IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs. SQL Server Integration Services

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
IBM InfoSphere Information Server is a data integration platform used to understand, cleanse, monitor and transform data. The offerings provide massively parallel processing (MPP) capabilities.N/A
SSIS
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a data integration solution.N/A
Pricing
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSQL Server Integration Services
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSSIS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSQL Server Integration Services
Considered Both Products
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Chose IBM InfoSphere Information Server
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.
SSIS
Chose SQL Server Integration Services
SSIS is a very basic, developer-oriented ETL tool and while it lacks many of the nice UX features of its competitors it is a powerful tool that comes as a part of SQL Server and, in the hands of experienced developers with domain knowledge, can meet most organizations' ETL …
Chose SQL Server Integration Services
Selection was done because of: 1. Lower Cost, 2. RDBMS was SQL Server and SSIS is tightly coupled for optimal performance
Features
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSQL Server Integration Services
Data Source Connection
Comparison of Data Source Connection features of Product A and Product B
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
8.7
4 Ratings
6% above category average
SQL Server Integration Services
6.0
54 Ratings
31% below category average
Connect to traditional data sources9.94 Ratings8.054 Ratings
Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL7.54 Ratings4.041 Ratings
Data Transformations
Comparison of Data Transformations features of Product A and Product B
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
9.6
4 Ratings
18% above category average
SQL Server Integration Services
7.0
54 Ratings
14% below category average
Simple transformations10.04 Ratings10.054 Ratings
Complex transformations9.24 Ratings4.053 Ratings
Data Modeling
Comparison of Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
8.0
4 Ratings
2% above category average
SQL Server Integration Services
7.0
52 Ratings
11% below category average
Data model creation8.72 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Metadata management7.74 Ratings7.133 Ratings
Business rules and workflow8.44 Ratings5.043 Ratings
Collaboration8.04 Ratings8.039 Ratings
Testing and debugging7.14 Ratings6.049 Ratings
Data Governance
Comparison of Data Governance features of Product A and Product B
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
9.7
4 Ratings
21% above category average
SQL Server Integration Services
3.0
42 Ratings
90% below category average
Integration with data quality tools10.04 Ratings3.037 Ratings
Integration with MDM tools9.53 Ratings3.037 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSQL Server Integration Services
Small Businesses
Skyvia
Skyvia
Score 10.0 out of 10
Skyvia
Skyvia
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
dbt
dbt
Score 8.9 out of 10
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS
Score 7.8 out of 10
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSQL Server Integration Services
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(5 ratings)
8.0
(54 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM InfoSphere Information ServerSQL Server Integration Services
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Information Server is extremely useful to replace manual developments that require a lot of coding effort. It significantly increases the productivity of the initial development and the future maintenance of the processes since it has a visual development environment with self-documentation.
Read full review
Microsoft
Ideal if the company is already a Microsoft shop, so chances are that it is free with SQL Server. Also, good for moving data between on premise systems. Not ideal for moving data to the cloud. No functionality out of the box to work with REST APIs. Stable product but definitely not the future
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • IIS best for ETL ,not ELT , and many and diffrent source systems.
  • It also can process big data , unstuctured data
  • It is not only DWH , you can use infosphere for analys and see the bigger architecture of your OLTP systems
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Standard ETL use cases for daily loads
  • Loading incoming data from Vendors which is placed on FTP and adding them to the SQL Warehouse
  • Creating outgoing data files and writing them to Vendor FTPs
  • Easy Active Directory integration for seamless connections to SQL Server
  • CI/CD by hosting the code on visualstudio.com
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • I would be nice to have a new web development environment for DataStage.
  • Connectivity Packs such as Pack for SAP Application are a little pricey.
  • It is confusing for new developers the possibility of developing jobs using different execution engines such as Parallel or Server.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Connection managers for online data sources can be tricky to configure.
  • Performance tuning is an art form and trialing different data flow task options can be cumbersome. SSIS can do a better job of providing performance data including historical for monitoring.
  • Mapping destination using OLE DB command is difficult as destination columns are unnamed.
  • Excel or flat file connections are limited by version and type.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
  • Scale of implementation
  • IBM techsupport
Read full review
Microsoft
Some features should be revised or improved, some tools (using it with Visual Studio) of the toolbox should be less schematic and somewhat more flexible. Using for example, the CSV data import is still very old-fashioned and if the data format changes it requires a bit of manual labor to accept the new data structure
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Usability
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
SSIS is a great tool for most ETL needs. It has the 90% (or more) use cases covered and even in many of the use cases where it is not ideal SSIS can be extended via a .NET language to do the job well in a supportable way for almost any performance workload.
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Performance
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
SQL Server Integration Services performance is dependent directly upon the resources provided to the system. In our environment, we allocated 6 nodes of 4 CPUs, 64GB each, running in parallel. Unfortunately, we had to ramp-up to such a robust environment to get the performance to where we needed it. Most of the reports are completed in a reasonable timeframe. However, in the case of slow running reports, it is often difficult if not impossible to cancel the report without killing the report instance or stopping the service.
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Support Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The support, when necessary, is excellent. But beyond that, it is very rarely necessary because the user community is so large, vibrant and knowledgable, a simple Google query or forum question can answer almost everything you want to know. You can also get prewritten script tasks with a variety of functionality that saves a lot of time.
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Implementation Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The implementation may be different in each case, it is important to properly analyze all the existing infrastructure to understand the kind of work needed, the type of software used and the compatibility between these, the features that you want to exploit, to understand what is possible and which ones require integration with third-party tools
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
DataStage is more robust and stable than ODI The ability to perform complex transformations or implement business rules is much more developed in DS
Read full review
Microsoft
I had nothing to do with the choice or install. I assume it was made because it's easy to integrate with our SQL Server environment and free. I'm not sure of any other enterprise level solution that would solve this problem, but I would likely have approached it with traditional scripting. Comparably free, but my own familiarity with trad scripts would be my final deciding factor. Perhaps with some further training on SSIS I would have a different answer.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • Productivity of the development of integration processes.
  • Better documentation and governance.
  • Reduce training costs of various technologies.
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Microsoft
  • Data integrity across various products allows unify certain processes inside the organization and save funds by reducing human labour factor.
  • Automated data unification allows us plan our inputs better and reduce over-warehousing by overbuying
  • The employee number, responsible for data management was reduced from 4 to 1 person
Read full review
ScreenShots