Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets comparison

Informatica and IBM are both solutions in the Data Integration category. Informatica is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.9, while IBM is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.4. Informatica holds a 9.9% mindshare in DI, compared to IBM’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Informatica users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Informatica PowerCenter

Read 81 Informatica PowerCenter reviews

15,851 Views
13,591 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

StreamSets

Read 20 StreamSets reviews

2,525 Views
1,707 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Informatica PowerCenter

StreamSets

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Informatica PowerCenter and StreamSets compete in the data integration platform category. StreamSets has the upper hand due to its flexibility and modern feature set.

Features: Informatica PowerCenter offers robust ETL capabilities, scalability for large enterprises, and excellent structured data processing. StreamSets provides real-time data flow monitoring, ease of use, and versatile handling of unstructured data.

Room for Improvement: Informatica PowerCenter could improve by reducing deployment complexity, streamlining cloud integration, and enhancing user interface modernity. StreamSets might work on extending support for legacy systems, enhancing transformation capabilities for complex data, and optimizing its error handling processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StreamSets offers agile deployment with cloud-native architecture easing implementation. Informatica PowerCenter requires more resources for deployment due to legacy complexity. Both deliver competent customer support, but StreamSets provides a more streamlined experience.

Pricing and ROI: StreamSets typically provides competitive pricing with subscription models, offering quicker ROI through lower upfront costs and scalability. Informatica PowerCenter may have higher setup expenses, but it can deliver substantial long-term ROI for large organizations.

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

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter vs. StreamSets

February 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

Informatica PowerCenter

Ranking in Data Integration

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (8th)

StreamSets

Ranking in Data Integration

15th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Informatica PowerCenter is 9.9%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StreamSets is 1.6%, up from 1.3% 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.

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Nantabo Jackie

Sales Manager at Soft Hostings Limited

Simplified pipelines and helped us break down data silos within our organization

The design experience when implementing batch streaming or ECL pipelines is very easy and straightforward. When we initially attempted to integrate StreamSets with Kafka, it was somewhat challenging until we consulted the documentation, after which it became straightforward. We use StreamSets to move data into modern analytics platforms. Moving the data into modern analytics platforms is still complex. It requires a lot of understanding of logic. StreamSets enables us to build data pipelines without knowing how to code. StreamSets' ability to build data pipelines without requiring us to know complex programming is very important, as it allows us to focus on our projects without spending time writing code. StreamSets' Transformer for Snowflake is simple to use for designing both simple and complex transformation logic. StreamSets' Transformer for Snowflake is extremely important to me as it helps me to connect external data sources and keep my internal workflow organized. Transformer for Snowflake's functionality is a perfect ten out of ten. It is important and cost-effective that Transformer for Snowflake is a serverless engine embedded within the platform, as without this feature, it would be very expensive. This feature helps us to sell at lower budget costs, which would otherwise be at a high cost with other servers. StreamSets has helped improve our organization. StreamSets simplified pipelines for our organization. It is easier to complete a project when we know where and how to start, and working with the team remotely makes it more efficient. This helps us to save time and be more organized when creating data pipelines. Being a structured company that produces reliable resources for our application benefits both our clients and contacts. StreamSets' built-in data drift resilience plays a part in our ETL operations. With prior knowledge, the built-in data drift resilience is very effective, but it can be challenging to implement without the preexisting knowledge. The built-in data drift resilience reduced the time it takes us to fix data drift breakages by 45 percent. StreamSets helped us break down data silos within our organization. The use of StreamSets to break down data silos enabled us to be confident in the services and products we provide, as well as the real-time streaming we offer. This has had a positive impact on our business, as it allowed us to accurately determine the analytics we need to present to stakeholders, clients, and our sources while ensuring that the process is secure and transparent. StreamSets saved us time because anyone can use StreamSets not just developers. We can save around 40 percent of our time. StreamSets' reusable assets helped us reduce workload by around 25 percent. StreamSets saved us money by not having to hire developers with specialized skills. We saved around $2,000 US. StreamSets helped us scale our data operations. Since StreamSets makes it easy to scale our data operations, it enabled us to know exactly where to start at any time. We are aware of the timeline for completing the project, and depending on our familiarity with the software, we can come up with a solution quickly.

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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

"Easy, scalable, robust platform to integrate heterogeneous source platform's data into the unified data warehouse."

"It has very good monitoring and process monitoring."

"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 is very good for integrating a huge amount of data in a very short duration, such as a minute. It is also very easy to use. After you provide the source and the target, mappings are automatically done, which makes it easy to use for the development team."

"It has good standard features for ETL development."

"Informatica PowerCenter is a very good ETL tool."

"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."

"My overall experience with Informatica PowerCenter is positive."

More Informatica PowerCenter pros

"The most valuable would be the GUI platform that I saw. I first saw it at a special session that StreamSets provided towards the end of the summer. I saw the way you set it up and how you have different processes going on with your data. The design experience seemed to be pretty straightforward to me in terms of how you drag and drop these nodes and connect them with arrows."

"Also, the intuitive canvas for designing all the streams in the pipeline, along with the simplicity of the entire product are very big pluses for me. The software is very simple and straightforward. That is something that is needed right now."

"The Ease of configuration for pipes is amazing. It has a lot of connectors. Mainly, we can do everything with the data in the pipe. I really like the graphical interface too"

"The scheduling within the data engineering pipeline is very much appreciated, and it has a wide range of connectors for connecting to any data sources like SQL Server, AWS, Azure, etc. We have used it with Kafka, Hadoop, and Azure Data Factory Datasets. Connecting to these systems with StreamSets is very easy."

"The ability to have a good bifurcation rate and fewer mistakes is valuable."

"What I love the most is that StreamSets is very light. It's a containerized application. It's easy to use with Docker. If you are a large organization, it's very easy to use Kubernetes."

"StreamSets Transformer is a good feature because it helps you when you are developing applications and when you don't want to write a lot of code. That is the best feature overall."

"The most valuable feature is the pipelines because they enable us to pull in and push out data from different sources and to manipulate and clean things up within them."

More StreamSets pros

Cons

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

"Integrating new tools can be tricky and challenging."

"Informatica, in my opinion, is very rigid and not very flexible, whereas platforms like Alteryx or Matillion are very flexible and agile."

"Areas for improvement in Informatica PowerCenter include scalability and high availability or the clustering configuration because that's still very basic. The elasticity or scaling of the platform needs a lot of improvement. For example, when it comes to DR handling or building an active-active or active-passive cluster, Informatica PowerCenter is still not that powerful. Automation also needs improvement in the solution. Improving automation leads to some improvement in the stability of Informatica PowerCenter and other aspects related to it. What I'd like to see in the next release of Informatica PowerCenter is real-time capability because the solution is mainly for patches, and to have real-time integration, you need to count on some additional components from Informatica. I would expect more integration and a complete platform in terms of real-time capability or patching with minimal interventions or minimal components to be aligned together."

"We had to take on a large volume of data from the legacy Sybase system. This was taking a very long time, i.e., more than a day. We were trying to improve it with partitions to gpload, but we were told that we can't go more than four partitions."

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

"Its interface can be modernized. It is an old product. I have been working with it for 14 years, and it still looks the same. It hasn't been modernized much. It also needs to handle more modern formats, such as JSON files. It works with the old text files and databases, but it does not always work with the newer, modern stuff. You need to make your own programs to support that kind of stuff. Support is also a kind of difficult with Informatica. They don't do direct support and rely on using their distributors around the globe for support, which means that you kind of have to go through this layer of different companies before you get help."

"It should be more cloud-centric than on-prem-centric."

More Informatica PowerCenter cons

"Currently, we can only use the query to read data from SAP HANA. What we would like to see, as soon as possible, is the ability to read from multiple tables from SAP HANA. That would be a really good thing that we could use immediately. For example, if you have 100 tables in SQL Server or Oracle, then you could just point it to the schema or the 100 tables and ingestion information. However, you can't do that in SAP HANA since StreamSets currently is lacking in this. They do not have a multi-table feature for SAP HANA. Therefore, a multi-table origin for SAP HANA would be helpful."

"I would like to see it integrate with other kinds of platforms, other than Java. We're going to have a lot of applications using .NET and other languages or frameworks. StreamSets is very helpful for the old Java platform but it's hard to integrate with the other platforms and frameworks."

"Visualization and monitoring need to be improved and refined."

"The software is very good overall. Areas for improvement are the error logging and the version history. I would like to see better, more detailed error logging information."

"If you use JDBC Lookup, for example, it generally takes a long time to process data."

"We create pipelines or jobs in StreamSets Control Hub. It is a great feature, but if there is a way to have a folder structure or organize the pipelines and jobs in Control Hub, it would be great. I submitted a ticket for this some time back."

"Sometimes, it is not clear at first how to set up nodes. A site with an explanation of how each node works would be very helpful."

"One thing that I would like to add is the ability to manually enter data. The way the solution currently works is we don't have the option to manually change the data at any point in time. Being able to do that will allow us to do everything that we want to do with our data. Sometimes, we need to manually manipulate the data to make it more accurate in case our prior bifurcation filters are not good. If we have the option to manually enter the data or make the exact iterations on the data set, that would be a good thing."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I consider this to be an expensive product."

"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."

"Cost could be improved."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a six out of ten. The exact pricing depends on various products that you have."

"According to what I've heard and read on various blogs, it's quite expensive when compared to similar competitive products."

"The price of this solution is high."

"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."

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

More Informatica PowerCenter pricing and cost advice

"It has a CPU core-based licensing, which works for us and is quite good."

"The licensing is expensive, and there are other costs involved too. I know from using the software that you have to buy new features whenever there are new updates, which I don't really like. But initially, it was very good."

"StreamSets is an expensive solution."

"The pricing is affordable for any business."

"We are running the community version right now, which can be used free of charge."

"Its pricing is pretty much up to the mark. For smaller enterprises, it could be a big price to pay at the initial stage of operations, but the moment you have the Seed B or Seed C funding and you want to scale up your operations and aren't much worried about the funds, at that point in time, you would need a solution that could be scaled."

"It's not so favorable for small companies."

"The pricing is too fixed. It should be based on how much data you need to process. Some businesses are not so big that they process a lot of data."

More StreamSets 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

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance 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?

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

What do you like most about StreamSets?

The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customiz...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StreamSets?

We often faced problems, especially with SAP ERP. We struggled because many columns weren't integers or primary keys, which StreamSets couldn't handle. We had to restructure our data tables, which ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StreamSets?

StreamSets is used for data transformation rather than ETL processes. It focuses on transforming data directly from sources without handling the extraction part of the process. The transformed data...

See all answers

Comparisons

SSIS vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 16% of the time

Databricks vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle GoldenGate vs Informatica PowerCenter

Compared 2% of the time

More Informatica PowerCenter Competitors

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs StreamSets

Compared 12% of the time

webMethods.io vs StreamSets

Compared 9% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs StreamSets

Compared 8% of the time

Fivetran vs StreamSets

Compared 8% of the time

SSIS vs StreamSets

Compared 7% of the time

More StreamSets Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter

March 2025

Download Informatica PowerCenter product report

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets

March 2025

Download StreamSets product report

Also Known As

PowerCenter

No data available

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.

Informatica

StreamSets is a data integration platform that enables organizations to efficiently move and process data across various systems. It offers a user-friendly interface for designing, deploying, and managing data pipelines, allowing users to easily connect to various data sources and destinations. StreamSets also provides real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities, ensuring that data is flowing smoothly and any issues are quickly addressed.

IBM

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank

Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge

Buyer's Guide

Informatica PowerCenter vs. StreamSets

February 2025

Free Report: Informatica PowerCenter vs. StreamSets

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