Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) Reviews

We use Data Quality for healthcare projects, and although it's not its prime purpose, we also use it to extract data. Compared to PowerCenter, it's a little easier to use — we designed the mapping ourselves. In short, we use Data Quality primarily for extraction purposes.

Within our organization, there are 10 employees using this solution.

Seeing the data in the mapping itself is really nice. We don't want to extract the data and just see the flat file. With Data Quality, we can see the data very easily.

When running a workload, we can only use the command mode. We were expecting Data Quality to offer the same type of workflow as PowerCenter.  

Although we are very satisfied with the design of the UI, executing tasks with it can be difficult.

We have been using Informatica Data Quality for three years. 

Overall, stability-wise, it's quite good; however, we think PowerCenter is more stable.

Compared to PowerCenter, Data Quality needs some improvement. When we are dealing with large amounts of data for extraction purposes, it doesn't always work out — often we experience some memory issues here and there. Scalability-wise it needs some improvement.

Although the technical support is responsive, they often take a very long time to solve our issues. They are quick to solve second and third-level requests, but when it comes to first-level requests, their solutions become very vague and general and often don't bear any fruit — otherwise, they're good.

Deployment was quite straightforward. 

We have a long-term license. I can't really speak about the licensing as I don't know much about it.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. If you can afford it, then go for it. If it's out of your price range, then I would recommend considering an open-source solution.

overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

Our primary use case for this solution is purely for data quality analysis.

It took us a while to teach our users how Informatica works and to help them understand. We are still learning together with them because it also took us a while to master the tool. The contractors that come with Informatica are good on the ETL side but not that good on data quality.

The features I find most valuable are the mappings and rules. I am also impressed by the solution's interface. I really like this solution, as it works very well.

The visualization is very limited. It's not modern age, it's not self-service BI. It only has three levels of granularity on which you can present data and that's not enough. What's more, we had a few problems with the configuration. At times we found it difficult to integrate with other systems, but it turned out that the problem wasn't with the solution but with our firewalls. We had a couple of bugs but they are all fixed now. 

Another feature I would also like to see is tagging. At this stage, we can't tag data in the database of the data source with particular data flows. This is a nice feature that other solutions have and that Informatica lacks. We have to analyze and store data in a database and then we have to analyze it again and go through the servers. This takes up double storage. So if the data could be tagged at the database instead, anybody who has access to this data will know if there is a problem with the accuracy or anything else.

I don't think the solution is very stable because we have to refresh and restart the server at least once a month, or even more often. We couldn't understand what was causing this, perhaps we have a few bugs. But at times one team will be working and everything will be running, and then the other team will have some access issues. All we could do to fix this was to restart the server and then everything was up and running again. 

The scalability is very good. We have about 30 users and this may increase because our organization constantly needs more people, so people see the benefit because it's stable and it gives consistency. We will probably move to big data analytics and purchase their big data applications.

To be honest, we didn't really have any major issues yet but the technical support is good and they have a dedicated tech person assigned to us by Informatica to supports us. It works well because if we have a problem that our own IT team can't fix, they use Informatica to help them. 

I used IBM InfoSphere before but Informatica is much, much better; gold standard. There is no comparison. The interface and everything else is better.

The initial setup was very complex. It is mainly our own fault because we didn't go for the solution that was recommended by Informatica. We used shortcuts that backfired on us and we've been struggling for a year. In the end, we did exactly what Informatica recommended at the beginning and now everything works fine.

We have an integration team that is responsible for maintenance and deployment.

Informatica is very expensive. But luckily we got enough free licenses, so we are still within limit. 

Informatica has been the best solution for the past 10 years, but now there are new tools emerging. So maybe we will switch in the future. 

I would advise others to go for it because I love it. Maybe there are better tools, but I don't know about them. I would use it in conjunction with Tableau and Google Analytics for visualization. I would also suggest others to follow instructions during the initial setup and not to cut corners. Do the configuration exactly as Informatica suggests.
I love Informatica but I am not sure if it is value for money. Organizations that plan to increase their users may find it worth the money, but smaller organizations may want to use something simpler.

I will rate this solution an eight out of ten. My rating would have been nine if the solution offered tagging and if it was cheaper. 

Valuable features include:

• 360 degree view of customer data
• Data quality improvement through better decision making with respect to BI
• Analytics and reporting
• Improvement in he customer experience with better services provided to the application users
• Consistent support to the business through process standardization supported by effective Change Management and Data Governance

We had implemented it across leading Life Science domain. Clients looked to implement a MDM solution for Customer data, which will create a Golden Record from multiple source systems.

Single and consistent view of Customer Data arising from a centralized data set with unique customer records.

Customer data is a critical asset that must be managed within the enterprise.

An integrated Master Data Management solution is needed to enable a 360-degree view of its Customers and provide accurate and timely Customer information.

The ability to link customer information across HCPs (Healthcare Providers), managed markets, hospitals and institutional accounts enables an enhanced view of the customer.

I am looking forward to integration with leading data providers, such as DaaS in the Life Science domain.

I'm using Informatica MDM since 2012 in various version XUSP2,9.1,9.5.1,10.1 and 10.2

There were a few stability issues, but overall it is a stable product.

When it comes to scalability, it is the best product in the market.

I would give technical support a rating of 9/10.

I looked into other products in this segment, but we never implemented them.

The setup was pretty simple.

I would suggest to just go for it. It is the best MDM solution in the market.

The Mapping Designer allows for declarative ETL development (visual scripting) that leverages a wide array of different transformations.

The designer allows for the creation of mappings to be leveraged as templates. Within the templates, parameters can be set up that serve as variables for deployment to mapping configuration tasks.

Mapping Configuration Tasks, MCTs, are specific uses of a mapping to fit a situation or set of circumstances.

With my firm, our use of Informatica Cloud is primarily to implement a set of financial integrations from various accounting systems into a Salesforce environment.

By leveraging Informatica Cloud Mapping Designer, we were able to create sets of reusable templates that were source agnostic. This made supporting the integration for hundreds of customers feasible with just a small team of integration specialists.

There are a small number of UI bugs that occur on occasion.

In several browsers, such as Chrome, elements of the UI can disappear when navigating through steps in any of the integration tasks' wizards. Additionally, on data synchronization tasks, the source fields in a mapping can disappear altogether as well.

Also, the product is so new, that any points not covered in the documentation prove difficult to research online.

I have been using Informatica Cloud for two years.

There is currently no active failover for Informatica Cloud Secure Agents. This is the service used to process source information in client environments.

Therefore if a Secure Agent running a job goes down, the job will not wait or failover to another agent. It will fail as well.

We have not had any scalability issues so far.

Technical support is stellar. The time zone can prove an issue, as their support is all in Pacific Standard Time (PST).

We did not have a previous solution.

The installation and configuration of the Secure Agent is a breeze.

Jitterbit, SnapLogic, and MuleSoft were evaluated.

Informatica is likely to make this their flagship product. It is a solid investment to move to this ETL now. There will continue to be a slew of new features and product improvements in the near future that may increase the cost of the license.

We are using it for extraction purposes for some of our projects. We extract and test the data. 

It is very useful for testing purposes and designing mappings for small projects. If you go for IDQ in the mapping itself, you can see the data. You can then correct it, and test it so easily. 

It is working fine. It is also stable, scalable, and easy to deploy.

It can be improved in terms of performance and execution. I'm expecting better performance. It currently has some restrictions in terms of execution. For example, if we want to run it in the command mode and execute it, there are some restrictions, and we are facing some issues with a huge volume of data. These restrictions are not there in Informatica PowerCenter because we are able to execute a huge volume of data, and there are more ways to execute it. 

We have been using this solution for the past three or four years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have ten engineers who use it. 

We are getting better support with PowerCenter. Informatica Data Quality was developed later, and its support is not up to that level, but it is fine.

We didn't use any other solution.

Its initial setup is straightforward. We just need to create data integration services. The deployment generally takes up to three hours, but it can take longer depending on the nodes.

I did it myself.

I would recommend this solution. We have a long term license, and we plan to keep using it.

I would rate Informatica Data Quality a seven out of ten.

Migrate workloads from on-prem. That's the usual scenario for many customers in the past.  The question is if IICS could help painlessly.

Don't know yet. In a trial now. There is much to find out, first and foremost, its performance level when compared with on-prem.

Mapping designer seems to be easier to use even when compared with PowerCenter which is a great improvement.

The availability of connectors from the get-go, not just waiting for additional, extra ones to be added. That's it.

We use Informatica MDM for master data maintenance across our organization. We have multiple departments, like material real estate, trading, and supply. We use it for consolidation, harmonization, and central master data maintenance. We are also integrating it with the nonrecipient systems.

I like that Informatica MDM has robust matching technology. Informatica MDM is also porting the external Java applications for validations. I can consider that a must-have. It is also exposed to Rest API calls, and we can engage in real-time integrations with any third-party systems.

The configurations could be better. It is a bit confusing because we must develop two tools when building a data model in Informatica MDM. Even though Informatica MDM is a single tool, we have our hub console plus the provisioning tool within that. Whatever data model we are building in the hub console, we have to develop it in the provisioning tool again. It is double the work to create a data model. 

We are also using external calls or the Java custom plans functions. This can be both positive and negative. Since MDM as a client does not support any complex validation, we have to depend on the external call or a Java call. Every time we deployed, the entire solution was impacted if something went wrong. 

I have been using Informatica MDM for four years.

Informatica MDM can be more stable. There are some issues and some crashes, and sometimes, with the data load, we usually feel like we are doing an initial data load for any project. Sometimes, it could also be down to the production environment.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give stability a six.

Informatica MDM is a scalable solution. We probably have 1000 direct and indirect users with multiple use cases. But people solely working with Informatica MDM might be around 200 or 300. Most users are from business IT data support.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give scalability an eight.

Technical support is very responsive.

Positive

I was using SAP MDM, which is currently end of its life, so we migrated from SAP MDM to Informatica MDM.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have to make a jar file which we have to download from the link and download it as a client in our local mission. However, there are some challenges if we deploy Informatica MDM with IDQ on-premises. The deployment time depends on the use case. One or two people can maintain this solution.

We have seen a return on investment. From a business perspective, there have been many improvements since we migrated from SAP MDM.

I would recommend Informatica MDM to potential users. Even though Informatica MDM does not come with data quality, Informatica as a whole has some of the right tools. We have embedded the MDM with the IDQ informatic data quality in ways we can interact. It is the best fit for non-SAP systems.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Informatica MDM an eight.

We use this solution primarily for core master data management and deduplication.

Recently, they have come up with cloud versions, which I have not experienced. It's mostly deployed on-premise.

We have a limited number of users who are using this solution and working with the master data.

Initially, there wasn't a great product competing with Informatica for market management. It has been leading the market with hierarchy management and all the different match concepts and algorithms. They're very robust.

Informatica's issue is the licensing. Right now, there are a lot of new gen MDMs that are offering a lot in a single licensing model. VOS or Entity 360 are offering licensing differently.

I have been working with this solution for more than 10 years.

It's stable and reliable.

It's scalable.

I have had mixed experience with technical support. Sometimes it's very quick. Sometimes there isn't a quick turnaround and we don't have a person to reach out to directly to get an answer from them.

Installation was challenging. Informatica has a very robust engine, which takes a little bit of time, but they're stable.

We have a technical team of 50 people. Deployment depends on
the size and complexity of the requirements. Starting from scratch, any new implementation should take around five to six months. For new gen MDMs, the implementation can be done in three and a half months.

The ROI depends on the business requirement. If they're using their core master data and that data is helping them to address a lot of issues, then the return on investment is definitely very high. If an organization isn't using that to full scale, then it might not be that great.

It's offers value for money. They're more competitive with respect to pricing and offerings.