What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company for data ingestion and the ETL process. Though in our company, we started to use the product for data cataloging, we still use it for ETL and data integration.
What is most valuable?
Informatica Enterprise Data Lake is a product that was recommended to our company after we got in touch with various product vendors, and all of them suggested that Informatica is the best in the market, especially as per Gartner's report. A lot of reports were available for the product around five or six years ago, which was before our company decided to use Informatica Enterprise Data Lake. Informatica Enterprise Data Lake is probably the right fit for our infrastructure.
What needs improvement?
Governance, data dictionary, and data cataloging are not available in Informatica Enterprise Data Lake. A lot of businesses are facing issues related to understanding the area revolving around insights of data.
At Informatica Enterprise Data Lake's level, in our company, we have a lot of redundant data in a lot of our core systems. The basic thing that our company wants is for the product to develop a reporting layer and access data from the document layer so that we can avoid duplication in projects, databases, and data.
There is a lot of maintenance to be done owing to the instability users may face every time because of the huge processing capacity as the company has around more than 50 nodes, which causes a lot of maintenance issues because of which a lot of people don't benefit from the platform as it functions in a slow manner.
Informatica Enterprise Data Lake's setup process was complex since it doesn't support a lot of real-time systems. Every time, we have to find different tools we can use in our company with the solution since it doesn't support many real-time systems. Even if our company invests in some tools, Informatica Enterprise Data Lake creates too many small files with some issues, which we cannot read because we invested in HBase and Kudu, but performance-wise, the process is slow.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Informatica Enterprise Data Lake for four to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The area revolving around the stability of the product depends on how we have set up the clusters in our company. In our company, if we consider high availability tools for every service, we distribute services according to multiple racks and nodes, meaning we self-structure them to fix the issues.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution. If you want to expand the tool, it's not a big task, but there is a need to procure the hardware and space in Cloudera, where our has stored Informatica Enterprise Data Lake. The process of using the tool's scalability option is well documented.
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.
Considering so many dashboards built into the product, more than 100 users of the solution. The tool's reporting layer is also used in our company.
How are customer service and support?
I have experience with the solution's technical support. The solution provided by the support team for the product is fine, but there is some time delay when it comes to certain issues. The support takes time to review the logs and get a solution, meaning the support is able to resolve the issues even though it takes time.
I rate the technical support a six to seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
My company uses Informatica EDC for cataloging along with Informatica Analyst.
How was the initial setup?
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
What about the implementation team?
The product's deployment phase was carried out with the help of some professional services, but it was not with the help of a third-party professional service. My company could manage migrations and upgrades with our own in-house support team.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licenses attached to the solution are highly priced. Informatica has licensing models for every product and for every feature, like the web service feature, which is something my company doesn't like. When our company buys a product, it should come with all these features. I would give the product a low rating in the area of pricing.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.