What needs improvement with Informatica PowerCenter?

The drawback of the tool is that it does not connect with other cloud platforms.

I have had performance issues with this product. When I deal with very large amounts of data, performance issues arise. Improvement is needed in terms of some new transformation because API integration and all those things are very critical nowadays. Some level of transformation, new transformation, if they introduce that, would be helpful, other than that, the performance and scalability related things that they need to improve. If they are launching another Informatica PowerCenter with a new version, I'm not sure about it because they are promoting IDMC, they are not promoting Informatica PowerCenter.

When I deal with very large amounts of data, there have been performance issues. For improvement, some new transformations for API integration, as that is very current nowadays. If they introduce some level of transformation or new transformation, that would be helpful. Other than that, Informatica needs to improve in performance-related and scalability-related things. If they are launching another Informatica PowerCenter with a new version, I'm not sure about it because they are promoting IDMC (Informatica Data Management Cloud) and not promoting Informatica PowerCenter.

The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required, considering the fact that the present licensing charges of the tool are expensive. In the future, there will be a need to develop the product's features related to integrations with APIs. Nowadays, the most popular integration features that products offer are mostly related to cloud-based areas. When users want to fetch data from the cloud and not do it with the help of an on-premises model, then how to deal with the part involving JSON format is something I want to be made available in the product's future releases.

The solution's commercial cost is very high. Other open-source tools can do the tool's functions for free. The world is moving to the cloud, but the solution hasn't updated its drivers. I presume that its downfall will start soon. The tool is trying to cross-sell or upsell without helping customers derive benefits from the existing products. They have multiple tools and licenses. It is better to bring the smaller tools in one umbrella.

Informatica PowerCenter can improve its unstructured data handling part. Unstructured data handling is an important area with a shortcoming that needs improvement in the solution.

The solution is not for newcomers. It has an old touch. The solution must improve the integration with new services. It was part of the program at Informatica when they moved to their cloud platform. It is integrated. However, from an on-premise perspective, we need to buy licenses for PowerExchange. If we want a native driver to access a special service, we need to extend our license to those services. It is expensive. I don't like that it's not all included in the solution.

Compared to solutions offering similar functionalities, Informatica PowerCenter is not very flexible regarding customized integrations. It's not a very customizable solution.

PowerCenter could integrate better with cloud applications. We had to do a lot of configuration work using API integrations to connect with cloud applications. Informatica Cloud Data Integration has a generic connector that you can use directly, so it's much easier.

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.

It would be better if I could do all the work within a single window. If I'm working on any mapping and if I have to switch to sessions, I have to open a new window altogether. If I have to get into workflows, I have to open a new window. It was also very expensive. In the next release, I would like it to be more user-friendly.

This product is going to decommission in the next couple of years. Therefore, I don't have anything specific to say something has to be improved. The pricing is pretty high.

What is not that clear, is the usability in the cloud, for example. That's a little bit fuzzy. The reputation of Informatica is that it is expensive. There are some things which could improve for the customer so that they have the perception that they get more for their money. I would say that the transparency towards the cloud is a big area for improvement. For example, Microsoft and Oracle, make it easy since they create a cloud and then integrate all the stuff that way that you always have the possibility to work to optimize with. Informatica is a little bit different. On-premise should not be eradicated.

Areas for improvement in Informatica PowerCenter include scalability and high availability or the clustering configuration because that's still very basic. The elasticity or scaling of the platform needs a lot of improvement. For example, when it comes to DR handling or building an active-active or active-passive cluster, Informatica PowerCenter is still not that powerful. Automation also needs improvement in the solution. Improving automation leads to some improvement in the stability of Informatica PowerCenter and other aspects related to it. What I'd like to see in the next release of Informatica PowerCenter is real-time capability because the solution is mainly for patches, and to have real-time integration, you need to count on some additional components from Informatica. I would expect more integration and a complete platform in terms of real-time capability or patching with minimal interventions or minimal components to be aligned together.

What needs improvement in Informatica PowerCenter is the cloud experience because, nowadays, other companies, such as AWS, Azure, and Google, have more experience in the cloud. The pricing for Informatica PowerCenter on the cloud is also very expensive for customers, so some customers prefer open-source tools or lower-priced tools, such as Azure. From my point of view, Informatica must work on the pricing policy and review the policy on the cloud for Informatica PowerCenter or propose more tools with lower pricing. Clients want the automatic integration of Informatica PowerCenter with other tools. Currently, the integration process is manual, and you have to add other tools to facilitate the integration, especially with the DevOps methodology. You need scripts and tools for the integration, and you'll need to use other integration tools if you want automatic deployment for Informatica PowerCenter, so this is another area for improvement in the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for the integration with APIs to be simpler, because currently, the API integration feature of Informatica PowerCenter is very difficult. It's not intuitive. You have to facilitate API integration and the real-time streaming of messages in Kafka, for example, so that should be improved.

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.

Informatica PowerCenter could improve the data threshold for large sets of data. Additionally, they should add real-time integration.

In terms of performance improvement and tuning, there should be a bit more guidance and documentation. I would also like to see improvement on some of the installation, especially to the adapters. The setup for the SAP adapters is a bit complex.

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.

Informatica are very rigid when it comes to cloud migrations which discourages customers in moving their solution to the cloud. I cannot simply move my code from on-premise to the cloud. There is a conversion process and that conversion process has to be done by Informatica. They charge a huge amount for their professional service. Informatica is not as mature when it comes to cloud solutions and cloud connectors and still they want to charge for cloud IACS adoption. If I compare Informatica with Oracle, Oracle provide almost double the licenses when we move onto a cloud solution, regardless of what on-prem license we have. The migration is free of charge. In a future release, we would like to have cloud connectors.

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.

Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user. In a future release of Informatica PowerCenter, they should add more flexibility on re-usability options. Reusing any setup developed on Informatica PowerCenter, more options to make it reusable, exporting the setup, or importing the setup to any project folder or anywhere in Informatica PowerCenter so that we can use it as a plug-and-play option.

I believe that people are shifting to more agile, flexible platforms not only in this era but also in the last two or three years. This is happening not only on data management platforms but also on analytics platforms. Platforms for visualizing data dashboards. We used to have very rigid tools like Cognos and MicroStrategy, but Tableau and Power BI have recently taken over. The same can be said for data management. Informatica, in my opinion, is very rigid and not very flexible, whereas platforms like Alteryx or Matillion are very flexible and agile.

PowerCenter seems to be a little bit higher side of cost. Customers are thinking about alternatives. Talend seems to be a pure Java-based thing, however, there are some technical hiccups there. There are a few finance companies are probably started using Talend as a competition tool for Informatica. Most of the smaller companies are trying to build open-source-based ETL tools. It should be more cloud-centric than on-prem-centric. That is where the problem with Informatica.

In the future, I would like to see Informatica PowerCenter integrate a more powerful dashboard.

The performance of Informatica PowerCenter could improve.

Some of the conversions are done inside the product. We use work tables that are created by the engine itself, but the names of the work tables are very long, and they don't have any meaning, which makes it a bit difficult to understand and follow exactly what is happening inside. We would like to be able to communicate with our Google Cloud platform. This feature probably exists, but I'm not sure if we tested it.

PowerCenter has three clients. I wish they would consolidate everything into one GUI, not three. Also, we had a persistent issue with the Informatica Developer tool but it was solved when we migrated to the newest one.

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 would like to see improvements made to the custom transformations. It should be more open for users that want to write their own code and use cases. As it is now, writing custom transformations is not user-friendly.

To be honest, we didn't find big issues with this tool. All the issues we found, we were able to fix. We don't have any issues with the tool so far. I would like to see this solution change the way it creates workflows. In Alteryx, for example, it's easier to build the workflow because of the way it was built, while PowerCenter was built in a more complex way to be able to process a large number of roles. The way PowerCenter creates the workflows is much more complex than the others, but nothing big. It's just that it's the old way. It would be good to recreate the entire interface to make it easier for users to build workflows. This is what I'd like to see in the next release.

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.

What I didn't like about it is that the platform itself is not great at distributed processing. When you need high parallel processing, it has some inherent issues. We had to use Java transformation, and it did not go very well. I have heard that it is going to the cloud, but we haven't tried that. We have Informatica in-house, and we thought it would go with ADF. Microsoft is leaning on us to do that because we're working with Azure. So, I don't know much about cloud features. The pricing model is a little bit difficult for development tools versus running the system in production. So, it has some shortcomings, but in general, it is not bad.

It would be nice to move from Windows tools (like Developer, Designer, or Manager) and have everything in one place like DATAQ developer, which is eclipse-based and user-friendly. CDC needs more improvement. It's stable and has good features, but it's only easy to develop if you are familiar with Linux. Sometimes a new monitor will not be accurate in logging or you'll open a log and get a misleading error message. The connection parameter is sometimes inaccurate, or the parameter will not load. Proactive Monitoring doesn't work very well with all of the Informatica processes. The latest version came out five years ago and there has been no enhancement since then. It doesn't make sense for a product to be ranked number one but have no enhancements. The product hangs and you can lose control for several hours. It works, but it hangs.

There is some room for improvement in terms of pricing.

PowerCenter has yet to announce additional features. The face that it has not made improvements is fine, as it is very easy to integrate. We are in touch with the vendors of products other than Informatica PowerCenter. The reason I chose to rate the solution as a nine out of ten is because there is a need to buy a separate license if one wishes to connect with some kind of SAP system, such as SalesForce.

The pricing could be improved.

An issue which should be addressed is that the solution only allows us to do structured, as opposed to unstructured, data processing. Also, the EPA related data processing should be improved. Processing capabilities should be streamlined. I prefer a third party scheduler tool to that of Informatica scheduler, since the latter is not one which is very physical. The solution is not so helpful if one wishes to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.

The solution can improve by providing more connectivity by having native ODBC or JDBC connections available. It will be easier and more people could start using it.

Its scalability can be improved. It is not scalable.

Integrating new tools can be tricky and challenging.

If you were migrating or connecting with multiple sources, initially there were issues that caused network latency. In the latest version, there are fewer bugs. The real-time database connectivity when getting the real-time data using the VPN is an area that needs improvement. Being able to generate reports on all of the status of the monitoring tools and the job qualities would be very helpful to provide to the operational team.

Its licensing can be improved. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise. A bundle will definitely be costly. In addition, we might use one or two features. That's why the pricing model should be based on the features. The model should be flexible enough based on the features. Their support should also be more responsive to premium customers.

Its interface can be modernized. It is an old product. I have been working with it for 14 years, and it still looks the same. It hasn't been modernized much. It also needs to handle more modern formats, such as JSON files. It works with the old text files and databases, but it does not always work with the newer, modern stuff. You need to make your own programs to support that kind of stuff. Support is also a kind of difficult with Informatica. They don't do direct support and rely on using their distributors around the globe for support, which means that you kind of have to go through this layer of different companies before you get help.

Support could be better. Technical support's friendly, but we should be able to get responses from them more quickly.

The solution currently requires quite an established data center in place because there is no option for software as a service so the best option to install the platform is on-prem. I know Informatica is thinking about it because they are introducing a brand new platform for big data management, but it doesn't yet have the same level of features as PowerCenter. This is something they can improve on. There are some significant differences between the two platforms. The other issue is price. I understand this is a high-level professional tool designed for big companies that have a great need for managing huge amounts of data and I understand these kinds of tools are quite expensive, but sometimes the cost is too high. Their focus is obviously a high-level market but I think there would be other companies who would want to use it but it's too expensive for them. I'd like to see improved on-prem support like Cloudera which is very oriented towards traditional databases, like Oracle, SQL Server and others.

It is very difficult to learn. The documentation could be improved. For example, if they were to create a system like SAS Books or IBM Redbooks that includes books on how to install, and how to troubleshoot problems, then it would be great. I would like to see a centralized dashboard that can be used to access all of the Informatica products, rather than having a set of fragmented applications. A consolidated system with everything in a single platform would make it easier for technicians, as well as when it comes to purchasing it. That would be amazing.

I would like to see it be able to import data from NoSQL.

We need another tool for monitoring. It would be easier if all the features were consolidated into one tool.

The only problem with this product is the level of complexity with the number of levels of transformation that you have to go through. I would say that's the biggest issue.

One of the things that I found lacking is that there should be some sort of a calculator where you can input your requirements regarding the number of data switches required, number of users, and the number of data switches in order to get a general idea of cost. It would save me time rather than having to run to the company to get the information.

I found it is kind of weird that not all of the mapping changes are treated as true changes.

I hope that the next release of this solution will: * Work with HADOOP and other BigData solutions. * Have an ability to compile code to run it quicker. * Include new features for parallel job execution. * Include more instruments for LOGs analysis, interpretation, and job corrections.

I would like to see an improvement in the digital adoption. It would be nice if they could be cheaper, because the training is very expensive as they do everything online.

The licensing cost for Informatica is very high. Other all-in-one solutions offer much lower prices. Also, sometimes with data capture, the solution doesn't support some data types so you must find an alternative, Informatica Data Replication, for instance. You end up buying two very expensive products to get just a little bit more functionality. They need to offer an all-in-one package. I'd like Informatica to provide more use cases. We have a huge knowledge base, but use cases in specific domains like healthcare, banking, and financial transactions would be helpful. There are some tools that exist for making predictions in different domains. I want something like that in Informatica so we can see use cases that showcase better management, better quality, and better governance, in different domains. The solution needs better support and training. Informatica can do a better job in making it clear at the beginning what is supported and not supported, and what the licenses include and do not include. That way we are better able to communicate with the clients and to get assistance from support. It would also save us time in raising issues with support if we knew what was covered.

The cost and set up of the licenses could be improved. You need a lot of different licenses, depending on your setup, and it gets expensive. For example, we're connected with Oracle, be we need licenses for that plus the core server, Terradata, etc. It gets costly. There's also a feature that exists on IBM DataStage called CDC. It's not on Informatica PowerCenter, but if they could add a feature similar to this in the next release, it would be useful.

I would like to see the inclusion of a tool that allows you to report performance metrics. For example, it can determine whether the connectivity is correct, or how long it's taking the integration to move data from one place to another. This would allow administrators to govern the performance and better maintain the solution. Having a tool that can work is nice, but we're not sure if it works accurately without something to evaluate performance. Integration with Artificial Intelligence would benefit this solution. The system should start to learn the behavior of your connections, and understand where your data is coming from to ensure that the process is being done correctly. As the system learns the stages, it will be able to easily identify problems. For example, if I have different databases where I want to store information, such as pictures in one and PDF files in another, it will be able to distinguish that.

As a connector to big data, it is not well developed. We've had problems connecting Informatica with Hadoop. The functionality to connect Informatica with Hadoop is not good. Right now, we use Informatica to connect with the tools of big data. We have been able to connect Informatica with Teradata. I use Informatica to integrate the data of Teradata. Although we have a lot of functionality in Teradata, when you use Informatica as a connector, the compatibility with Teradata and Informatica it's not sufficient. In future releases, they need to have a good version of the cloud.

The multiple interfaces in Informatica PowerCenter are not great for the user experience. Because of this, I think it can cause confusion for any beginner developer. When we are dealing with multiple transformations and mapping, we cannot see the flow of our transformation until we run reports. It is not like Informatica Developer, where we can see every step of what we're doing and the flow of the mapping. With those solutions, we can see data and transformation and how it's affected by our expressions or anything we do. In Informatica PowerCenter, we cannot see any data in the transformation until the end or you may need to do some debugging, and it is very confusing for some people. They need to enhance their viewer so we can see data within the transformation and show the affected data.

Now they are migrating to a new version, and they have something that is called Informatica Developer. Previously, they just had PowerCenter. Now, when they move everything to Informatica Developer it's not as good or stable like it was when it was PowerCenter, though it has some nice features. I would like the solution to offer better metadata management.

The developer tool documentation can be enhanced with a more clear explanation of each utility, accompanied by relevant examples, so that developers are able to create programs with ease.

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.

* 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.