Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) Reviews

Informatica Axon is typically used for data governance, where we establish policies and business glossaries.

Users can benefit from Axon's business lineage. Axon has something called Overlay, which can be used to extend the technical lineage. You can also extend it to stakeholders, all the compliance policies, and all the overlaying business rules. All of these can be seen in the same lineage.

I want to get a deeper understanding of the logic that is being used in the ETL. Informatica Axon does not provide complete transparency about the level of detailing you need and the logic used in ETL. I cannot use Google Fusion for ETL because I don't have a connector within Informatica Axon. I am stuck if I don't have a connector with an ETL tool.

One of the biggest disadvantages of Informatica is that it's very expensive. Many clients don't want to go with Informatica Axon because of its cost structure. You have to buy every component separately. If a customer wants governance, they obviously would need cataloging and lineage also.

Other tools like Collibra have cataloging, lineage, and governance in the same package. You don't need to buy them separately. With Informatica, you have to buy Axon for governance and EDC for cataloging and lineage. So, it becomes difficult for customers to pay for every component.

I have been using Informatica Axon for seven years.

We haven’t faced any stability issues with Informatica Axon.

Scalability is not really a factor in data governance because the volume and storage of metadata is not more than a couple of gigabytes.

The solution provides good technical support.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is easy, but you typically need Informatica support to run some of the preliminary tests. I've heard that the solution will be available on the cloud. Once it is available as software as a service (SaaS), you don't need to install it; you only need to configure it.

Typically, it takes around two days for the solution's installation and integration with the entire Active Directory and EDC. Then, it may take another day for testing. One engineer is enough to do all this work.

Only using Axon will not give you all the benefits, but you will see benefits when Axon, EDC, and IDQ are all plugged in together. It is difficult to get benefits from Axon as a standalone solution.

The solution's pricing model is easy, but it is very expensive.

Informatica Axon has a Marketplace that comes at an additional cost. Other tools like Collibra have built-in collaboration features, and you don't need to buy them separately. Collaboration features like collaborating on data sets, tagging them, and making a request are available in the Informatica Axon Marketplace.

It's not difficult to maintain the tool as long as someone has been trained in administration because Axon has many components. You need to understand how to change the logo of your screen size and how to change the dashboard wizard.

You also need to understand the product's configurations with other tools, personalize your dashboard, customize it, and add roles. There is a learning curve there. You need to train a person to be an administrator, and once they are trained, they can do the role better.

There is an NLP enabled with the solution, but it is not really that great. There is still room for growth in Informatica Axon's AI space.

Although expensive, Informatica Axon is very easy to learn, and you don't need to customize it much. Once you have the tool, you start uploading things. The solution is very easy to use because it has proper documentation and user guides.

If you want to set up business rules, Informatica Axon will give you a readymade template and ask you to start filling it out. You will be told about the mandatory and non-mandatory fields, and as long as you understand what the fields are required for, it's very easy to start filling out. Someone new to governance can get the hang of it and easily start filling in the details. You can have Axon implemented very quickly.

I am more involved with governance, cataloging lineage, EDC, and IDQ. I am getting a little bit into master data management and data security.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are using it for multiple purposes, such as real-time data integration and data migration. It allows seamless integration of various cloud-based applications and services.

The solution provides increased efficiency while still being user-friendly and easy to operate. It includes built-in features that ensure data consistency and accuracy, resulting in excellent data quality. 

It would be helpful if there was a GenAI feature integrated into the system, especially regarding the data quality. It would ensure improved decision-making processes and better insights. 

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

Our experience with the stability has been quite good. I would rate it nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability is one of its key aspects. It facilitates the scaling of data integration capabilities based on customer's needs. 

The deployment process depends on the client's requests. If it requires complex tools and features, the process will take longer. But for normal operations, it is really easy and not very time-consuming.

I have been very satisfied with the feedback I was getting with Informatica Cloud Data Integration. Its automated performance enables the processing and integration of large volumes of data quickly and efficiently. I would rate this solution nine out of ten. 

Informatica MDM is a multi-domain product for any master data management. We could use it for customer master data management or supplier data. Given the nature of the business, we can apply Informatica MDM to master the core data entities within an organization.

Informatica MDM has a defined data model we can customize with user and developer options. The solution's user interface allows users to work with the master data model. Another feature I like is that the solution can integrate with various data cleansing engines, such as address cleansing or data quality-related packages or functionalities.

From a data or master data management perspective, the solution is pretty evolved. But from a business process automation workflow standpoint, it could be a bit more intuitive, rather than technically complex, such as in workflow alteration using ActiveVOS. The solution also needs adaptive rules elaborating AI/ML technologies.

I have been working with Informatica MDM for ten years now.

The solution is robust and stable enough.

With master data, we don't usually talk about tons of data. There could be a lot of records, but then it's not that huge. Now that Informatica is shifting towards the cloud as part of their software, they would have considered the scalability perspective, which is not too huge. Like transactional databases, we would expect less data there. The solution is mature enough to cater to a wide range of users.

We have a huge dependency on support all the time. If something is required or unclear or doesn't work, we have to raise a ticket and follow a process to resolve it. The turnaround time is long sometimes.

Even for simpler questions, we still have to be put on hold and wait for someone to pick up and respond. Even if the problem is critical, support does not treat it with the same urgency we would anticipate or expect.

Neutral

One would need professional services from Informatica to get MDM installed, and there has to be a contract with professionals all the time after that to manage the data model and any changes to the data. Moreover, there is a huge dependency on their professional services to work with the product in the long-term perspective.

The setup is not complex for professionals, but people without a technical background would not be able to set up the solution by themselves.

Once the installations are complete, there are two aspects to the solution. One is the back-end, which is the model, then setting up integration to load the data and configuring the MDM system to perform its master data capability. The other part is the front end, which is deploying the user interfaces and ensuring the user roles are defined and set up.

When deploying the solution, the whole project team needs to be around because the developers, the users, and everybody on the project team must come together because once it is deployed, it needs to be tested. Maintenance teams would be separate. They need to focus on any minor enhancements to the solution and provide support with any bugs, issues, or questions users might have with the data.

I have heard from customers that the product comes with a huge license cost. Under contractual terms, Informatica does not let us have full control of our own datasets, but that comes down to how the billing and licensing work. The licensing is a bit complex and expensive.

I have experience working with Informatica MDM. However, I have been comparing it against MS MDS to see how each stands. More from a costing perspective, a licensing standpoint, or any roadmap from a product's perspective, for which MS MDS has no plans to expand or evolve to a newer product with more capabilities. That's something I am checking in the background. Given the current landscape in my organization, both tools coexist, but we are trying to see if we need to replace one with the other.

At the moment, Informatica is the market leader within the MDM space, expanding into the latest data integration and management advancements. I don't see MS MDS in these areas. But then again, MS MDS has been treated as a legacy system within the organization, and we're trying to find a roadmap to replace it with Informatica by understanding what it offers comparatively.

The solution is pretty evolved from an MDM perspective, and it seamlessly integrates with its product suite.

We work with the on-prem version. We have seen the cloud version, but we're not there yet because it takes a long time to onboard all the businesses onto the cloud. The cloud version is still at a proof of concept stage.

Before purchasing the solution, the user must understand the licensing and cost structure, as well as their professional support. All these aspects are important on an ongoing basis. Depending on the wide suite of products they offer, it's best to understand which products would suffice the business needs rather than having to roll out a full-blown MDM solution, which is not the case with all the clients.

I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We are using it to understand the assets that we have from their technical metadata perspective, but we're also using it to align our business glossaries with the actual physical data location where the data is stored. Using their Claire or AI engine helps facilitate that. We've been doing that for a while.

The other thing we're trying to do is extend that metadata capability to include extended lineage and provenance attributes. We're trying to incorporate those into the existing EDC environment, and hopefully, when we get Axon, we'll try to figure out how we would expose that to the customer. We will figure out whether we're going to expose that directly or whether we're going to have to augment Axon with an additional UI layer.

From my standpoint, Informatica offers a pretty robust set of scanning tools that can scan a variety of sources of information. It offers a central repository that you can go to for interrogating and finding data. You can find the data that you're looking for based on enhanced metadata.

The other thing that we're working on is extending the existing Informatica data quality capabilities within the EDC so that we have a more robust understanding of not only what the data is and where it is located but also the quality of that data. We are doing this so that when people are looking for data, they see not only where they can find the data, but they also feel confident that the data is going to meet their needs.

The capability of the tool to scan and capture the metadata from a variety of sources is one of the capabilities that I find most useful. The central repository into which it is going to put that captured metadata is the best.

The model is somewhat flexible. There are certain aspects of the model that are not as flexible as we would like. It doesn't do certain things to a great level of depth. So, in situations where we want to drill in to do something specific, we have to essentially copy that data into our own structures in order to add that additional layer of flexibility.

Robust process management or workflow management, like Bonita, should be incorporated into the Informatica tool stack because it offers very simplistic workflow capabilities. If we had more dynamic and robust workflow capabilities, we could make use of that a lot more. Currently, we have to do a lot of pre-work outside of the Informatica tools before we can get the data loaded and start using it because they're UIs. I haven't dealt with Axon. So, I don't know exactly how that's going to change things, but with the EDC tool, I can't say the user interface is useless, but people don't use it because they find it cumbersome.

Its UI, without considering Axon, is probably their least desirable part. It has some interesting capabilities, but it is not what I would call cutting edge or super. It is not as intuitive as I would've expected. Its UI is probably prior to Axon. It is a little dated, and even Axon has been out there for a while now, but it is a little dated. That's probably why they went out and bought the company that originally made Axon.

I have been using this solution for five or six years.

It is very stable.

We're using it for our enterprise. We are not the largest enterprise in the world, but we're a pretty good size. We have 20,000 people working here and petabytes of data flowing through various systems. It is less about the people using it directly as opposed to the systems using it. It is really a matter of the system interfaces that are automating. We're trying to automate the metadata as much as possible so that when people are looking at their data, they can also see the associated metadata. Sometimes, we have to pull the metadata out of EDC and feed it into other systems so that as they're using these other systems, they can see the metadata flows with it.

I haven't dealt much with them directly, but I've had colleagues create tickets all the time. Generally, they're pretty good. 

I'm more from the end-user perspective. From a system standpoint, there is a different team that sets things up on the server and establishes various types of configurations. I do work with them, but I'm not actually doing that work. 

They have three people that are actively managing the system, and they are system administrators. There are also various people who might be testing things at any one point in time, and then there are various analysts who might be creating data to feed into the system, such as definitions of business terms. The same people may review the results once it gets into the engine. When it starts to process that data and makes the associations between the terms and the actual metadata where it is linking the two up, somebody has to go in and validate that, especially the exceptions or the ones that don't have a high enough matching score. So, there are probably three or four system admin folks, and those are more technical folks, and then you have maybe 20 people who might be putting in data, validating the data, and so on. Those are still primarily an IT function. They have subject matter expertise, but they're still reporting up through the IT group, and then, we'll eventually get to the point where we have a more robust set of business users who are reviewing and vetting that information.

I have no idea what the price actually is. It is probably not going to be the cheapest, but it is a pretty stable and robust platform from the backend standpoint. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Informatica MDM is used for customer affiliations and sites and hierarchy management.

Informatica MDM has helped our organization because we now work from a harmonized single record for customers and patients. We're able to have an aggregation or hierarchy view, which drives a whole variety of things, such as data quality and data reliability.

The most valuable feature of Informatica MDM is hierarchy management. It's not something that's typically available and effective within ERPs.

Informatica MDM can improve the data catalog and data marketplace.

Informatica MDM is expanding in AI by making it much more efficient and automated stewardship-related work. I'd like to see that accelerated and made available for on-premise.

I have been using Informatica MDM for approximately four years.

The stability of Informatica MDM is good.

Informatica MDM is scalable.

We have approximately 100 people using this solution in my company and their roles vary. For example, we have stewards, data analysts, platform administrators, architects, developers, and support teams. The active users are primarily stewards and data analysts.

We rate Informatica MDM support on an annual basis and we have quarterly executive business reviews where we discuss support issues.

Positive

We previously used SAP for MDM. We switched because there were new use cases that SAP couldn't meet. 

The initial setup of Informatica MDM is more complex than it should be.

We used a third party for the implementation of Informatica MDM.

We have approximately 20 people that do the maintenance and support of the solution. This includes support admin teams and architect engineers. We have a BA for each of the domains, shared architecture, shared engineers, ETL, and MDM. Additionally, we rely heavily on third-party assistance.

We have seen an ROI in duplicate data management, visibility to market share, and reduction in risk.

I rate the licensing cost of Informatica MDM a five out of ten.

We did go through a solution selection and RFP process before we chose Informatica MDM.

My advice to others is for them to look at SaaS and cloud options first.

I rate Informatica MDM a seven out of ten.

Informatica MDM has a lot coming ahead from a solution standpoint, which is a benefit for them. However, there's a lot of configuration involved to keep the solution going and this is why I would encourage a SaaS solution for anyone coming in.

We use the solution for ETL.

It's a powerful tool to create data warehouse solutions for our clients. We take unstructured data and use Informatica Cloud to structure it in various ways, making it usable on a reporting front end. This enables clients to make informed business decisions based on the data.

It's the accessibility and the range of features that stand out. Before using Informatica Cloud, we were working with Informatica PowerCenter. The transition from PowerCenter to Cloud wasn't entirely effortless, but it was seamless enough for our developers to adapt and continue their work smoothly.

Our main issue is transitioning from on-premise to cloud data storage. As many clients move their data to cloud platforms like Azure, Snowflake, and AWS, we're encountering problems with Informatica. Errors that were straightforward and clear with on-premise databases now appear ambiguous in cloud environments. Our developers spend significant time reducing these generic errors, often simple issues like a column not accepting null values. This lack of clarity is causing unnecessary delays as they have to sift through logs or contact support to diagnose problems that would have been more easily identified in an on-premise setup.

I have been using Informatica Cloud Data Integration as a financial partner for over five years.

We have about seven developers. It is a scalable solution.

When errors arise, contacting support can be frustrating. Sometimes, the technician can't solve the issue and transfers us to someone else. This makes us less confident that the person helping us is truly equipped to resolve the problem.

Neutral

The initial setup is simple and depends on the task. However, it usually takes a couple of hours if development is complete and we're moving from the development environment to production.

ROI is strong because we have a structured portal that ensures development is done correctly. It is shareable, scalable, and equipped with enough monitoring tools to quickly address any issues. Ultimately, the client doesn't care what tools we use. They just want problems resolved quickly. Informatica provides the necessary tools and features to help us do that effectively.

It has premium pricing. Depending on what we're working on and which features we're using within Informatica, there can be additional costs. It's mostly data integration, but you might need to upgrade your license to include other aspects of Informatica. Certain connectors require a license upgrade to access.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is for data governance, data quality, data lineages, and data cataloging.

It is used by an internal team for data discovery. However, we are not able to provide business area-level access to other users because of data security.

It's a good product, and the features for data quality, data cataloging, and UI are excellent. It has a lot of advantages.

The major points of improvement are stability, integration, and permission to sub-folders or categories of data. If you want to provide access to a particular type of data discovery to a team, it exposes a lot of data points which in turn makes Axon not that useful for them.

Permissions, scalability, and connection with other informatic tools are the main areas that need development. Integration with other tools, such as IDQ, is challenging. The management of data discovery is highly challenging because many data points have identical definitions.

Mostly, this will come under the data security permission level or admin access.

I have been using Axon for a year, but I have been using other solutions from Informatica for five years now. 

I currently use the latest version of Axon.

I would rate the stability a three or four out of ten. It's not loading at all and it keeps on getting down.

I would rate the scalability a six out of ten. There is room for improvement. 

We developed something on IDQ on the data quality side. If there is a huge data or a big workload, it takes a lot of time to run and we don't get the result in Axon. 

There are around 10 to 15 end users using Axon in our organization. 

There is a different team for platform maintenance, management, and deployment. There are around ten people on the team. It's a mix of engineers and developers.

The platform team had some difficulties with admin-level things and keeping Axon up all the time because it's on-premises. 

The solution is expensive.

Not on the governance, but I have used Databricks, Azure Synapse, Oracle, and other services by Azure.

Databricks is my personal favorite because of the scalability and the runtime it takes to load a large amount of data from a data engineering and data science perspective. 

I'll probably look for another solution because it has stability issues. When it's needed, it's usually unavailable.

However, it is a good product the way it's designed. It's a very good product, and it has a lot of features that are required for data governance. It moved all the Excel work to our web page, which can be accessible to everyone. It's a good product, but it needs some improvement.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I manage the environment and admin-related tasks.

I have integrated Axon into EDC, PowerCenter, and data quality tools, and I face no difficulty integrating with those tools.

I also handle installation, configuration, and troubleshooting issues, in addition to when users face access issues or need help seeing their DQ technical roles.

With Axon, you can easily call and verify DQ rules. You can also upload your business gallery, and the business team can easily verify your data because it is secure.

Some of Axon's valuable features include creating your business glossaries, importing DQ rules, and creating change management.

They could improve technical support because it is not good enough at the moment.

I am a consultant and have been working with Informatica Axon for three years.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten because I have not yet seen the environment go down.

I rate the scalability of the solution a five out of ten. We have faced some performance issues. We have about five or six Axon business users who are data owners and stewards. They are not very active with the solution.

Personally, for the last month, I have not touched Axon or the servers. There are no plans to expand Informatica Axon's usage at the moment.

I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten. The clients gave us their Linux servers, and I set up the solution on-premises.

I could set up the environment, the installation, and the configuration in one day.

My organization's initial steps required us to get licenses for the installation, and we needed specific kinds of ports opened from our environment. We first needed to install the Axon agent and Axon server on different directories. Once we did that, we needed to update a couple of files to communicate with data quality and other functions.

The solution requires some maintenance. I might have to perform a sync-up or make sure the environment is not down, but that is very rare.

The solution was implemented in-house, with me deploying the solution single-handedly.

I rate the pricing a six or a seven out of ten because the price is neither too high nor too low.

Informatica is a big name in the market and the tools are trustworthy, which is why our client chose Informatica Axon-EDC. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.