Ellucian Ethos vs. Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud

We live in the world where one system cannot solve all of your business problems, because of that we want to make sure that information is exactly the same across multiple systems and Ethos allows this to happen. Your identity and everything related to you will be exactly the same in all systems across the board. With cloud solutions coming up at the speed of light, it is imperative that every solution you acquire has accurate data in order to be efficient and cost-effective.

Incentivized

Informatica Cloud is an excellent tool for freeing up trapped data in your internal systems and exporting it into a cloud data warehouse or SQL container. Especially if you have any internal SQL query generators that allow you to copy and paste into the Source setup. For example, we use Business Objects internally, and you can build out the query you need inside the firewall with that, then paste it into the query within Informatica Cloud while establishing the Source connection. This way you are not writing all your source parameters by hand, cutting new jobs setup time by 50%. Where Cloud will not suit you well is if you need significant visibility to the health of the system from a tracking, monitoring or error handling standpoint. Cloud will tell you it failed, maybe give you an example error, but has no further troubleshooting or diagnostic assistance to offer.

Incentivized

• Ethos Integration obfuscates database access from the developers and functional users.
• Ethos Integration provides common-denominator data model between different systems on campus.
• Ethos Integration has good management tool - API Management Center.
• Ethos Identity allows easy federated access with our Shibboleth IDP provider.

Incentivized

• Informatica Cloud is a great tool for automating data imports. Raw data files can be scheduled to run at designated times, and using pre-built mappings ensures that the data goes into the system accurately each time.
• It is also a great tool for converting raw data into specific formatting. For example, configuring the mapping so that the first letter of a first, middle or last name is always capitalized.
• Additionally, Informatica Cloud has a built-in field-matching tool so that records that already exist are updated rather than having duplicates created.

Incentivized

• It is expensive
• Getting Ellucian Ethos does not mean you get all functionalities, other modules like workflow and analytics have to be purchased separately
• Takes a while to set it up

Incentivized

• The User Interface can be a bit difficult to get in initial stages.
• Error messages are hard to understand which sometimes takes a lot of time for the resolution
• Cannot Implement complex SQL queries which should be fixed in future release.

Incentivized

Support from Ellucian for Ethos Integration was generally good. The help in building Ethos was adequate, and resolving issues were handled professionally. However, for Ethos Identity module, the support in building the cluster failover architecture was lacking. After over a month of open engagement, the issue still has not been resolved.

Incentivized

I've never had trouble getting into contact with Informatica's support for technical help. I give it a nine because it does pretty well for mid to enterprise-scale workflows.

Incentivized

The integrations with Banner and other systems are currently done by home-grown systems.

Incentivized

Having used SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) in the past, Informatica Cloud was a huge-step up in functionality, usability and performance. Hands-down, Informatica Cloud is a much more robust product overall. While SSIS is well-suited for specific instances (i.e. SQL Server-specific implementations), Informatica Cloud is a much better product as an overall integration/transformation tool.

Incentivized

• Our ROI is nonexistent at this time as we are still implementing. However, the minimal cost signifies that it will be a significant help.

Incentivized

• A positive impact is bringing more projects.
• Getting data out of various systems such as Salesforce.com or FTP and consolidating it into tables in one central database.
• Having the ability to run data transformation tasks (the equivalent of batch jobs in SF or stored procedures in SQL) on a schedule without consuming those resources on the target or source systems.

Incentivized