Databricks Lakehouse Platform vs Informatica PowerCenter | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.2 out of 10

Based on 30 reviews and ratings

Score 8.7 out of 10

Based on 80 reviews and ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Databricks has helped my teams write PySpark and Spark SQL jobs and test them out before formally integrating them in Spark jobs. Through Databricks we can create parquet and JSON output files. Datamodelers and scientists who are not very good with coding can get good insight into the data using the notebooks that can be developed by the engineers.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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PowerCenter is well equipped to handle large amounts of data movement in an organization with many disparate sources and a structured development team. It excels in enforcing enterprise development standards through things like metadata manager and the monitoring capabilities (as well as being able to design monitoring rules for everything from naming standards to design practices). It is especially well suited at handling flat-file data in addition to its many connectors and native support for just about any ANSI standard database. For large development teams or the desire to remain flexible at an enterprise scale, Powercenter is a top-tier solution.For small projects or even smaller development teams with mostly a single data source, expect frustration with being able to quickly test a solution as the design flow is very structured. It is also designed in a way that segregation of duties at a very high level can also cause small development teams to be counter-productive. Each step in the design process is a separate application, and although stitched together, is not without its problems. In order to design a simple mapping for example, you would first need a connection established to the source (example, ODBC) and keep in mind that it will automatically name the container according to how you named your connection. You would then open the designer tool, import a connection as a source, optionally check it in, create a target, optionally check it in as well, and design a transformation mapping. In order to test or run it, you will need to open a separate application (Workflow Manager) and create a workflow from your mapping, then create a session for that workflow and a workflow for those one or more sessions at which point you can test it. After running it, in order to observe, you then need to open a separate application (Monitor) to see what it is doing and how well. For a developer coming from something like SSIS, this can be daunting and cumbersome for building a simple POC and trying to test it (although from the inverse, building an enterprise scalable ETL solution from SSIS is its own challenge).

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Senior Data Solutions Architect

Laser Spine InstituteHospital & Health Care, 501-1000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Connect to traditional data sources

Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Simple transformations

Complex transformations

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Data model creation

Metadata management

Business rules and workflow

Collaboration

Testing and debugging

feature 1

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Integration with data quality tools

Integration with MDM tools

Pros

It supports all data science programming languages like Python and R
it takes very few minutes to deploy models into production
it has tools that ensures collaborations between developers

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Machine Learning And Deep Learning Mentee

Runmila AI InstituteEducation Management, 201-500 employees

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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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Better Localized Testing
When they were primarily OSS Spark; it was easier to test/manage releases versus the newer DB Runtime. Wish there was more configuration in Runtime less pick a version.
Graphing Support went non-existent; when it was one of their compelling general engine.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 201-500 employees

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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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Insurance Company, 51-200 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Informatica PowerCenter 10.0

Based on 4 answers

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

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Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics

Georgetown UniversityHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees

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Usability

Databricks Lakehouse Platform 9.0

Based on 1 answer

This has been very useful in my organization for shared notebooks, integrated data pipeline automation and data sources integrations. Integration with AWS is seamless. Non tech users can easily learn how to use Databricks. You can have your company LDAP connect to it for login based access controls to some extent

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Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Informatica PowerCenter 9.1

Based on 3 answers

Positives;- Multi User Development Environment- Speed of transformation- Seamless integration between other Informatica products.Negatives;- There should be less windows to maintain developers' focus while using. You probably need 2 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.

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Data Quality Management Software Development Manager

Yapı KrediInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Informatica PowerCenter 9.6

Based on 3 answers

PowerCenter is robust and fast, and it does a great job meeting all the needs, not just the most commercially vocal needs. In the hands of an expert power user, you can accomplish almost anything with your data. It is not for new users or intermittent users-- for that the Cloud version is a better fit. Be prepared for costly connectors (priced differently for each source or destination you are working with), and just be planful of your projects so you are not paying for connectors you no longer need or want

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Verified User

Manager in Finance and Accounting

Consumer Goods Company, 10,001+ employees

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Support Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Informatica PowerCenter 8.7

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

I also use Microsoft Azure Machine Learning in parallel with Databricks. They use different file formats which teach me to be flexible and able to write different programs. They are equally useful to me and I would like to master both platforms for any future usage. I do prefer Databricks because it could be free if I decided to go with the Databricks Community Edition only.

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Freelance Translator

ZOO Digital Group plcEntertainment, 501-1000 employees

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PowerCenter is the industry leader when it comes to interfacing with multiple source and target systems. The graphical interface increases employee productivity while reducing human resource expenditures and training requirements. These other tools offer some similar capabilities, but lack the range and depth when compared with the PowerCenter platform.

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Data Integration Data Quality Specialist

CARFAXInformation Services, 501-1000 employees

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Return on Investment

Rapid growth of analytics within our company.
Cost model aligns with usage allowing us to make a reasonable initial investment and scale the cost as we realize the value.
Platform is easy to learn and Databricks provides excellent support and training.
Platform does not require a large DevOPs investment

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Verified User

Strategist in Engineering

Computer Hardware Company, 10,001+ employees

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Positive - Easy to maintain processes built in Informatica Power Center.
Positive - Rapidly build and deploy ETL data mappings.
Positive - Develop the overall workflow process to run all ETL processes for the project.
Negative - Informatica Power Center can be a bit expensive, so your application needs to warrant the enterprise support.

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Verified User

Director in Professional Services

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Databricks Lakehouse Platform Editions & Modules

Edition

Standard	$0.07¹
Premium	$0.10¹
Enterprise	$0.13¹

Per DBU

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Informatica PowerCenter Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Informatica PowerCenter

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