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Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) vs. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AInformatica PowerCenter was data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, application migration, or analytics. It is a legacy product.N/A

    SSIS

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a data integration solution.N/A
    Pricing
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    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
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    Chose Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
    SSIS is a good entry into ETL, for smaller organizations or Microsoft-centric companies. It's strengths lie in its ease-of-use, quick turnaround, and simplicity. Its weaknesses lie in scalability and re-usability (you can achieve re-usability, however segmentation is at the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
    PowerCenter can be run from different types of OSs and can integrate with multiple types of databases and applications compared to SSIS. PowerCenter performs better with any type of database due to its ability to use native drivers to read as well as load data. Due to its seam …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose SSIS
    SSIS is similar to Alteryx and Informatica PowerCenter in a way because these are all drag-and-drop ETL tools with similar functionality. Alteryx is a step ahead because it has some advanced ETL functionalities including statistical calculations etc. and a better ability to set …
    Incentivized
    Chose SSIS
    I personally prefer SSIS. There are items that each do better than the others, but the ease of use of SSIS, along with its extensibility to 3rd party, ability to write any code required in the tool, and uses the same IDE for the MS BI suite (more of an issue if you're not a …
    Incentivized
    Chose SSIS
    SQL Server is already in our wheelhouse so it only made sense to utilize the tools we already had available to us--SSIS, SSAS, & SSRS. Other non-technical users seem to be more comfortable using alternatives to SSIS. However, these alternatives are not as good as SSIS at …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    84%
    Would buy again
    21 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    24 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    22 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    19 Answers
    Features
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    Data Source Connection
    Comparison of Data Source Connection features of Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    Feature
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
    8.5
    18 Ratings
    1% above category average
    SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    7.0
    56 Ratings
    18% below category average
    Connect to traditional data sources9.018 Ratings9.056 Ratings
    Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL8.014 Ratings5.043 Ratings
    Data Transformations
    Comparison of Data Transformations features of Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    Feature
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
    7.5
    18 Ratings
    8% below category average
    SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    6.8
    56 Ratings
    18% below category average
    Simple transformations8.018 Ratings8.956 Ratings
    Complex transformations7.018 Ratings4.755 Ratings
    Data Modeling
    Comparison of Data Modeling features of Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    Feature
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
    8.2
    18 Ratings
    3% above category average
    SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    7.5
    54 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Data model creation9.015 Ratings9.028 Ratings
    Metadata management8.016 Ratings6.035 Ratings
    Business rules and workflow9.018 Ratings7.145 Ratings
    Collaboration6.116 Ratings9.140 Ratings
    Testing and debugging9.017 Ratings6.451 Ratings
    Data Governance
    Comparison of Data Governance features of Informatica PowerCenter (legacy) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    Feature
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
    9.0
    15 Ratings
    11% above category average
    SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
    5.4
    43 Ratings
    40% below category average
    Integration with data quality tools9.015 Ratings6.238 Ratings
    Integration with MDM tools9.013 Ratings4.638 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    Small Businesses
    Skyvia
    Score10 out of 10
    Skyvia
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM InfoSphere Information Server
    Score10 out of 10
    IBM InfoSphere Information Server
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SolarWinds Task Factory
    Score8.3 out of 10
    SolarWinds Task Factory
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (21 ratings)
    8.0
    (56 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (11 ratings)
    Performance
    9.4
    (2 ratings)
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (8 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)SSIS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    1.- Scenaries with poor sources of data is not recomended (Very bad ROI). The solution is for medium-big enterprises with a lot of sources of data and users. 2.- Bank and finance enviroment to integrate differente data form trading, Regulatory reports, decisions makers, fraud and financial crimes because in this kind of scenary the quality of data is the base of the business. 3.- Departments of development and test of applications in enterprises because you can design enviroments, out of the production systems, to development and test the new API's or updateds made.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As I mentioned earlier SQL Server Integration Services is suitable if you want to manage data from different applications. It really helps in fetching the data and generating reports. Its automation make it very easy and time efficient. It works well with large database as well. But it doesn't work well with real time data, it will take some time to gather the real time data. I would not recommend using it in a real time/fast-paced environment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Informatica Powercenter is an innovative software that works with ETL-type data integration. Connectivity to almost all the database systems.
    • Great documentation and customer support.
    • It has a various solution to address data quality issues. data masking, data virtualization. It has various supporting tools or MDM, IDQ, Analyst, BigData which can be used to analyze data and correct it.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • There are too many ways to perform the same or similar functions which in turn makes it challenging to trace what a workflow is doing and at which point (ex. sessions can be designed as static or re-usable and the override can occur at the session or workflow, or both which can be counter productive and confusing when troubleshooting).
    • The power in structured design is a double edged sword. Simple tasks for a POC can become cumbersome. Ex. if you want to move some data to test a process, you first have to create your sources by importing them which means an ODBC connection or similar will need to be configured, you in turn have to develop your targets and all of the essential building blocks before being able to begin actual development. While I am on sources and targets, I think of a table definition as just that and find it counter intuitive to have to design a table as both a source and target and manage them as different objects. It would be more intuitive to have a table definition and its source/target properties defined by where you drag and drop it in the mapping.
    • There are no checkpoints or data viewer type functions without designing an entire mapping and workflow. If you would like to simply run a job up to a point and check the throughput, an entire mapping needs to be completed and you would workaround this by creating a flat file target.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Our team enjoys using Informatica and feels that it is one of the best ETL tools on the market.
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    While Talend offers a much more comfortable interface to work with, Informatica's forte is performance. And on that front, Informatica Enterprise Data Integration certainly leaves Talend in the dust. For a more back-end-centric use case, Informatica is certainly the ETL tool of choice. On the other hand, if business users would be using the tool, then Talend would be the preferred tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I think SQL Server Integration Services is better suited for on-premises data movement and ADF is more suited for the cloud. Though ADF has more connectors, SQL Server Integration Services is more robust and has better functionality just because it has been around much longer
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • The data pipeline automation capability of Informatica means that few resources are needed to pre-process the data that ultimately resides in a Data Warehouse. Once a workflow is implemented, manual intervention is not needed.
    • PowerCenter did require more resources and time for installation and configuration than was expected/planned for.
    • The lack of or minimal support of unstructured data means that newer sources of dynamic/changing data cannot be easily processed/transformed through PowerCenter workflows.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Without this, we would have to manually update a spreadsheet of our SQL Server inventory
    • We would also have poor alerting; if an instance was down we wouldn't know until it was reported by a user
    • We only have one other person who uses SQL Server Integration Services , he's the expert. It would fall to me without him and I would not enjoy being responsible for it.
    Incentivized
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