Likelihood to Recommend I have only been using Astera Centerprise for about 6 months and I am still learning the ins and out of it. A scenario where it seems to do well is in generating reports from SQL queries that we already had and no longer have to run the reports manually. The SQL Query Source object has been the most useful tool for me thus far. I have yet to fully stress test the server side of Astera Centerprise, but currently there have been some version updates that required me to re-set up all the scheduled jobs that we have. We only have 8 jobs thus far but have plans to expand this into the hundreds and those same updates would require exponential amounts of work.
Read full review Datameer is a great tool if someone is capable of keeping the most recent version of the tool up to date along with the most recent version of the distribution of Hadoop. The tool is easy to support but it must have someone who can run the back end processes
Read full review Pros API integrations vis REST Web Service transformation Stored Procedure integration via SQL statement Lookup transformation Bulk imports and exports to and from tables Data dumps from SQL tables to excel, csv, text files etc... EDI Integrations like 810, 856, 940, 945 etc.. via Astera Centerprise Data Integrator plus EDI Connect Read full review It leverages scalability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of hadoop to deliver an end-user focused analytic platform for big data without involvement of IT. It overcomes Hadoop`s complexity by providing GUI interface with pre-built functions across integration, analytics and data visualization . Excel feature is awesome for business users which is already provided by Datameer. Using datameer now user can do smart analytic using Decision Trees, Column dependency and recommendation. Recently HTML5 inclusion is making application to available on a wider range of devices, including the iPad and other mobile devices which does not support Flash. It can be used in premise or in a cloud computing environment. Wizard-based data integration designed for IT and business users to schedule and do transformation of large sets of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data without any knowledge of Hadoop ecosystem. Read full review Cons When purchasing Astera Centerprise you are given options on how you would like to be trained and each option comes with a different price tag. We chose to be trained using online meetings over several days. The training went too fast and it was not always easy to understand until I started using the product. I am a person that wants to learn how and why something works so that I can use the knowledge in the future. When contacting the support team they take the problem, create a solution for you and send it back. The solutions always work, but when I get the solution I have to review every field and function to understand how it works so that I can re-create it for another solution I need. I would much rather have the support team explain what I had done incorrectly and what they changed or I would like to find a solution with them instead of having it handed to me. Astera uses license keys to allow their customers rights to only the functionality that was purchased. Each user and server has its own key and each key is only good for one year. There have been 2 different times that we received keys that had less functionality that we purchased. It wasn't until it created problems that we noticed and had to request new keys. This year our sales representative made sure she was available when we updated our keys so that if there was a problem she could fix it right away; however, there were not issues this year. I believe this is something they pay closer attention to now. Read full review Concentration issues are possible while using a lot of tabs at once. In most cases, the length of a tutorial video is excessive. A more condensed design is certainly a viable option. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We've been using Astera Centerprise application for the last 6 years and we've already added EDI connect to it. Both applications are working really well for our enterprise needs so far with no issues, so we'll continue renewing the licenses.
Read full review Employees with intermediate SQL and Hive knowledge can generate reports faster than using Datameer . It does have visualization tool but I don't think it is anything that cannot be accomplished by importing the data in Excel
Read full review Usability Centerprise is highly usable; however the version we are currently using could be a little more intuitive in some areas though by no means unworkable. I think some of the issues we have have been addressed and solved in the latest version.
Read full review Easy to use for most things, starts to require some planning as your projects get more complex.
Mike Blizman Administration of Hadoop cluster - Cloudera, Datameer
Read full review Reliability and Availability In most cases Astera is stable. However, our client experiences the error from time to time. Mostly they are related to cdc file and ServerAdminConfig.xml file.
Read full review Performance I think the performance for Astera is great when compare with other similar software.
Read full review Support Rating Support is great! No matter if you need technical assistance or you have general questions about the tool - the support is very responsive and provides solutions quickly. They are available via various channels, which makes it very convenient to get in touch with them (Support portal, direct email contact, LinkedIn).
Read full review Implementation Rating Astera support provided us implementation/installation tutorial and we were able to perform all the activities. Also one of the support was there to shadow us to make sure the process was smooth with no issues
Read full review Alternatives Considered We looked at continuing to use SSIS as an alternative. Although we own SSIS as part of our SQL licensing, we found that it takes a much higher skill level to create solutions. It also does not have the ability to parse unstructured data the way that Centerprise Data Integrator can. We also looked at
Datawatch Monarch as a possibility but found it over-all to be cost-prohibitive. We also looked at a cheaper alternative called SimX but did not have a strong confidence in the product as we evaluated it. We landed on Centerprise Data Integrator as it met all of our business requirements and we know we could leverage it for many uses across our enterprise.
Read full review Pricing, support, and ease of use. We plan to scale up our data over the net few years and Datameer gives us all the things we need in one tool. Handles large transformations quickly and works with all the cloud data warehouses.
Datameer's per-user pricing sealed the deal for us as we plan to transfer much more data over the next few years. We looked at
Fivetran but the usage pricing discourages growth. We also looked at Informatica but it was too expensive and didn't work as well with other BI tools like Datameer does.
Read full review Scalability I think Astera can do multiple things. However, we are not sure what it can do. We only know the basic features. If they can give us some kind of training, then we maybe able to benefit for it. We are planning to use their Azure connection in the future. If they can provide the training for it, it will be wonderful.
Read full review Return on Investment It is tough to say on how Centerprise would have helped us with ROI. Unfortunately our project (after 3 years) was scrapped (put on hold) due to the impromptu purchase of another Crop Insurance company. But with that, Centerprise was huge in getting our warehouse loaded for our BI Team to make important decisions about our policies. Read full review We have not been able to reach our business objectives just yet. Hadoop its a hard sell in most companies still. Legacy skills are still highly on demand and as long as an easier path leverage SQL for example is available, it would be hard to gain more adoption. Read full review ScreenShots Astera Centerprise Screenshots