Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) Reviews

The solution helps with cataloging and obtaining the data lineage. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog also helps in identifying vital datasets, including the critical data elements and cataloging them. In our company, we have to manage the life cycle of the critical data elements and maintain the business glossary.

The definitions of the critical data elements, their linkage, lineage, as well as the relationships are managed using the solution. Informatica has been in the industry for decades, so they are one of the top SMB partners. 

At our company, along with the solution, we also use Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services REST API for app and system integrations in the packaging industry. Of our total portfolio, we integrated applications for about 20%, but we did not have any cloud presence; only a setup application was in the cloud. But for all the on-prem projects, the key components of the customer's product were integrated and governed by using Informatica. 

Data lineage is a valuable feature when, at our company, we design the physical elements and the logical components and need to identify the relation between them. 

The duplicate identification feature for two tickets, synonymous fields, or attributes is another vital aspect of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The categorization of whether data is critical or not in the business glossary is another vital feature of the tool.  

The product is difficult for an untrained professional to operate. Specialized skills need to be acquired by learning the tool and executing it for data operations. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog needs to be more user friendly, the UI is extremely complex.

For instance, if I have to view the tool, the first deterrent is that it gets highly technical. Thus, a limited number of professionals can understand the tool processes. Unless you are a data professional, it's very difficult to use Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The tool operates with Power BI sometimes.  

I have been using Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog for eight years. 

At our company, we haven't faced any downtime or business issues with the solution. The solution allows a limited number of users, so it's easier for the vendor to manage stability. 

I believe the solution is scalable and integrates satisfactorily. Our company was successful with scalability because, for the majority of our applications, where the key data was being hosted, we could integrate the apps quite easily with the cloud.

If Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is being used, scaling the data up or down shouldn't be a problem. The solution's cloud integrations make scalability easier, unlike the on-prem version, which requires implementing complex security protocols. 

I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten. The product's support team has been highly responsive while solving the issues faced by our organization. 

Positive

At our company, during the product deployment, we had to asses our applications and APIs that would be connected, whether they were available out of the box or not. But the capabilities of customer connections are available with similar tools.

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog offers custom connectivity. Therefore, the deployment process has been troublesome for our organization except for the mainframe. But as we kept using the tool we realized the integrations could be smoothly completed. At our company, we implement the product if customers are convinced to integrate the tool and make it their central, single source of data management for integrators and technicians. 

The deployment of the solution took more than a year in our organization, which included upgrades, contract renewals, and demonstrations similar to IDMC, provided by the same vendor. For deploying the on-prem version of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, a team of five engineers was needed in our company to manage the whole deployment and support process.

A couple of business analysts are needed to gather the users' requirements. Our organization has about ten members who provide on-call support on Informatica for its customers, comprising developers, business analysts, and testers. 

In our organization, we were able to derive about 70% of the critical data lineage. 

It's a costly solution. I would rate the pricing of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog as six out of ten. 

The automated data lineage feature utilization depends upon the integration, which is why, in our organization, we had all our key applications integrated that derived automated lineages. But there were unknown applications as well, which, due to the lack of integrations, needed to be manually plugged in.

The mainframe integration with Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is highly complex. At our organization, due to the aforementioned complexity, we had to import all the data of the mainframe into Informatica. If you are able to integrate the tool with your core applications and systems, then the data lineage duration is pretty simple and this structure is the same for competitor tools as well. 

In our company, we might explore in the near future how Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog can assist with AI capabilities. I would overall rate the solution as eight out of ten. To anyone looking to use Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, I would say if they are willing to understand the company data, then the professional should gather sufficient technical knowledge about the product or take assistance from an Informatica expert because it's not a straightforward tool. 

We had proof of concepts where certain test cases were given to improve the functionality of the vendor regarding the supply chain.

So, it was a proof of concept. It was not applied in production.

It was just illustrating the capabilities of the platform, and we were comparing it with other platforms.

If we use it comprehensively, we can improve the data quality metrics or KPIs. 

So use as much data as you process, and have a solid strategy in place. If you don't have a comprehensive approach, then you don't draw any benefits or value from such a complicated platform. So, you have to have the objectives very well set up and be part of your daily activities in order to benefit from such a platform.

I like the connectivity and richness of features for the technical team, the maturity of the product, and that it had a cloud version. There is Informatica Cloud, and it is part of the Informatica Cloud platform.

It also has integration with other data governance tools from Infromatic, which is also good. 

It offers integration with some of the latest data platforms, streaming platforms like Kafka, for example. And the setup of the platform is very challenging.

Regarding the cloud, it is deployed in the private cloud of the vendor, so it poses challenges regarding the security of the data and the confidentiality of the data. There was no offering of a cloud version deployable in the client's tenant where all the data would reside.

I used it for a couple of months because it was only demoed for the client.

It is a stable product. 

The customer servive and support could be faster. There is a slow turnaround. 

Neutral

We just compared the data profiling features or data quality features between the tools. There was a rich functionality available in the system, but we did not draw any conclusions regarding how it improved or may have improved.

It was set up by the vendor for the demo. To deploy the Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, you need at least two admins and architects. 

It enables business processes by providing trusted data that can be integrated into many processes around data.

It's very expensive. It's subscription-based. There are several levels of subscription.

The price is high, but the competitors are even higher and more experienced, like Collibra.

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

I would recommend it due to the consistency of vision and very good integration between different products of Informatica. It offers wide coverage, the widest coverage of technologies from the major players.

It improves the workflow.

In terms of the user experience, it's very Integrated, and the implementation is very fast. You can integrate the platforms for different services to deliver all the banking needs.

It is expensive.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for two years.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

The scalability is impressive. Implementing something is easy, and there's no need to wait for licenses or other potential roadblocks. It is a highly efficient and smooth process, which makes it even more appealing.

The main reason for the switch was the cost. IBM solutions are quite expensive, and migrating to the cloud platform is complicated. Another significant expense comes from the database, as IBM typically recommends DB2 when implementing DataStage, and using Db2 can be costly. The company considered moving to a more versatile platform that supports different databases and cloud providers. With IBM, there are limitations, and the cloud strategy is more rigid, which influenced the decision to explore other platforms.

Deployment is straightforward. I have experience implementing the platform for various customers here in Brazil, where I live, and I can confirm that it's quite easy to implement. It takes around six months to deploy.

Data has been migrated from IBM DataStage to Informatica Cloud. In this process, we worked with NextPath MSA, which generated new metadata based on the iDMC platform. After this, the company produced the data, and here at the bank, we are validating the conversion from this process. In some cases, adjustments or parameterization were needed with Informatica to refine the processes. The company is responsible for translating the code and generating the required information for each project. We migrate this to the development environment, then to the test environment for validation, and finally to production, where about sixty percent of the projects are implemented for data integration. The entire process, from creation to production, has taken approximately six months.

We are reviewing all components and executions, and overall, the migration process has been a success, with only minor adjustments. It’s interesting to see how the company has successfully converted the original metadata to the new metadata, showcasing its expertise in the process. We have 40-50 professionals involved.  We have different levels of specialists across various areas involved in this project. For example, we have experts with extensive knowledge of IBM DataStage, others with experience in IBM CA, and some professionals specializing in databases. Each group brings expertise and experience with these solutions, contributing significantly to the project's success.

They do have additional costs in terms of usage.

The bank acquired the platform and utilized almost all its services except MDM. We use APIs, messaging, data governance, and data integration for the enterprise. The platform's full range of services is involved. The combination of data integration with application integration is precious to us. It allows us to acquire information through APIs, treat this information via data integration, and generate files or intermediary databases for future consumption by messaging systems. This type of usage is efficient and straightforward to implement. The implementation and usage are simple and effective for our needs.

In our daily operations, we receive data from external and internal systems for Kuzena and generate information in real-time for various departments within the bank, such as the risk and human resources departments. The platform’s ability to efficiently deliver this information is precious.

When a platform provides data from external systems and other sources, combined with HEP implementation and fast integration, the platform ensures high data quality and the ability to deliver information efficiently. This simplicity allows all departments in the bank to adopt and explore this type of usage easily.

I know of other companies using Informatica Cloud, like Ferrero in Chicago. They used Informatica Cloud for three years but migrated to SAP CPI this year. While I know why they made the switch, it's hard to justify it fully. For context, Ferrara produces candies and is owned by Ferrero Rocher in Italy. The IT team in Italy used SAP CPI for data integration, closing their operations with Informatica products. It's surprising, especially because Ferrero had given us positive feedback about Informatica Cloud regarding usage, implementation, and cost.

Its open platform allows it to connect with everything you need, making it very versatile and efficient for various integrations.

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

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog was used by our company as proof of concept for projects related to comprehensive data governance. 

The solution has multiple valuable features for metadata collection from multiple data sources or technologies. The solution manages data and acts as a central hub for setting up data governance processes. 

The automated scanning of metadata from data sources is one of the most vital features of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The solution comprises attribute features and AI capabilities for automatic relationship discovery between different datasets.

Another powerful feature of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is data lineage. The whole path of data transformation from one location to another using certain technologies is represented in Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The solution integrates seamlessly with other products from the vendor and allows the creation of comprehensive data governance processes.

The aforementioned integrations facilitate the coverage of semantic layers in addition to the technical data. There is another business glossary product from Informatica that easily integrates with Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog to consume data harvested by Data Catalog, which makes a powerful combination. 

The user interface of the product needs to be improved. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog captures huge amounts of data and along with this data, the interface becomes comprehensible only for users with advanced technical knowledge. Even for advanced users, it becomes challenging to move around vast amounts of data collected by the solution. 

Some competitors of Informatica are trying to implement some brilliant ideas, but they lack the coverage provided by Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The data lineage feature can also be further improved.

While using the solution, the data is being transmitted outside the client's network to the Informatica cloud, which can be a security concern; the vendor can solve this by enabling the product as part of a public cloud like Azure, AWS, or Google. The aforementioned scenario can be a concern for institutions like banks where there are legal restrictions and data needs to be fully under control. 

I have been using Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog for a year. It was used in two different projects in our company, each of them concluded in six months. 

I would rate the stability of the product as seven out of ten. 

The customer support is satisfying, but the turnaround or response time is quite long as the vendor needs to support a huge number of customers daily. At our company, we have noticed that there are experts in the support team who can provide effective solutions. 

The tool's initial setup is complex. I had experience with the on-prem deployment of Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, but I believe the cloud version is easier to set up. The solution's deployment takes around three to six months.

About four to five professionals are required, including technical administrators and data governance experts, for the on-prem deployment of the solution; for cloud deployment, three professionals might be enough. 

It's a very expensive solution. 

Informatica covers the widest area of technologies in comparison to other vendors and they also have a network of partners who develop add-ons for extending functionalities or data source technologies which could be integrated with Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog. The solution provider has a wide partner ecosystem to provide features on APIs and special custom formats that could be imported or integrated into varying processes. 

The solution's features can be extended and the vendor provides useful documentation and training on it. Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is a reliable platform due to its extensibility and cooperation with other partners. I would overall rate the product an eight out of ten. I would definitely recommend others to use the solution, given that there isn't a requirement for in-depth analysis. 

The critical data lineage feature acts as a link between every aspect of data governance, including an explanation of the data journey and its history which reflects the business growth. The powerful AI capabilities of the solution allow you to automate the management of massive amounts of data, especially the aspect of associating technical metadata with business terms.

When dealing with millions of data attributes its not possible to manage data manually, therefore Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is needed to automate 60 to 80 percent of data association between business terms and harvested technical terms.

If the Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog deployment is carried out efficiently, it can greatly impact your organization and enable business capabilities to further improve business processes. 

I use the solution for preparing the data according to the data quality rules.

The mapping and mapplet features are valuable. The product improves data quality. The processes are running smoothly. The interface is good. Data integration is easy.

I use the solution to integrate on-premise and cloud products. There are issues with connectors to cloud applications. The integration process is not easy. The customer experience must be improved. When we implemented it, we did it with the help of Informatica professionals. I would not recommend them as an implementer. They didn't have any experience. It was very hard. The customer experience was not good. It's hard to understand the new features of the HR list. The tool must have more options for connectors. It is hard to connect to some of the applications. The remediation process is not straightforward.

I have been using the solution for one and a half years.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a six out of ten. It is a bit complex to scale. We have 20 users.

The technical support is not good. The support team must improve the quality of support.

The product is cloud-based.

We got a 50% discount.

We couldn’t deliver the full project. I will not recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

In my company, we use Informatica Cloud Data Integration because I work in the insurance sector, where we use the tool for data migration from one environment to another. We also use Informatica Cloud Data Integration in scenarios where the clients switch from their legacy system to Informatica Cloud using Azure Synapse, because of which we have to migrate all the data to Azure Synapse.

The most valuable features of the solution are pushdown, optimization, and partitioning, which can be used for frequent data loading, especially when we have a huge data volume in our company.

While my company operates on the cloud, we have seen that Informatica Cloud Data Integration has some performance issues causing it to lag. I feel that Informatica is still in the process of improving its cloud. Sometimes, there are connectivity shoes in the product causing it to have multiple issues, because of which the solution hangs or lags. The product may have issues because they are new to the market and are trying to improve their services.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration for two years. 

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

The solution can be easily scaled up since we just need to take the aid of some PIM processor and increase the data volume as per what we want.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I have an experience of more than ten years with Informatica PowerCenter.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration's on-premises version is very good, considering the faster performance and efficiency it provides. Informatica Cloud Data Integration's cloud version is also getting enhanced since Informatica has been regularly doing some patching to increase the product's performance. Considering the current scenario, Informatica PowerCenter is a good product, especially its on-premises version.

The deployment doesn't take much time, and only a few minutes are needed to deploy the solution.

I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is the cheapest and ten is the most expensive. The product is a bit expensive.

In the cloud, Informatica has migrated to a different environment in a single platform named IDMC, on which one can have cloud data migration, cloud application integration, data quality, and data governance, making everything combined with a single platform. Earlier in our company, we had to rely on different software or platforms for each functionality, but now we can use a single URL and work on a single platform.

I would like to speak about Informatica Cloud Data Integration's performance, which is too slow but works overall as a tool. To those planning to use Informatica Cloud, I would say that it is the second-best product in the marketplace, and soon it will become the leading product.

On a daily basis, the product has been increasing their overall availability and performance .On a weekly basis, the product gives out some new updates while fixing its old defects. It will be a good product in the coming years. Improvements in the current product will continue for some time.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

We were trying to publish a compendium of all our various assets using an Oracle-based data warehouse. We also had vendor-based solutions like Epic for electronic medical records on an SQL Server base. We had many research systems on various platforms because it's a cancer research institution. 

We wanted to pull together a comprehensive data catalog to show people all the different assets we had and where they could go to find things. If there were vendor-based definitions of things, we'd pull in the definitions and various attributes. It's a heterogeneous environment data-wise. We get a lot of value from a comprehensive enterprise catalog.

It's available on our intranet through a data governance portal. You could go there for a catalog, quality reports, etc. In a year, there may have been 500 unique visitors. It was my job to publicize it, but I didn't necessarily do a good job. I worked with research groups and clinicians to get their stuff on it, and they would tell other people about it. The nice thing about Informatica is that it was easy to link from our internal web portal to their catalog. I had excellent developers working for me. It didn't require much development, and it took less and less as time went on. 

I like EDC's self-service capabilities. You can put the catalog on the intranet inside the organization, so users can search for something. People in the research world have specialized systems, and you might find data from various places that sound similar. 

The purpose of the Enterprise Data Catalog was to build an internally searchable catalog of stuff. You may not have permission to see this data but at least you could find out where it was and contact the person who owns it. 

Interoperability is one area where EDC has room for improvement. It was challenging when the faculty took over the data world and had specific vendors they wanted to use, and some were not particularly open platforms. 

It was a challenge to promote data visibility while also jumping through hoops to take some of the proprietary things and make them part of the calling, especially when the vendor doesn't necessarily support interoperability. You need to export things from a vendor program and import them again. 

We used Informatica for a lot of the data governance stuff I worked with when I joined the company, including things like cataloging and profiling data. The organization has really changed a lot in the last year and went with Informatica EDC. They're moving from the on-prem version to the cloud.

Informatica is a strong company, and EDC is a solid platform. 

The scalability is excellent. Informatica really knows what it's doing. They're smart people and great engineers. 

Informatica's customer service and support were decent. They listen to their customers. If something is missing or wasn't working, they will put it on their roadmap. They were listening to customers for roadmap stuff. 

We wound up building a staging database to pull stuff out of the EDC, stage it, and then access that. It was open, so we would often have an intermediary layer at Oracle. If we wanted to show, for example, data quality over time, we would have a weekly quality process that would run. We staged that in an Oracle database, and the portal could access that.

We had to build Informatica pipelines and do some Azure work to feed data to them. With data warehousing, you typically have static data that is timestamped daily or weekly and sometimes monthly or annually.  We were trying to get real-time data, like blood pressure monitoring and stuff like that. That was a lot of work. I didn't do it. The integration team. 

When I joined the company, it was an Oracle-based solution. Then Epic took over, which was SQL Server-based. After that, they went to Azure. Now, all the analytics are supposed to be on this platform, and it's not particularly open. 

Setting up Informatica EDC is usually pretty straightforward. The challenge is working with vendors like Oracle and Microsoft, which have APIs for integrating things. You can query what they have. They want it to play well with other vendors because they know customers don't only have one brand of product. In some cases, you get vendors in there that are, "No, we're not going to do that because we're so special." It was a challenge. The platform of choice for data initiatives at the cancer research institution is Palantir. 

We didn't look for an alternative, but Azure has its own catalog.

I rate Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog nine out of 10. It's a great solution, and I was happy with it. It did everything I wanted, and Informatica dramatically increased the integration points over time. When we started, it was like Oracle and SQL Server, but now they're adding NoSQL databases and others.

Informatica has user groups and listens to user input. One of the people that worked for me hosts an annual Informatica user group in Houston. You can try to build your own Oracle-based or SQL-based solution. They listened to the market, and they're working on improving the interoperability. Maybe it works better with Palantir since I left, but they work across all platforms. They're making it Cloud-based. I didn't know anything about them before I got here. I was dropped into a department where Informatica had been for at least five or six years, and it was a good choice.

We essentially use Informatica Axon to set up a data governance framework for a corporation, usually a medium-sized or large organization.

The dictionary, the search, and the ratings are without a doubt the most beneficial components of this solution. 

Socializing data governance is one of the examples, but I'm not sure what the others were. For instance, if you locate a specific data attribute, you can grade its accuracy by assigning it a star rating between 0 and 5. 

When someone else conducts a search, they might discover whether employees at the company believe the data to be of high quality.

In terms of additional features, I believe it is quite rich. As I previously stated, it is a fairly mature product.

The main issue probably has nothing to do with end users, but installation can definitely be simplified. Also, I believe that this is something that they are already working on it, but it needs to be provided as a service. 

The Microsoft version, Purview, is now available as a cloud service, it must be provided as a service rather than just installation. You do not need to go through the installation, you literally create an account in five minutes. That is something they need to do. I believe that it is already something they are on working on, but I don't believe it has yet been released.

Over the past year, I have definitely used Informatica Axon.

I have worked with Informatica Axon for two years.

We are always working with the latest version.

Informatica Axon is a stable product.

It's a fairly mature product. For many years, it has been the market leader.

Informatica Axon is a scalable solution.

The smallest organization would have 500 users.

Any of the multinational corporations could be the largest. It's quite pricey. 

It is commonly used by large multinational corporations.

It has two or three user interfaces, one for everyone in the organization, one for specific data analysts, and one for IT technical staff.

Like many organizations, technical support responds quickly at times. It can take some time. It's about average, in my opinion. I wouldn't say it's particularly good or bad. It's average.

I would rate the technical support a three and a half out of five.

Neutral

I am just really familiar with Azure DevOps as a deployment technology.

Some of the Azure services, such as Database and Purview, and Informatica tools, such as Axon, and Data Governance, are among the things I am familiar with.

Informatica Professional Services should absolutely perform the installation due to its complexity. Additionally, training is required for end-client configuration. It is not something you can pick up and configure immediately.

Although there is no cloud version of it yet, it can be deployed in the cloud as a virtual machine, or VM.

Axon itself, you normally allow anywhere between five and ten days to conduct the installation configuration together, and that's not elapsed time. It normally takes a week to two weeks to install and configure an initial setup. This is elapsed time, not necessarily man hours. You will always need additional configuration to be done. Although the actual installation and configuration might be completed in a few weeks, getting it ready for use by the organization might take six months.

We do not have a technical team. I was the person who deployed this solution.

It was a challenge, but I did it for the POC.

Informatica Professional Services was consulted when it came time for the client's actual installation.

Axon can typically be present; the technical installation only requires one person, and a second data specialist is typically required for configuration. Normally two. Additional technical setup and data configuration are required.

It is definitely high if used properly, but many organizations spend all of the money and then fail to use it to its full potential. It is unquestionably a good investment if used properly.

It depends on how the client uses it.

Pricing is determined by the number of licensed users as well as the number of Core CPUs. 

You can imagine how expensive it would be for a company with 10,000 users, but it all depends on how many analyst user licenses they require. 

I believe there is a flat fee for the end user. 

It is not expensive, but individual licenses are required for technical users, data analysts, data stewards, and the data governance team, which can add up if you have a large number of them.

Different clients may have different licensing costs, but it is based on a yearly paid license. It is renewed every year. There is an initial licensing fee as well as an annual renewal fee.

They are very expensive, and they charge a lot because they know they are number one. I would rate them a five out of five. Five being the most expensive.

I would definitely recommend it. If they can afford it. I strongly advise them to use it. But, before diving into Axon or any of the other governance tools, make sure they understand their data landscape thoroughly because the tool will not help them with that. They will fail if they do not have good data practices in place.

I'm a freelancer, but the consultancy I went through is also independent, but they do have a partner relationship with Informatica, as they do with many vendors.

I would rate Informatica Axon a nine out of ten.