IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs. Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)

You can use infosphere: -If you have multiple targets and source systems and they are different than each other. -If your infostructure is so big and unplaned well so you can't find what you want to see. -If your databases not so strong to process your data

Incentivized

Informatica Powercenter is the centerpiece of our overall enterprise data warehouse strategy. It's a critical enablement to ensure we can feed in multiple data stream and transform them into digestible data within our data warehouse. With its flexible capabilities and API availability, we were able to feed in industry standard data format as well as home grown data structure. Overall, we are very pleased with their capability and contribution to our data warehouse strategy.

Incentivized

• It is very strong to make transformations/data derivations
• It is very easy to connect to various external data sources. It has an interface (stages) for each connection that simplifies the task
• It is a stable platform. And that parallelism helps make it fast for loading, if the process is well designed

• Informatica has a wide range of support for databases. Pretty much every mainstream DBMS is compatible here.
• Designing ETL mappings and workflows is a very intuitive process, and takes minimal learning time and effort even for a beginner.
• Informatica's biggest strength is its sheer performance. It is unmatched in terms of handling large volumes of data.

Incentivized

• Lack of a strong web development environment.
• Metadata propagation in Jobs is somewhat complex.
• The possibility to develop jobs in Parallel and/or Server Engines is confusing.

• One of the challenges of PowerCenter is the lack of integration between the components and functionality provided by PowerCenter. PowerCenter consists of multiple components such has the repository service, integration service, metadata service. Considerable time and resources were required to install and configure these components before PowerCenter was available for use.
• In order to connect to various data sources such as Netezza database or SAS datasets, PowerCenter requires the installation and configuration of separate plug-ins. We spent considerable time trouble-shooting and debugging problems while trying to get the various plug-ins integrated with PowerCenter and get them up and running as described in the documentation.
• PowerCenter works well with structured data. That is, it is easy to work with input and output data that is pre-defined, fixed, and unchanging. It is much more difficult to work with dynamic data in which new fields are added or removed ad-hoc or if data format changes during the data ingest process. We have not been as successful in using PowerCenter for dynamic data.
• One of the challenges of learning PowerCenter is that it is difficult to find documentation or publications that help you learn the various details about PowerCenter software. Unlike SAS Institute, Informatica does not publish books about PowerCenter. The documentation available with PowerCenter is sparse; we have learned many aspects of this technology through trial and error.

Incentivized

• Scale of implementation
• IBM techsupport

Incentivized

Our team enjoys using Informatica and feels that it is one of the best ETL tools on the market.

The tool is very flexible and will meet most, if not all, of your data transformation needs. It is an expert-level tool, so building your knowledge-base and user-base (and keeping that base healthy!) is very important. But it will pay off with strong data management and the ability to leverage that data in ways you haven’t thought of yet. Bottom line, data is money, and PowerCenter helps you monetize your data.

Incentivized

Positives; - Multi-user development environment. - The speed of transformation. - Seamless integration with other Informatica products. Negatives; - There should be fewer windows, to maintain developers' focus while using. You probably need two big monitors when you start development with Informatica Power Center. - Oracle Analytical functions should be natively used. - E-LT support as well as ETL support.

Incentivized

Informatica power center is a leader of the pack of ETL tools and has some great abilities that make it stand out from other ETL tools. It has been a great partner to its clients over a long time so it's definitely dependable. With all the great things about Informatica, it has a bit of tech burden that should be addressed to make it more nimble, reduce the learning curve for new developers, provide better connectivity with visualization tools.

Incentivized

I particularly believe that Information Server, especially DataStage, is superior in many aspects to the Oracle Data Integrator tool. Several market analysts such as Gartner and / or Forrester better position DataStage on the Oracle solution.

Basically the two solutions have, more or less, the same functions and features.The difference, for me, is that ThreatQuotient make more features over the security and I think is oriented to a SOC enviroments. InformaticaExchange Connectors is oriented to the quality, integration and distribution of the data in order to ensure the reliability and access of data from different sources, as well as the integration in a single repository of enterprise data (External/internal)

Incentivized

• Information Server can positively impact the costs of companies by increasing the productivity of development and therefore reduce their time and costs. It is estimated that DataStage can increase a developer's productivity by 40% on average.
• Better data governance
• Improve data quality and reduce bad data impacts

Incentivized

• PowerCenter has been instrumental in being the center of all data movement within the organization.
• It has also provided a foundation for which re-usability and scalability are the focus.
• Finding talent with experience and expertise in PowerCenter is far more likely due to its presence and market share.

Incentivized