Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) vs. SAS Data Management

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

SAS/Access is well suited for companies who need to manipulate and analyze large databases and data-sets. It does the same thing as SQL, and if you already know basic SAS coding it is easier to pick up. SAS/Access works well with analyzing data from multiple data-sources at once, including large databases stored in external and virtual environments like Hadoop. Data can be easily reassembled from relational databases for use by the user. SAS/Access is not necessary if you are only pulling data from one database that you have the physical file for.

Incentivized

• 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

• SAS supports the main database connection options that allow you to optimize the performance of your extracts and loads.
• Simplicity of the syntax for a basic connection.
• Ability to configure by an administrator in a BI environment so that all users can benefit from the connection without having to establish it by themselves.

Incentivized

• 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

• It is a versatile product but sometimes difficult to use due to the very close link with the proprietary programming language where specific knowledge is required.
• Compared to competitors on the market that offer the same functions for the integration perimeter, it is certainly very expensive.
• It is very simple to use when combined with products from the SAS suite, less so it is being used stand-alone or integrated with other well-known brands.

Incentivized

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

We are happy with the software and its functionality. As a SAS-shop, DataFlux is a logical choice for complex data integration.

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

The main negative point is the use of a non-standard language for customizations, as well as the poor integration with non-SAS systems. However, there is no doubt that it is a high-performance and powerful product capable of responding optimally to certain requirements.

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

It worked as expected.

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

With SAS, you pay a license fee annually to use this product. Support is incredible. You get what you pay for, whether it's SAS forums on the SAS support site, technical support tickets via email or phone calls, or example documentation. It's not open source. It's documented thoroughly, and it works.

Incentivized

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

Because SAS Data Integration Studio is the third party it seems to work equally well with all our systems. That is to say that it doesn't really work better with Microsoft or Oracle but really just seems to work equally well with all of them. It has a very powerful back-end that allows us to transform and load our data quickly and efficiently programmer time wise.

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

• The platform enabled us to have a single repository of customers to run campaigns on.
• Feedback from various campaigns is stored in a single database, which makes running A/B analysis easier.
• Helped improve data quality due to SAS Dataflux being a part of the SAS Data Management Platform.

Incentivized