IBM DataStage vs. ZoomInfo Operations vs. SAP Data Services

DataStage is somewhat outdated for an ETL. I guess that's what makes it a bit lagged behind its competitors. It can be used for data processing, sure, but its performance seems to be lagging behind or quite slow given the server it is running from. I won’t depend on this application if it's handling a lot of mission-critical banking and business data.

ZoomInfo Operations helps us streamline prospecting, enrich our CRM data, and aligns our departments with actionable insights. It's ideal for targeting enterprise accounts and launching ABM campaigns. It is a bit less effective for mid-market or small accounts. It could probably improve in intent data precision and the ease of integration.

Incentivized

It's definitely one of the leading ETL tools, and it's the best ETL tool to use with SAP integration. If you use SAP HANA, then you should think about Data Services as your primary ETL tool.

Incentivized

• Connect to multiple types of data-sources including Oracle, Teradata, Snowflake, SQl Server.
• Powerful tool to load large volumes of data.
• Transformation stages allow us to reduce the amount of code needed to create ETL scripts.
• Allow us to synchronize and refresh data as much as needed.

Incentivized

• EverString allows us to build account lists based off in-depth firmographic or technographic data. It's far more accurate than trying to build these lists any other way.
• EverString is fast. Where it might've previously taken us weeks to build lists of this quality, we now can build them in a matter of minutes (and have them ready to be published in a couple of hours).

Incentivized

• Integration with SAP ERP/ECC works really well.
• A lot of flexibility in data creation, with different types of communication capabilities like BAPIs, IDocs, and Batch input.
• Reliable and consistent results and easily enforceable data templates.

Incentivized

• Technical support is a key area IBM should improve for this product. Sometimes our case is assigned to a support engineer and he has no idea of the product or services.
• Provide custom reports for datastage jobs and performance such as job history reports, warning messages or error messages.
• Make it fully compatible with Oracle and users can direct use of Oracle ODBC drivers instead of Data Direct driver. Same for SQL server.

Incentivized

• Lower pricing tier, some other zoom products have freemium versions which would be nice
• Faster import/export time for data, depending on the size of the data, it may take close to more than a few minutes.
• Merging data does not always report 100% of data merged.

• Debugging is not very easy. When one wants to see the flow of data from one Query to another, the process is not very smooth and efficient.
• A lot of functions do not behave the way they should. I have faced problems with the count() function.
• I have faced problems while loading Excel files. The same set of options will work in one case but not in the other.

Incentivized

Would love to keep everstring as part of our tech stack in the future. if we ever have to move from everstring it will be due to budget not the solution itself.

Incentivized

Because it is robust, and it is being continuously improved. DS is one of the most used and recognized tools in the market. Large companies have implemented it in the first instance to develop their DW, but finding the advantages it has, they could use it for other types of projects such as migrations, application feeding, etc.

Incentivized

Overall, it is good. They are moving in the right direction with AI integration and use cases and are probably working on Agentic AI as we speak. They just need to remember that accuracy on the small stuff is still the most important thing. Without it, there is no ZoomInfo.

Incentivized

No problems

Incentivized

It could load thousands of records in seconds. But in the Parallel version, you need to understand how to particionate the data. If you use the algorithms erroneously, or the functionalities that it gives for the parsing of data, the performance can fall drastically, even with few records. It is necessary to have people with experience to be able to determine which algorithm to use and understand why.

Incentivized

Had very good experience when using it

Incentivized

IBM offers different levels of support but in my experience being and IBM shop helps to get direct support from more knowledgeable technicians from IBM. Not sure on the cost of having this kind of support, but I know there's also general support and community blogs and websites on the Internet make it easy to troubleshoot issues whenever there's need for that.

Incentivized

I’ve had one support request that was addressed and resolved within 30 minutes

Incentivized

As other SAP products, there is excellent support by SAP on this tool. You can access the SAP Help portal in order to give support either from the huge community or directly from SAP.

Incentivized

It was helpful

Incentivized

Have a plan on how you're going to evaluate. We had a two-month trial period, but a six-month average lead cycle time, making it impossible to evaluate on a purely new-business ROI basis within the trial. We applied the model to our prior data, which demonstrated how much time and effort was devoted to accounts that weren't going to close

Incentivized

With effective capabilities and easy to manipulate the features and easy to produce accurate data analytics and the Cloud services Automation, this IBM platform is more reliable and easy to document management. The features on this platform are equipped with excellent big data management and easy to provide accurate data analytics.

Incentivized

This was the other tool we reviewed, but the OS applications were more detailed and had better results. Although still a good tool it just did not fit our scope for our sales group. Have yet to find any of the ZoomInfo tools to not be but quality and informational applications. So highly recommend them.

Incentivized

You cannot afford to run your business on questionable data. With SAP® Data Services software, you can access, transform, and connect data to fuel your critical business processes. Together, these enterprise-class solutions enable data integration and data quality, providing the right level of insight across your business so you can make better decisions and operate more effectively.SAP Data Services was previously known as SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator, BusinessObjects Data Integrator.

Incentivized

Hasn’t experienced any issues to doubt reliability

Incentivized

• It’s hard to say at this point, it delivers, but not quite as I expected. It takes a lot of resources to manage and sort this out (manpower, financial).
• Definitely, I don’t have the exact numbers, but given the data it processes, it is A LOT. So props to the developer of this application.
• Again, based on my experience, I’d choose other ETL apps if there is one that's more user-friendly.

• Generate more pipeline - indirectly. Data from anywhere still needs to be transformed and used for a business objective.
• Saved time in doing research and data population.
• Assuming a business will purchase a data vendor, the comparison between other vendors is a factor of cost, functionality, and data quality. ZoomInfo has higher costs typically - which would lower the ROI - but with proper incentives or discounts, the comparative ROI grows.

Incentivized

• Very positive impact in jobs maintenance since support auto-documentation.
• Great impact on learning curve.
• Great results in our Data Quality Projects.

Incentivized