, diverse data source connectivity, and comprehensive data transformation capabilities. Its robust nature supports effective data management and handles complex transformations with ease. SSIS provides strong integration with Microsoft tools, efficient data transformation options, and is particularly advantageous in Microsoft-centric environments.

Room for Improvement: Informatica PowerCenter could enhance user experience by simplifying its initial setup, reducing the complexity involved. Improved native integration with non-Oracle systems and more user-friendly error handling features would be beneficial. SSIS might expand its feature set for large-scale data handling, strengthen cross-platform capabilities, and offer more intuitive user interfaces for non-Microsoft users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SSIS features straightforward deployment due to its native integration with SQL Server and offers accessible documentation within the Microsoft ecosystem. Informatica PowerCenter requires a more complex setup, potentially necessitating specialized skills, but provides extensive documentation and support to navigate deployment challenges.

Pricing and ROI: SSIS is a cost-effective solution with lower initial setup costs, making it appealing for organizations using Microsoft's stack. It enhances ROI through cost efficiency. Informatica PowerCenter entails higher setup expenses but delivers significant ROI via advanced capabilities and broad scalability, optimizing extensive data environments.

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

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter vs. SSIS

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 831,158 peers since 2012

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

Informatica PowerCenter

Ranking in Data Integration

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (9th)

SSIS

Ranking in Data Integration

4th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Informatica PowerCenter is 11.0%, up from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SSIS is 8.9%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

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.

Read full review

BobAmy

Sr. Architect - Data warehousing & BI at Molina Healthcare, Inc.

Robust and does a good job of handling overload conditions

We purchase an add-on called task factory primarily to allow bulk delete, update, and upsert capability. I'd like to see this be part of the standard package. I believe there are ways to build a model and set variables so that it can be a generic process. In my next system, I would like to have a generic process that would handle all the logging and processing in a model that can be modified and enhanced as the need for a better process, or different statistics to be logged is discovered. I'd want this in a way that the model can be changed and all the processes, with their unique parameters, could all be changed with the model upgraded. I believe they should add some features that help to create the code using a model. This would allow for continuous improvement of the model uses and easy replication of all the different programs that use the model.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"PowerCenter performs well during data transformation and optimization."

"It is UI friendly and has all the advantages of an ETL tool."

"We use Informatica PowerCenter to transfer the transitional database to and from the data warehouse. This is very efficient as it enables us to quickly find our data reports and the data, so we can build AI models."

"The greatest feature is that it is very easy to have someone come in and jump right in. It is one of the nicest tools in terms of getting a person acquainted quickly."

"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."

"Informatica PowerCenter provides multiple transformations in one particular toolset. You don't need to apply any coding."

"I would recommend that others considering the solution go ahead and use it for any batch and high volume loads with complex transactions."

"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."

More Informatica PowerCenter pros

"The most valuable features of SSIS are that it works with the query language and it can import data from different sources."

"SSIS is an easy way to do data integration from various data sources. It doesn't matter whether it's a database, flat files, XML, or Web API. It can talk to the and join them all together."

"The most valuable thing is that it is easy to connect with Microsoft tools. In Europe, particularly in France, a lot of companies use Excel, SQL Server, and other Microsoft tools, and it is easier to connect SSIS with Microsoft tools than other products."

"The product's deployment phase is easy."

"You can get data from any data source with SSIS and dump it to any outside source. It is helpful. Getting, extracting, converting, and dumping data doesn't require much effort because we can do everything in the user interface. You drag and drop, then give the required input. It's intuitive."

"With this solution, there is the potential to expand, so that you can immediately write code onto the SQL server."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

"It is easy to set up the solution."

More SSIS pros

Cons

"Lacks ability to calculate cost of the product."

"This product is going to decommission in the next couple of years."

"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."

"Its licensing can be improved. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise. A bundle will definitely be costly. In addition, we might use one or two features. That's why the pricing model should be based on the features. The model should be flexible enough based on the features. Their support should also be more responsive to premium customers."

"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."

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

"What I didn't like about it is that the platform itself is not great at distributed processing. When you need high parallel processing, it has some inherent issues. We had to use Java transformation, and it did not go very well. I have heard that it is going to the cloud, but we haven't tried that."

"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, for me it's not good."

More Informatica PowerCenter cons

"We'd like more integration capabilities."

"We've had issues in terms of the amount of data that is transferred when we are scheduling."

"We would like the solution to be expanded so that it is available for other platforms than just Microsoft."

"The interface could use improvement, as well as the administrative tools. Jobs fail from time to time for different reasons. It's not a problem with Microsoft, or SSIS itself. The problems are external, but to find the problems and analyze them it takes too much time."

"At one point, we did have to purchase an add-on."

"The performance of this solution is not as good as other tools in the market."

"The performance of SSIS could improve when comparing it to Oracle Database."

"It hangs a lot of the time."

More SSIS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"It is for big enterprises. We have leveraged Informatica for big enterprises but not for small and medium enterprises because it is a very costly product as compared to other products. We propose this solution only for enterprise customers. For small to medium enterprises, we would propose the Microsoft solution. Its licensing is currently bundle-wise. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise."

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

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

"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The price is very high, and it doesn't understand the market now."

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

"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 are satisfied with the pricing."

More Informatica PowerCenter pricing and cost advice

"This solution has provided an inexpensive tool, and it is easy to find experienced developers."

"We purchased the standard edition of SQL Server and SSIS came with it free of charge."

"We have an enterprise license for this solution."

"This solution is included with the MSSQL server package."

"SSIS is a cheaper option compared to the cost of other ETL tools."

"I'm not involved in licensing details, but SSIS provides value to our organization by simplifying data management tasks."

"It comes bundled with other solutions, which makes it difficult to get the price on the specific product."

"This solution is a free of charge addition to our SQL licence. However, the only way this tool can be utilized is as a feature of the SQL licence, which may make it unattractive to organizations who don't wish to purchase the wider-ranging licence."

More SSIS pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Answers from the Community

Netanya Carmi

Content Manager at PeerSpot

Feb 4, 2022

Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?

See 2 answers

Leah Fainchtein Buenavida

Tech Blogger

Nov 18, 2021

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 components and connect cloud and on-premises data sources. We find it very useful for connecting traditional data sources, big data, and NoSQL. We like that it can carry out simple and complex transformations. It is easy to use and helps us connect with multiple systems and web services. It makes it really easy for developers to develop production SSIS packages. It helps us to pull data because it is DBA-friendly. However, the filtering of the tasks is a bit difficult, and the error messages can be confusing and hard to resolve. That’s why, when evaluating both solutions, we ultimately decided to go with Informatica PowerCenter. This metadata-driven integration tool is easy to use and effective even when creating complex mapping. It is easy to monitor jobs, create workflows, and detect bugs. It is well suited for handling a low volume of records, therefore maintaining a real-time operation at an affordable cost. Another advantage is that it works with ETL-type data integration, connecting to almost all types of database systems. It has great support and documentation, too. Informatica PowerCenter can address different data quality issues, such as data masking and virtualization. It has supporting tools for big data as well. It is critical to ensure we can feed on multiple data streams and transform them into usable data in the data warehouse. There are a few downsides, though. There aren’t many scheduling options, and debugging the workflows is kind of hard. Conclusions: Overall, SSIS is a very good group of tools. For organizations used to working with MS products, it provides easy integration and connections between databases. Since we work with a small number of records, the Informatica PowerCenter works better for us.

Read full answer

GaryM

Data Architect at World Vision

Feb 4, 2022

Curious why you would compare these 2 tools and why you wouldn't be looking for a PaaS solution? SSIS is free verses Informatica is the opposite. But there are no plans to fully embrace SSIS within Azure. They have moved to ADF and Synapse pipelines. That said there is IR (Integration Runtime) so you can run SSIS in Azure but it's limited in terms of SSIS add-ons. Clearly, the future for Microsoft is Azure and Synapse so don't count on SSIS staying around for many more years. In fact, the BiXpress add-on has been deprecated by its new owner. And I would NOT recommend using SSIS without BiXpress as its built-in logging and error control is awful. I'm looking at us migrating from SSIS to ADF over the next few years.

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?

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

What do you like most about SSIS?

The product's deployment phase is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SSIS?

The solution comes free of cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SSIS?

SSIS has too many bugs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I try to use a package, and it won't work on my computer, but it will on another user's computer. If I could rely on the program mo...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 7% of the time

Informatica PowerExchange vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 5% of the time

More Informatica PowerCenter Competitors

Talend Open Studio vs SSIS

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs SSIS

Compared 8% of the time

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs SSIS

Compared 8% of the time

AWS Glue vs SSIS

Compared 4% of the time

Alteryx Designer vs SSIS

Compared 3% of the time

More SSIS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter

January 2025

Download Informatica PowerCenter product report

Buyer's Guide

SSIS

December 2024

Download SSIS product report

Also Known As

PowerCenter

SQL Server Integration Services

Learn More

Informatica

Microsoft

Overview

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.

SSIS is a versatile tool for data integration tasks like ETL processes, data migration, and real-time data processing. Users appreciate its ease of use, data transformation tools, scheduling capabilities, and extensive connectivity options. It enhances productivity and efficiency within organizations by streamlining data-related processes and improving data quality and consistency.

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank

1. Amazon.com 2. Bank of America 3. Capital One 4. Coca-Cola 5. Dell 6. E*TRADE 7. FedEx 8. Ford Motor Company 9. Google 10. Home Depot 11. IBM 12. Intel 13. JPMorgan Chase 14. Kraft Foods 15. Lockheed Martin 16. McDonald's 17. Microsoft 18. Morgan Stanley 19. Nike 20. Oracle 21. PepsiCo 22. Procter & Gamble 23. Prudential Financial 24. RBC Capital Markets 25. SAP 26. Siemens 27. Sony 28. Toyota 29. UnitedHealth Group 30. Visa 31. Walmart 32. Wells Fargo

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter vs. SSIS

January 2025

Free Report: Informatica PowerCenter vs. SSIS

Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica PowerCenter vs. SSIS and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Informatica PowerCenter vs. SSIS report.

See our list of best Data Integration vendors.

We monitor all Data Integration reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.