When it comes to the impact of the mapping and transformation features on data integration processes, Informatica has an existing license system where we directly map it to the existing cloud and then run it over the cloud. Any new development activities that we are doing are done directly on the cloud. Informatica has provided this migration tool for lift and shift purposes. With the tool, almost 80 to 90 percent of things are directly convertible from on-prem to cloud services, but through reports, we figured out that 10 percent can't be done, so we have to redo such areas in the cloud.
Speaking about the ease of use and learning curve of Informatica, I would say that my total experience is close to thirteen years with ETL tools. I have worked on multiple ETL tools on different clouds. I don't see much difference between IBM Cloud Paks and Informatica Cloud Data Integration. For me, these are more or less similar tools, with just a change in cosmetics.
Speaking about Informatica Cloud Data Integration's performance and scalability and how it meets our company's project needs, I would say that we have to buy CPU units. Initially, we had some 10,000 CPU units, and with that, we knew how many credits there were. Most of our systems are in production, so only with the peak loads, our threshold is not going beyond 60 to 70 percent of utilization.
Informatica Cloud Data Integration is associated with a bigger integration part where we have around 200 mappings and it works well. I don't see many issues in the tool except in the area of metadata querying. If I want to figure out a particular column of the table that is impacting the number of mappings, previously, we used to go for query, or we used to query in XML format. Currently, we have to call the APIs, but the information that we are after is not that precise.
Informatica Cloud Data Integration can be integrated with Salesforce. We can also have some other API integrations. If you have any specific systems, then considering whatever ERPs or legacy systems we have used with the tool, we don't see many issues.
I would recommend the tool to others. I would recommend the product to mid-sized companies. At the end of the day, everything is about the number of CPUs or the units that are needed to run it. Everything depends on the number of mappings of the growth prospect of the ETL pipelines that one is going to build. If it is mid-level and companies are above the mid-level zone, Informatica and IBM Cloud Paks are preferable to the other tools.
I rate the tool a seven and a half to eight out of ten.