Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud vs. SAP Replication Server

Informatica Cloud is an excellent tool for freeing up trapped data in your internal systems and exporting it into a cloud data warehouse or SQL container. Especially if you have any internal SQL query generators that allow you to copy and paste into the Source setup. For example, we use Business Objects internally, and you can build out the query you need inside the firewall with that, then paste it into the query within Informatica Cloud while establishing the Source connection. This way you are not writing all your source parameters by hand, cutting new jobs setup time by 50%. Where Cloud will not suit you well is if you need significant visibility to the health of the system from a tracking, monitoring or error handling standpoint. Cloud will tell you it failed, maybe give you an example error, but has no further troubleshooting or diagnostic assistance to offer.

Incentivized

Rep Server is great for creating a warm standby server and backup copies of data. What is great about replication server is it is replicating transactions, not disk blocks. So transactions are also consistent and no corruption is ever replicated. I have not found a situation where Rep Server can't handle what we're asking for, however, at times it can be difficult to program. Doing data transformations can be a little tricky and you need very knowledgeable DBAs and Developers that understand the product. Rep Server uses a publish and subscribe model and can do cross platform data migrations.

Incentivized

• Informatica Cloud is a great tool for automating data imports. Raw data files can be scheduled to run at designated times, and using pre-built mappings ensures that the data goes into the system accurately each time.
• It is also a great tool for converting raw data into specific formatting. For example, configuring the mapping so that the first letter of a first, middle or last name is always capitalized.
• Additionally, Informatica Cloud has a built-in field-matching tool so that records that already exist are updated rather than having duplicates created.

Incentivized

• Training was excellent on the product.
• Great customer service when questions arose.
• Functionality was awesome.
• Bringing the main OLTP down for maintenance then allowed down time we could previously never afford to make SLA committments

Incentivized

• The User Interface can be a bit difficult to get in initial stages.
• Error messages are hard to understand which sometimes takes a lot of time for the resolution
• Cannot Implement complex SQL queries which should be fixed in future release.

Incentivized

• make implementation easier
• make programming easier
• offer out of the box pre-defined use cases

Incentivized

I've never had trouble getting into contact with Informatica's support for technical help. I give it a nine because it does pretty well for mid to enterprise-scale workflows.

Incentivized

SAP support has been outstanding. They have quick response times and always meet their SLAs. Any time we have an issue that needs to be researched they are able to get back to us quickly with resolution.

Incentivized

Having used SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) in the past, Informatica Cloud was a huge-step up in functionality, usability and performance. Hands-down, Informatica Cloud is a much more robust product overall. While SSIS is well-suited for specific instances (i.e. SQL Server-specific implementations), Informatica Cloud is a much better product as an overall integration/transformation tool.

Incentivized

Hands down Sybase has the best replication

Incentivized

• A positive impact is bringing more projects.
• Getting data out of various systems such as Salesforce.com or FTP and consolidating it into tables in one central database.
• Having the ability to run data transformation tasks (the equivalent of batch jobs in SF or stored procedures in SQL) on a schedule without consuming those resources on the target or source systems.

Incentivized

• A positive is that it allow quick business decision making on the basis of real time data. Huge time saving for business.

Incentivized