IBM InfoSphere DataStage Reviews

Complex data integration projects which require integration from multiple data sources.

I have worked during many implementations using DataStage. All of the projects that I worked on have been successful. This is due mainly to the strict discipline around best practices, and by following a set of standards and templates designed to reduce complexity and improve automation, including strong reference architecture.

• Its parallel processing capability allows you to go through extremely large data sets in no time at all, if you do your job right. 
• Highly customizable: Allowing you to handle multiple data latencies (scheduled batch, on-demand, and real-time) in the same job. 
• High scalability: Start small and go big with the same job. You just need to adjust the configuration file, no need to recompile.
• Strong metadata management: Business, technical, and process metadata can all be managed from a single place.
• Ease of integration with other tool sets: Easily supports APIs (or build your own) to support data streaming (or batched) from other systems.
• Data Quality Management from within the tool: Supporting data sampling, including profiling of data, directly from the development canvas.
  

High-cost of ownership: They could take a page from open source software, such as Talend.

Working with some of the big data components is good, but I can see improvements are needed, such as native support for Spark and HBase.

No issues.

No issues.

Support is always good.

Have used quite a few ETL tools in my job.

• Ab Initio: Even pricier, but has a highly competent ETL tool. It is complete, but hard to use. 
• Informatica: Not as flexible and does not support the same level of complexity in its maps.
• Talend: It is a good tool suite, extensive, but can be cumbersome to cite all its pieces.
• ODI: For the Oracle centric world.
• SSIS: Week when compared to any of the above tool sets.

Depends on type of environment that is being installed. I have seen fairly simple to overly complex initial setups due to the environment, not due to the tool.

Both vendor and in-house team implementations:

IBM has top-notch support and tool services along with other partners as well. Depending on the partner, this can go from installation and configuration to solution development, etc.)

Most in-house teams that I have seen tend to have have good developers, but not always good architects. Like most every data integration project, if you do not have a strong architecture, your solution will eventually fail.

Depends on the project.

Have done many ETL tool evaluations based on client requirements. DataStage has always been in the top-three. It may not have been selected due to different weights being used for different sections of the evaluation for different clients, but it has always been in the top-three consistently.

If you have the budget and your solution requires industrial/enterprise strength data integration, this product is always a good choice.

We use it for many kinds of projects. For example, we use it for business intelligence, master data management, data quality, data governance, data integration to SAP, Oracle retail, and real-time integration.

The concept of integration is a valuable feature of the product. The product excels in this area. In fact, it is one of the two leading products in the integration field. 

Based on my experience, interacting with data through integration has been more profitable than any other products or projects. Data integration is a reliable feature.

The graphical user interface (GUI) feels a lot like the interfaces from the 1980s. Regarding IBM, they initially indicated that version 8.11.7 would be their final release. We require more connectors to establish clear connections to cloud services. Connecting to the cloud is not easy or transparent within the product. Although the product has the potential to connect to the cloud, configuring and setting it up is challenging.

In future releases, connecting to the cloud should be easy and transparent.

I’ve been using this solution since 2005. I’m currently using version 11.7.

The stability of the solution is ten on ten.

The scalability of the solution is nine on ten.

Setting up the system is difficult and requires a lot of technical expertise. It demands a high level of experience during the setup process. 

However, despite the difficulty, our team, possibly the only one in Mexico, is good at quickly completing the setup.

Most of our implementations or installations are on-premises, accounting for approximately 90% of the total. The remaining 10% of our implementations are on the cloud.

The product has proven to be exceptional and highly competitive in the market. As a result, I have experienced substantial financial success with the product. There are many examples we have for the ROI.

The price of the product is reasonable, especially for mid-sized companies. We have been successfully selling to several mid-sized companies.

The market is indeed filled with numerous solutions. Currently, I am exploring Microsoft's offerings, particularly their integration capabilities. Also, the purpose and functionalities of Azure are pretty interesting. I have been working with Quick Link, and specifically, I have been working with Azure Database.

If you want to learn about integrating data, this product offers a valuable learning opportunity. Then you can consider transitioning to the next product in line. The underlying concept remains the same. 

I believe this solution is more reliable and provides a better understanding of data integration, data quality management, and master data management. It covers all aspects of data management, making it easier to learn. 

This is my perspective, possibly influenced by my extensive experience working with this product for many years. It is the main strength of this solution.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

This solution has an end-to-end process used for data integration.

It's a robust solution.

The initial setup could be more straightforward.

We have been providing IBM InfoSphere DataStage for one year.

I believe this solution is stable. We have not received any feedback from our clients.

To my understanding, this solution is scalable.

We have several customers who are currently using it.

I have not contacted technical support.

We have a long list of different providers such as Informatica, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft SSIS, Pentaho, and Talend.

The installation was not straightforward and I would rate it at medium complexity.

The installation required assistance from an expert from IBM.

The price is expensive but there are no licensing fees.

Informatica provides a cloud-based deployment but we only work with the on-premises version. This is a product that I can recommend.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We started using this solution as we needed a system upgrade. We had to move the Db2 data to a AS400 system. 

Their web interface is good but the on-prem sites are outdated. The solution could also be improved if they could integrate the data pipeline scheduling part of their interface. 

We have been using this solution for a couple of months.

This is a scalable solution. 

When we have needed help from the IBM team, they were helpful. Our company is a premium partner so we get fast responses. 

Positive

The infrastructure and the software configuration part was done by one of my teammates. We were able to complete it in two working days. This was only for the installation of DataStage. 

I would advise others to identify the communication between servers and the client tools correctly. If working from a client environment and connecting to the server, configuration should be done correctly, otherwise you may encounter some issues.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We are a consulting company and we use this solution for our clients. We set up the data for them. We have various healthcare-related information from their vendor and business partners. They have integrated them and get data reports from it.

It improves how our client's organization functions.

We mainly use the designer and developer qualities. We use the basic features that we have.

They have many good features. The Hierarchical Data Stage is good.

The interface needs improvement. The interface in Informatica is easier than in DataStage.

The licensing can be improved. Many companies are moving away from DataStage because it is expensive.

The biggest issue that is unclear is how are they integrating into DevOps when they are binary files.

We would like to see DataStage integrated with DevOps so that a pipeline can be created for auto-deployment. Right now we are all doing it manually.

I have been working with IBM InfoSphere DataStage for seven years.

We have the 11.3 version but have recently migrated to the 11.7 version.

It's a stable product, it's not new.

It's very scalable. Our clients are medium-sized companies with a 1.5 billion turnover.

We reached out to IBM because the file was not readable, and they resolved the issue.

Technical support is good. I have not found any issues with technical support. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

In some cases, they have a delay in giving suggestions for the configuration.

Previously, in another company, I worked with Informatica. There are not a lot of differences but the interface is easier than it is in DataStage.

I don't do the setup, but I think that they have many challenges.

Initially, we had challenges with the configuration. We were trying to use the comparison for Excel, and reading the Excel files from the source, but the files were not readable.

It's very expensive.

I am not a developer, I have a team within our company for that.

There is a cloud migration strategy going on, so they are thinking of moving to the cloud. They want a tool that is not heavy and suitable for their budget.

The recommendation for using this tool would depend on the requirements. 

I don't have anything bad to say about this product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We migrate data from old databases to new databases. 

We can view what we want to do. We can transform data and put them on tables. 

I want the tool to continue with the on-prem version, not the cloud one. 

I have been using the solution for six years. 

I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten. 

My company has 12 users for IBM InfoSphere DataStage. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten. 

It takes time to get answers from the support. The responsiveness varies. Sometimes it is fast, and other times it is slow. 

Neutral

IBM has good installation documents. The tool's deployment took a day to complete. 

As part of the tool's maintenance, we install the updates and take backups. We rely on two engineers to help with the process.  I rate IBM InfoSphere DataStage an eight out of ten. 

The product is primarily used for  intense data transformation; it's part of the risk management, and dataflow, and is sourcing data from the data warehouse on the SAP Sybase platform.

The connectivity with the databases and the speed and flexibility of modeling is excellent. We like the flexibility of modeling.

The solution is stable.

It can scale.

We'd like better integration with source control and error and diagnostic information. The error messaging needs to be improved. 

The solution is a bit complicated. 

I've been using the solution for four years. 

It's stable. it's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We can scale the solution as needed. 

There are about 50 users on the solution right now. 

While technical support may have been used, I have never personally dealt with them.

I've used SSIS as well and find this product to be more difficult to set up.

The initial setup can be challenging. It's harder to set up than, for example, SSIS.

I'm not sure how long it took to set up, as it was already in place when I joined the team. However, I would say it took a week to deploy.

We have five people on hand that can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. They are all engineers. 

The initial setup can be handled in-house. 

The licensing we have is permanent. 

I'd recommend the product to others. 

I'd rate it a nine out of ten. We've been pleased with its capabilities overall. 

We implement this solution for our customers. The majority of them are Enterprise companies.

This solution is very easy to use because you can design to compile and to run.

The most valuable feature is the ability to transfer information via notes.

The documentation and in-application help for this solution need to be improved, especially for new features. By comparison, in Talend, there is help available for all of the features.

One of my clients has a problem using this solution with MongoDB.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see the ability to copy and paste schemas. It would be very good because as it is now, you have to save the schema to a repository and then re-load it. It can be done in Talend, but in DataStage, it is not as good.

This is a stable solution. You have to be careful when you install a service pack because sometimes it causes problems. There may be a second service pack to solve problems that were introduced by the first one.

Scaling this solution is not difficult. When you first install you chose what components you need. My clients are enterprise companies, with at least five hundred or a thousand employees.

The are several technical support teams, and the quality of support depends on where the customer is situated. Normally, technical support answers quickly, but it can be improved.

The initial setup is not easy. You have to be an expert to install DataStage.

Sometimes I get calls from clients who ask me to install this solution because their Unix administrator is not able to do it. You have to configure your OS, Database, Web server, and more. There are a lot of things to install.  

If you are not experienced then it is not possible to install.

Small and medium-sized companies cannot afford to pay for this solution.

This solution is for larger companies. Smaller businesses use Talend.

This is a good product, but there is room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.