This post is a brief review of leading Data Integration tools in the market. Heavily referencing from the Gartner 2016 report and peer reviews from my circle.
The Market
The data integration tool market was worth approximately $2.8 billion at the end of 2015, an increase of 10.5% from the end of 2014 [2016 Gartner Report – Data Integration Tools].
Key data integration responsibilities-
- Data acquisition for business intelligence (BI), analytics and data warehousing— extracting data from operational systems, transforming and merging that data, and delivering it to integrated data structures for analytics purposes.
- Data migrations/conversions — although, traditionally addressed most often via the custom coding of conversion programs, data integration tools are increasingly addressing the data movement and transformation challenges.
- Data consistency between operational applications — Data integration tools provide the ability to ensure database-level consistency across applications.
- Support for governance and management of data assets — Increasingly, data integration tools are expected to collect audit and monitoring information regarding the deployed data integration services and processes in the organization.
Gartner DI Magic Quadrant – 2016
Market Leaders
- Informatica
- IBM
- SAP
- Oracle
- Talend
- SAS
Evaluation Criteria (weighting)
- Product/Service (high)
- Overall Viability (medium)
- Sales Execution/Pricing (medium)
- Market Responsiveness/Track Record (medium)
- Marketing Execution (low)
- Customer Experience (high)
- Operations (low)
Comparison of Leading Tools
| Informatica | IBM | SAP | Talend | SAS | |
| Overall Rating (based on a peer review algo) | 4.24/5
(61 reviews) |
4.08/5
(12 reviews) |
3.79/5
(11 reviews) |
3.92/5 (45 reviews) |
– |
| Strengths | 1. Most substantial size and resources on the market of data integration tools vendors
2.Rapidly adapts to market functionality demands 3.Dedicated focus on big data, data lakes 4.Strong appeal to non- technical roles |
1.Breadth of functionality
2.Tight linkage with Watson Analytics, Data Works |
1.Integration with SAP
2.Broad usage and functionality 3.Leverages SAP HANA, simplifies portfolio 4.Integration with SAP products and apps 5.Tools for data quality, monitoring, profiling 6.Quick learning curve |
1.Cost Model and flexibility
2. Dedicated focus on Data Integration and Quality management |
1.Broad portfolio
2.Experienced Company 3.Product reliability and scalability |
| Weaknesses | 1.Pricing and licensing structure
2.Partnership model reportedly diminishing value of technology |
1.High Cost and complexity of license model
2. difficult learning curve |
1. Basic functionality of integrating source systems is already included in the HANA suite – HANA Smart Data Integration. Hence, some confusion.
2.SAP applications focused tool, challenging for buyers looking for agnostic application usage 3.Cost concerns |
1.Product Stability
2.Has its roots in Open Source, moving slowly toward self- service models |
1.Focussed towards analytical applications
2.Costly 3.Heavier integration requirements |
| Customer Base | 5000 | 700 [more than 11,000 for entire suite of Data Integration products] | – Unknown for BODS
– Total of 23k customer for SAP suite of products |
1300 | – Unknown, used mostly by SAS architecture based companies
– Estimated around 14k organisations worldwide for Data Integration suite of products. |
| Set of Products for Data Integration | Informatica Platform (including PowerCenter, PowerExchange, Data Services, Data Replication, Advanced Data Transformation, Ultra Messaging, B2B Data Transformation and Data Integration Hub), Vibe Data Stream, Informatica Cloud Integration, IronCloud Platform, Big Data Management, Intelligent Data Lake, Intelligent Streaming, Enterprise Information Catalog and Informatica Data Preparation, Data Integration Hub and Informatica Data Preparation | IBM InfoSphere Information Server Enterprise Edition (including InfoSphere Information Server for Data Integration, and InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog), InfoSphere Federation Server, InfoSphere Data Replication, InfoSphere Information Server Enterprise Hypervisor Edition, WebSphere Cast Iron Live, BigInsights BigIntegrate and DataWorks | SAP Data Services, SAP Replication Server, SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server, SAP SQL Anywhere, SAP Process Orchestration, SAP Hana Platform, SAP Hana Cloud Integration, SAP Event Stream Processor and SAP PowerDesigner | Talend Open Studio, Talend Data Fabric, Talend Data Management Platform, Talend Big Data Platform, Talend Data Services, Talend Integration Cloud and Talend Data Preparation |
SAS Data Management, Federation Server, SAS/ACCESS, SAS Data Loader for Hadoop and SAS Event Stream Processing |
