Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) Reviews

Our clients need to perform data masking to comply with GDPR rules or the company's internal data security policies. Data masking restricts who can look at the private customer data. Informatica provides a comprehensive solution for on-the-fly or real-time data masking. 

One use case is masking the data for a test environment, so developers and testers can't see production data. This is something you have to do regularly with large amounts of data.

The second use case is in a production environment. Sometimes you need to mask the data on the fly when the data consumers are retrieving reports from the data platform. You are masking the data for certain groups who don't have permission to see that data. 

Informatica should simplify the rules for setting classifications and user access management permissions. It's too complex to define, configure, and make work.

One feature I would like to see is the ability to do data sampling when anonymizing a test environment. It would save you the trouble of having to replicate or perform complex configurations when moving to another environment for testing or development. You should be able to easily configure the data sampling when you are preparing an environment with anonymized data.

We are a system integrator, and we've been one of Informatica's biggest partners for around two years. My team integrates Persistent Data Masking for our clients, but I don't use it personally. I understand the product and its capabilities, and the clients give me feedback on it.

Persistent Data Masking is stable and ready to scale. It has to be. You are working with large amounts of data.

I rate Informatica support eight out of 10. Informatica provides standard support during deployment. A vendor that doesn't offer support isn't a good company. Informatica is willing to make a straightforward deployment because they care about feedback from the client. 

They don't mind investing some money at the beginning to make it run. They care about retaining clients for a long time. Client satisfaction is essential.

Positive

I rate Persistent Data Masking eight out of 10 for ease of setup. It's straightforward. You can deploy a proof of concept in three weeks. It takes two or three people to deploy, but one guy is fine for maintenance. Then again, it depends on the scope and how many anonymizations you have to do, but it doesn't require a big team.

It's usually a yearly subscription, but customers can go with a different pricing model. Typically, it's a yearly subscription for the cloud solution. If you're buying an on-premise solution, it's a one-time payment and annual license for support.

I rate Informatica Persistent Data Masking seven out of 10. 

Our primary use case is to build composite applications for our clients and to automate the business processes. We build new automation applications out of it

Our requirement is to orchestrate. We talk to different integration points in our client's systems and get the data from different APIs. Data gathered is enriched/cleansed and filtered with application of business rules . Output of application can be a communication sent out to clients customer via different channels or an update to their core data elements via API

There isn't any human touch involved. It's just an automated business process to build different applications and talking to various APIs using the client's ecosystems. Human workflow feature of this tool has not been explored.

We don't use all of the features like Human workflow. Moreover for build human workflow application would prefer products like Appian and Service. Would like to this tool to enable features like BAM and inbuilt BRE. Currently we are using custom integration to external rule engine built using JBOSS Guvnor.

We have been using Informatica for the past five to six years.

For the kind of application we have built and running on this tool, its been very stable and has given consistent performance. The nice feature of enabling logging and persistence level at individual process level gives the flexibility to optimise the performance of process by keeping those attributes at lowest level.

We have not used it with high availability setup. But there is plan to enable it behind LB and deploy it on Amazon cloud.

We very rarely contact their customer support. We generally only contact them for version upgrades and any major upgrades on the server version. Then we use them in our test environment. We'll use it and then we go to production. But we have only done that twice 

We haven't had many technical issues. We don't use all of the components of the tool that are more complex like Huma. Workflow which can be more error prone . We have a straightforward orchestration flow in which we haven't faced any issue.

Earlier we were using product named Intalio. We switched due to its increased license cost and frequent issues.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. They provide steps that were quite clearly defined. You only need to follow the steps in order to configure the server.

I already had experience working with different tools. It was quite easy to do this setup on my own, without consulting anybody.

Inhouse as I have good amount of experience in other BPM tools with more complex setup requirements.

Many other tools were evaluated before finalizing om Activevos. As we did not have requirement for human workflow, so tools.like Appian, Lombardi ans Oracle BPM were not considered and there pricing was also not in he budget. Tools like WSo2, Activiti were considered for evaluation.

Informatica actually does not sell this product. They acquired this product to support their own MDM productt and they want it to be used in conjunction with their MDM product. They have no intention to sell it as a standalone tool to any other company. But because we already have experience in BPM they were more convinced that we'll be able to use this without asking too many questions. So they were okay to give it as a standalone product to us. But they do not sell this product as a standalone product to anybody else.

I would rate it a seven out of ten due to lack of inbuilt BAM and BRE features.

At our company, we use Informatica MDM for data architecture and numerous other aspects of data warehouse, such as data designing or modeling. We recommend Informatica products to our customers based on their use cases, data volume, budget, and environment suitability.  

The product isn't mature enough to provide suitable connectors to various data engines. The performance of the solution in transporting data between data lakes and Big data infrastructure is not up to the mark. At our company, we use a similar solution called Spark, which is much better than Informatica MDM in terms of performance and speed. The data support capabilities of Informatica MDM can be improved. 

It's a stable product without any bugs or glitches. But overall Kafka is a better product than Informatica MDM. 

The product exhibits satisfying scalability. 

The tech support is satisfying from the vendor. The support team was able to respond and solve the issues in a very short time. I would rate the tech support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

Informatica MDM easily integrates with the Informatica environment as well as with third-party tools. But for some integrations, for instance, when Informatica MDM is integrated with SAP, the functionality slows down drastically; the task that would take five minutes with Spark takes five hours with Informatica MDM.

The same scenario occurs when Kafka is integrated with Informatica MDM. For popular database integrations such as Oracle and SQL, Informatica MDM functions well enough. 

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward. Our company professionals suggest that Informatica MDM should be on a Linux server instead of Windows. 

The product is very expensive compared to other competitor tools. Informatica MDM is not meant for small businesses but rather used by large enterprises like banks or government organizations. Informatica MDM can be purchased as a stand-alone product and doesn't come in an Informatica bundle. The support for Informatica MDM is not included in the standard licensing fees and must be purchased separately.  

I recommend that others test Informatica MDM with different integration tools before making a purchase decision. I also advise others to evaluate the use cases before choosing a product. Other popular competitor tools in the market include Collibra and SAP MDG. 

Informatica MDM fits our organization's use cases perfectly. When a customer of our company has a plethora of business products, VOCs need to be implemented, even if it's a different MDM solution than Informatica MDM.

Some customers depend on a single technology ERP, while others work with Oracle ERP or SAP, and sometimes they are using ERP and Informatica MDM in combination or migrating from one ERP to another. These use cases will impact the setup that already exists on the customer's site, and thus, the solution needs to be configured accordingly. I would rate Informatica MDM as eight out of ten. 

We use Informatica Cloud Data Integration to migrate to the cloud, upgrade our data warehouse, and implement master data management. It helps us with in-depth analysis, leveraging shared history, and addressing data governance questions.

The most valuable features of Informatica Cloud Data Integration for our clients are the AI capabilities within Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services. It excels in mapping development, searching for contracts in data governance, creating data quality rules, and designing merging processes. The ability to identify duplicates and automate analysis coverage is particularly beneficial. Additionally, the cost-effective option of using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for smaller projects or departments has made it more accessible and attractive for experimentation.

One area where Informatica Cloud Data Integration could improve is in providing more accelerators for certain functionalities. For example, for master data management, having additional accelerators could streamline implementation. Additionally, enhancing compatibility with metadata sharing across different applications, similar to what is achievable with PowerCenter, would further enhance the product's capabilities.

I would like to see more connectors for on-premise databases in the next version of Informatica Cloud Data Integration. Currently, CDI free is a great option for cloud integration, but expanding the connectors to include databases like Oracle or MySQL for on-premise environments would make the tool more versatile and accessible for smaller businesses or those not fully in the cloud.

I have been working with Informatica Cloud Data Integration since 2016.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration has been generally stable, with occasional editor issues. However, SLAs are consistently respected, and we typically experience minimal downtime, averaging around two to three hours per month.

The scalability of Informatica Cloud Data Integration is high. With advanced pushdown optimization, it performs well in various environments like Snowflake and AWS. It is suitable for companies of all sizes; for small to medium enterprises, starting with fewer IPUs is cost-effective, and scalability allows for growth as needed.

I would rate Informatica's vendor support as a seven out of ten. It is generally good, but there is room for improvement, especially as they shift focus from on-premise to the cloud. We often find answers in the community for software issues, but sometimes we encounter challenges that require official support tickets.

Neutral

The initial setup for Informatica Data Integration is straightforward. Deployment is simple, involving exporting and importing development processes. The ability to pilot the Informatica Data Integration platform from various APIs makes continuous integration and deployment easy to manage through API calls.

I would rate Informatica's pricing as an eight out of ten in terms of affordability. Starting with a small IPU volume is cost-effective, and as we grow, the pricing adjusts favorably based on consumption, which makes it reasonable for our needs.

I would rate Informatica Cloud Data Integration overall as an eight out of ten. It is a comprehensive platform covering data integration, API integration, data quality, data governance, master data, and privacy tools—all within one platform. The accessibility to all functionalities with the purchase of IPUs is a significant advantage compared to the past where certain features required additional payments and permissions.

Axon is a tool for data governance that lets you define personas of people who can define policy and implement those policies and have a check on them. So it's part of a data governance solution.

It is a very good tool. So there is Informatica Axon, Informatica EDC, and Informatica Data Quality, which are the best solutions in the market for data governance. Many customers prefer the solution.

All the functionalities of the solution that are currently available on the on-prem version should be made available on the cloud. The on-prem version's functionalities may not be available on the cloud version. So, Informatica is working on it, and it may take some time. In short, adopting the functionalities of the solution's on-prem version could be faster in the cloud.

I work with an SI company, and my company is also a cyber-security value-added distributor. I have been selling Informatica products, including Axon, for years.

It is a very stable solution. I rate its stability a ten out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. I have six to seven customers using the solution.

Informatica Axon's technical support is good. So, like all the US companies, the support ticket moves from one support team to another.

The initial setup process depends on the complexity of the customers' requirements. So, it can be simple or complex. Usually, data governance projects are a minimum of six to eight months.

Regarding the deployment process, the first step is to conduct a discovery session to understand the customers' problems. This involves identifying the stakeholders involved in the data governance process, determining who owns the data, and identifying the layers of governance that need to be implemented at various levels, including the persona and solution levels.

Two to three people, including a data analyst, a data engineer, and a data quality or data assurance person, are required to deploy and maintain the solution.

A yearly subscription is paid based on the number of people using the solution. Price-wise, it falls under the medium range since it is neither very costly nor too cheap.

It's a very good solution. And for any customer embarking on our data governance journey, Axon is the right tool to choose, along with ECD and Data Quality. I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.

We are using Informatica Cloud Data Integration to take sources from databases to flat files or from web service to flat files. We do data integration with the tool.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration could improve the price by making it less expensive.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for approximately four years.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration is stable.

The scalability of Informatica Cloud Data Integration is good.

We have many people in my company using this solution, approximately 100. We do not plan to increase usage.

I have not contacted the support from Informatica Cloud Data Integration.

The initial setup of Informatica Cloud Data Integration is easy. The deployment of the solution only takes a few clicks of the mouse, it takes a few minutes.

We did the implementation of Informatica Cloud Data Integration in-house.

The price of Informatica Cloud Data Integration could be reduced.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration is good overall. I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Informatica Cloud Data Integration an eight out of ten.

The most valuable features of Informatica MDM are it is cloud-enabled and has all the elements that are supposed to have in terms of MDM as a solution. All the features that are there. It is very well-integrated with any of the SAP and non-SAP applications. It is quite user-friendly. The user experience that you receive in Informatica MDM is quite good.

From multiple masters that are there in Informatica MDM, we can improve the financials.

I have been using Informatica MDM for approximately four years.

The stability of Informatica MDM is good.

Informatica MDM has very good scalability. When we say scalability it refers to the ability to add custom fields as per the requirement and then upgrade the overall data model the way you want for the client. 

The scalability is one of the most important features because the clients do not want to use a common data model. They want to have scalability so that they can upgrade the data model the way they want.

We have approximately 25 people using this solution in my organization. The users of the solution include data stewards, business data owners, data sponsors, technical architects, and testers. All kinds of people are using the solution.

There are certain challenges with the support from Informatica MDM, however, I did not directly contact them. It was somebody in my team who did.

I rate the support from Informatica MDM a three out of five.

I did not use another solution previously.

The initial setup of Informatica MDM is complex but is okay if you have experience. The full deployment took approximately five to six months.

Where one is the easiest and five is the most complex, I rate the complexity of the initial setup of Informatica MDM a two out of five.

The deployment of Informatica MDM was done by a whole team, approximately eight to ten people involved, and they had multiple roles. Each person looked after a different section, such as data, validation, and testing.

My advice to others is they need to first ensure that the functions of the solution are stable and the people who are supposed to implement it should have a good functional understanding. It is important that the team that is working on, in terms of standardization and data quality check, that it is a robust team, a strong team to take care of the solution. If we upload data in the system and then the data is not correct, then it becomes a very difficult job to clean afterward.

I rate Informatica MDM an eight out of ten.

We use Informatica to extract data from production. It's mainly the configuration of the systems. We extract data from one site in the same system and mass customer data to the test system. It's a list of customers that is a subset of the data. 

In our CRM, we have data on our customers, and the data in that system is a copy of the production environment. We have all the configurations manually modified to work as a test, but we can extract only new clients, which is a problem. We need to have a CRM with only the configuration but not the customers. 

My plan is to make Informatica work with the CRM. If it works, I am sure that I can get the budget to make it work with other systems, but the first system that I need to work with is CRM. The other ones are less important and don't have the same impact of making it work with the CRM. We're at about 80 percent completion with this project. 

Informatica is user-friendly, stable, and scalable. These three aspects are the most valuable for us. If we can make it work well with the CRM, we can continue or try again this year to complete that part of the project. I am confident that this kind of solution is what we need because we have a third-party resource that works in the development. 

We need to have a lot of hardware infrastructure to make our test system work. We use a complete copy of the production environment for testing, which is a real problem for us. The problem is not with Informatica as a provider per se. It's more of an issue with our system providers, but we need support to complete the projects. That's our real situation. With the pandemic, we have undergone many changes that have slowed down these projects in the last few years.

We have the license to deploy Informatica on any system we want. Right now, we aren't using it as much as we thought we would. We understand the solution, but it isn't easy in some areas. One problem is we have systems in which we don't know all the relationships among the data, and we need support from our providers to get that information. That is one of our most complicated problems implementing it.

Informatica's support understands the solution, but they lack the experience we need for our use case. That was one thing that we prioritized when we started searching for this kind of solution. 

Informatica is working well, but we need access to the production databases to extract the data. The real problem is understanding the data in the system that we don't own or provide. Those are the most problematic to implement with this solution. We make it work with what our team has developed. Deployment took four to six months. Right now, we have one developer and two or three system administrators using Informatica, so it takes about three or four people to deploy and manage the solution. 

We worked with the team we used for all the installations. They made it work. I can say that wasn't as good as I expected when we purchased the solution. When we started the implementation, we understood that they didn't have the research that works in this project because we did a lot of work to understand the data from the implementation team. That wasn't what we wanted because we knew that Informatica would be the most complicated of all the systems we would implement in the extraction. After all, they are our clients, and almost all other systems depend on that system. 

We have a perpetual license for Informatica, and we only need to pay for support. However, because we're not actively using it at the moment, we don't have the budget to continue with the support.

We evaluated several solutions, including IBM InfoSphere Optim and Delphix. We purchased 15 licenses at the same time that totaled around $230,000.

I rate Informatica Persistent Data Masking eight out of 10. It's important to have a robust understanding of the knowledge you need in the system. That is one of the main problems that we have. You need firm control over the systems to do data masking. All of the data is a subset because we want to make the subset and the data masking, but you have to have good control over the systems. I think that is the key.