Informatica PowerCenter Reviews

Informatica PowerCenter is a data integration tool.

The most valuable features of Informatica PowerCenter are the ease of use, and development, and is simple to find resources.

Informatica PowerCenter could improve by having a single interface because half of the system is still in the legacy interface and many other elements are moved to the developer client. It would be good if there was a single interface for the end user and developers.

In the next release, Informatica PowerCenter would be beneficial to have run time column propagation. Other solutions have this feature but it is missing in this solution.

I have been using Informatica PowerCenter for approximately 18 years.

Informatica PowerCenter is stable.

The scalability of Informatica PowerCenter is good.

We have approximately seven people using the solution.

The support is good from Informatica PowerCenter and they have been responsive.

I rate the support from Informatica PowerCenter an eight out of ten.

Positive

The implementation of Informatica PowerCenter is easy.

The price of Informatica PowerCenter is expensive, but it does give value.

This is an amazing solution. If I ranked it in terms of all of the data integration solutions, I would rank it first.

I rate Informatica PowerCenter a seven out of ten.

Our primary use cases of PowerCenter are database regulatory reporting cases. Both sides are suitable for us to net trace metadata and it's easy to develop or hedge, after production as well. It's also easy to understand the steps or ETL. 

I'm working with the latest update, and it's deployed on-prem. 

One of the most valuable features for us is the metadata repository because it can easily understand the lineage of first target mapping. My company and I also find Informatica really easy to use—when a consultant joins our company, in just a few days to a few weeks, they can understand how to use it—so we prefer to use this ETL tool. 

PowerCenter could be improved by having more big data components. Normally, we prefer Informatica as a relational database, but nowadays, companies are trying to understand and use big data components. I think it would be useful if we had more chances to create a hub ecosystem because customers try to use some data integration tasks by SQL, Spark and Spark codes, and Scala, but at the end of the day, the company will understand that we need to trace all the steps. An ETL tool is a must for that company, if we're talking about the regulated industries like finance, telcos, etc. If Informatica's biggest ecosystems feature were okay, I would prefer to use it. 

I have been working with PowerCenter for more than seven years. 

The stability and performance of PowerCenter are good. 

The scalability is fair enough. 

PowerCenter is suitable for large companies. The pricing could be an issue for some companies who want to implement and develop with PowerCenter.

I haven't been in touch with technical support in the last few years, but before that, I contacted them many times. I remember that when we were using PDW, the previous version of Microsoft APS, we contacted Informatica support teams a few times to handle connection problems with the driver of PDW, and they solved it. I was satisfied with the support. 

The initial setup of PowerCenter is a simple process. The first development took just a week—a few days is enough. 

We provide implementation services to customers. We are a consultant company, so we use it for our customers on the customer's side, but we don't have a business relationship with Informatica. 

Compared to other tools, I think PowerCenter is a bit expensive. When I compare it to Oracle, if you want to use Oracle databases, you can easily get an ODI tool, so it's easier to handle. Informatica is a standalone tool—it's an independent company—and there are no databases around them, so it's quite expensive to use. 

Generally, large companies use PowerCenter because of the price. If companies want to expand their usage areas, they try to consider if it's easy to implement and easy to understand the pricing. I think the pricing is a barrier for Informatica. 

I rate PowerCenter a nine out of ten. To those looking into implementing PowerCenter, I would advise evaluating whether they have a large company. If their first criteria is not pricing, I totally recommend Informatica as their first ETL tool, but if there are pricing, performance and support, etc. requirements, maybe they can evaluate ODI and Informatica together. If you have an Oracle ecosystem, I think you can get Oracle or ODI cheaper than Informatica, but if you don't, I think Informatica could be a leading option. It depends on what the customer has. 

We use it for data integration. It's a great tool.

It reduces a lot of legacy coding.

It works with any multi-database, so it works with Sybase, SQL Server. Also, the performance is really good and it is easy to use.

It has everything we want. We were looking for a feature but they have already it in Informatica 10. We are using Informatica 9.6.1 but they added the feature we were thinking about in 10.1.

The stability is great.

Scalability, durability, everything. It is the leader in the market.

We are using technical support every year, it's part of like maintenance we get from Informatica. Year by year they are improving. They're up to the mark.

The initial setup is not straightforward. You need expertise to do it.

Licensing is a one time cost. But maintenance costs depend on what you want, how long you need it. Maintenance is a kind of insurance. With health insurance, you don't know whether you will get sick or need to go to hospital or not but you have to have insurance. It's the same thing with support.

If you have that expertise in resolving issues, if you have enough experience in your IT department, I would say you don't need the support. But in practice, they recommend you go with the support. If you want support you have to pay for it.

When you want to convert all your company products into Microsoft, the equivalent to the Informatica product in Microsoft is SSAS. That's where the decision was made to go with the SSAS as the primary option, going forward.

If you are a small company it depends on how much data integration you need. I cannot blindly say you should always go with Informatica because it depends what your needs are and whether you can afford Informatica or not.

I would give Informatica a 10-plus out of 10 because it satisfies all our requirements, it is robust and scalable.

The solution is basically used for anything and everything that we process, for example, from the SQL Server, from other application sources like Oracle, from Flatfiles, or loading into these kinds of sources. We use it for pretty much everything.

It's the best ETL tool that one can have.

The initial setup is easy.

It's stable.

We can scale the product.

Support has been helpful in the past.

If we could have the option of performance improvement within Informatica, and if it could have more features, that would be ideal. For example, we have a DTM buffer, and sometimes we face issues where we are creating the cache in Informatica, and it keeps on adding onto that particular directory. Even though we deploy code to remove that cache, somehow Informatica DTM does not remove the cache, and it keeps on piling up, filling up the whole server unless we manually remove that.

There are some functionalities in Informatica, however, after some time, they stopped working. That has been an issue that has added up to operational costs. If we could have the consistent working of all the functionalities that Informatica offers, not just during the start of the project or for around six months, that would be ideal. We find that it stops working due to some issue, due to some process not getting started or getting in a hung state.  

From 10.1, to 10.1.1, to 10.5.1, there is a feature in the expression transformation where users have the option to evaluate the expression. It works only when you do not have variables in that, yet only some values (hard-coded values). For example, if you have column one and column two and put in column three, then when you evaluate the expression, and you only get column one plus column two, and it even does not work. It says you can't pass the variables, pass the values, and then that feature that was introduced is of no use. 

I've used the solution for almost 14 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. I'd rate it 9.5 out of ten in terms of stability. There are no bugs or glitches.

The solution is scalable. However, it depends on the server. 

You can scale unless the server on which it is hosted does not have enough resources to handle the additional load.

In our organization, most developers are on the product. There are around 50 people at least using it. 

I have not used technical support yet in this organization. That said, in my prior organizations, I have. When we had a new tool, for example, we had OneConnect for an SAP Field Glass Connector and we were not sure how to connect to it. Therefore, we had some connectivity-related questions that we were not able to explore on our own since there wasn't much online expertise available. We had to reach out. All questions were addressed and answered by Informatica.

The level of assistance we received was as expected. We were happy with their response time and their answers provided solutions to our questions.

The initial setup takes time sometimes. It can take around two days if you have a prior code. That said, if you are starting it from scratch, then more than four hours, so it is easy - if someone has experience in it, of course, and the proper manual to follow.

I don't recall the exact cost o the solution. That said, it is one of the costliest products that one can have. They are costly ETL products. When it comes to Oracle, we have cheaper options since Oracle provides its ODI fee of cost if someone buys any of their modules for business intelligence. That is something that Informatica does not have.

Still, if you have large data volumes and you do not want to be at risk for your daily loads, then it is worth the money.

I'm an end-user.

I'd advise new users to go through proper training and get at least one to two years of proper work experience in it before they actually go to customers to suggest its implementation - especially if they will be the primary point of contact.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Informatica PowerCenter is outdated and would benefit from modernization. They should have a very good migration strategy from Informatica PowerCenter to AACF. Informatica PowerCenter there is no point in using it, you have to use a cloud version.

I have been using Informatica PowerCenter for approximately 17 years.

The technical support for Informatica PowerCenter is good.

I rate the support from Informatica PowerCenter a four out of five.

I would not recommend anyone use this solution.

I rate Informatica PowerCenter a one out of ten.

Informatica PowerCenter is being used for data warehouse development, using ETL and ELT, e.g. Informatica PowerCenter for ETL and Informatica Cloud Data Integration for integration between systems, e.g. with their downstream systems.

What I like most about Informatica PowerCenter is that it enables integration and connection with multiple new systems, both structured and semi-structured. I also find its adapters for multiple source systems valuable. Its features meet industry standards. It is a proven high-performing enterprise-scale ETL solution.

Though I wasn't able to explore all features of Informatica PowerCenter, it would be good if Informatica can also have connectivity with NoSQL compliant, unstructured data sources, e.g. Microsoft Azure Data Factory or Talend.

The cloud-based solution mostly focuses on continuous data stream processing, but not on batch processing. If Informatica enhances this cloud-based solution to also do the batch processing of data, and also integrate semi-structured and unstructured data processing, that will be more beneficial.

I've been working with Informatica PowerCenter for 15 years.

I find this solution very stable.

Informatica PowerCenter is easy to scale.

The support team is responsive. They're able to address our issues.

The initial setup for Informatica PowerCenter was straightforward.

Implementation for this solution was in-house. It was done by our own team.

I evaluated Oracle Data Integrator, Talend, and Microsoft Azure Data Factory.

We are using these solutions: Oracle Data Integrator with different versions, Informatica PowerCenter, Informatica Cloud Data Integration, and Talend. Matillion, we explored, but we don't use it for our company. We are a consulting partner. We are an implementation partner, so our consultants use these to implement solutions to many of our customers. We are an indirect partner through Oracle, and not a direct partner of Informatica.

Informatica PowerCenter is deployed both ways: on-premises and on cloud, but on cloud very recently. In the past two years, we have been using the cloud version. Deployment for this solution could take one to two days, if the person doing it is knowledgeable.

We have a team of 70 members who are data engineers and data analysts, but for the actual installation, setup, and configuration, we have another team made up of system/application administrators. We have a shared service model with 50+ associates who take care of this service. They will take a day or two to complete the deployment. Given all the infrastructure details available from the customer, it wouldn't take more than a day or two, worst case two days on average to set up and start the system, for it to be ready for working on and developing the ETL.

To maintain this solution, in a shared service model, e.g. not dedicated, it requires two to three people, but if it is dedicated, then one person can handle the maintenance.

There are two ways we are using this ETL solution. Number one: as part of Oracle's prepackaged solution, and number two: as an independent solution.

I don't deal with the licensing, but as part of Oracle's pre-packaged analytics solutions, we did use them. There's a one-time fee plus yearly support. That is their model, but I don't know the costs associated.

My advice to new customers of this solution is that if they are looking for an enterprise scale data warehouse and data management solution, Informatica PowerCenter is one of the go-to proven tools. Its limitations are on these two areas: one is that it needs to enable the cloud-based version to do batch processing, e.g. heavy data loads, and two is that it needs to enable connectivity to the NoSQL compliant and unstructured data sources.

Keeping the two product limitations out, e.g. the cloud version has limitations for batch processing and is unable to process unstructured and semi-structured data, my rating for Informatica PowerCenter is an eight out of ten.

Our primary use is to implement our data warehouse, including moving data between FTP, flat file and relational databases, and Domain/Integrated Service designs.

Informatica PowerCenter has been implementing mapping design, data flow, and workflow execution for years. Informatica administrators are in the scope of daily operations.

• Import from PowerCenter
• Copy Text between Excel and the Developer Tool
• Logical Data Object Read and Write Mapping Editing
• DDL Query
• Profiles

• XML processing
• Scheduler
• Non-limit SQL qualifier embedded (right now 32K limitation)

The Integrated Reporting service should be more smoothly transitioned from view to function to be in sync with the main design.

We use this solution for ETL and data transformation and we are customers of Informatica. 

This is an old and reliable product. I like the visual tool for data mapping and the workflow manager.

I think the UI could be improved, it's a little outdated. Configuration is  complicated and could be simplified; it requires experience, and not many people have that. 

I've been using this solution for one month. 

Our data engineers are dealing with big data and large files which Informatica is capable of dealing with.

I know that support is available but I've never contacted Informatica. I go to the documentation supply tool to solve any issues.

The initial setup is dependent on the requirements of an organization. Sometimes it's more complicated. It requires and administrator who does everything, and eventually testers are brought in for specific workflows. Each environment requires a different deployment. Maintenance is carried out in-house. 

PowerCenter requires some discipline in terms of the implementation process, and because it is dealing with databases, there are several layers of protection and authorization.