The product that kicked off the ETL revolution in the 1990s is a workhorse in thousands of enterprises today, powering significant data warehouses across financial services, banking, government, retail, insurance, healthcare, and manufacturing essentially every industry has been touched at some point by PowerCenter.
With so much changing across the data management landscape, it's rare to see something so persistent. When Informatica Cloud (aka IICS aka IDMC) was released to the market it opened up enterprise-class data integration to new market segments that previously would not have considered PowerCenter or could afford it. Over time IDMC has become a powerhouse in data management offering everything an individual team or sophisticated IT organization could ask for.
What Has Changed in 2024?
New conversion options:
Informatica Modernization Team - Informatica can take on your migration project for you. They will have access to the latest tooling however this comes at a premium far above market rates.
Conversion With Specialist Tooling with Partner - Whether using Informatica's internal conversion tooling or Automate Vision's Converter. This remains the most flexible option for quickly converting a complex PowerCenter environment to IDMC. We utilize several tools to ensure a smooth migration and Automate Vision is significantly more affordable than alternatives which previously was an impediment to migration projects.
CDI for PC with Migration Workbench - This is the latest option from Informatica. It essentially 'cloudifies' your PowerCenter environment meaning you no longer need to deal with upgrades and converts your contract to IPU billing. This is a good option to start on your journey however the DIY approach with the Workbench still requires specialist knowledge to know how to use it. It is up to each customer to decide whether they want to become experts for a one-off migration or work with Automate Vision to do this and focus on becoming experts in IDMC.
Hybrid Approach - We believe the best option for the majority of customers is a hybrid approach of leveraging the Informatica Modernization team for high level planning but working with a partner to execute the conversion for you. This ensures early issues are caught and allows you to focus on the future with IDMC.
Our experience has been that most customers want to focus on their data and business. The challenge with a migration is after the project is completed the investment in those skills is no longer needed by the business. This is where we come in to provide experienced consultants who can get the migration completed the first time.
In 2024 What Benefits Exist To IDMC?
#1 You're Investing Into The Modern Data Stack (Cloud Data Warehouse, Cloud Ecosystem, Cloud Dashboards)
Probably the number 1 reason to consider migrating your PowerCenter instance to IDMC is if you're moving the center of gravity for your data infrastructure to the cloud. Spend some time reviewing the product updates pages for IDMC, Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift or any cloud application. You'll notice these platforms receive significant amounts of R&D investment and hence new features are released every 3 months. IDMC tracks these changes and keeps your investment up to date so you can get the best out of your data. The most recent example of this in action is Superpipe for Snowflake. Superpipe enables 3.5x faster data transfer speeds and is fully supported by IDMC. This feature is simply turned on and available without any manual efforts.
#2 Future Proof Your Transformation Logic
As mentioned above, there are now no impediments to converting your mappings with so many options available.
#3 A Platform For Data Management
Its debatable whether moving an ETL tool for an ETL tool in the cloud is worth the trouble. But if you're investing in the cloud you're investing for future growth which means you're eventually going to need things like data quality, realtime integration, data distribution and governance. Instead of attempting to cobble 8 different enterprise apps together and then get them to cooperate IDMC presents a single pane of glass where user access, UX, support, knowledge, collaboration are uniform across applications.
#4 Scalability and Elasticity
If you need more processing power in PowerCenter this means manualIy installing additional servers to scale the environment. IDMC can scale up or down based on demand, making it well-suited for handling variable workloads with nothing more than configuration. Customers can easily adapt to changing data integration requirements without the need to invest in additional on-premises infrastructure.
#5 Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Moving to the cloud will reduce infrastructure maintenance, upgrade and support costs, as there is no need to purchase, maintain, and upgrade physical hardware and software. Customers can benefit from a subscription-based pricing model, which can be more cost-effective in the long run. The majority of work done in IDMC is clicking and navigating through web interfaces. The infrastructure maintenance cost goes to zero.
#6 Faster Deployment
IDMC offers rapid deployment, enabling customers to get started with data integration projects more quickly compared to traditional on-premises solutions. This agility can be especially important in fast-paced business environments. This compounds when adding new connectors (via the connector store) or simply using new services within IDMC. Because of the IPU consumption approach all services are made available to you.
#7 Global Accessibility
We live in a remote world and working from home during the pandemic accelerated that. IDMC is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. This is advantageous for organizations with distributed teams or the need to access and integrate data from various geographic locations.
#8 Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Integration
IDMC supports hybrid integration scenarios, allowing customers to seamlessly connect and integrate data across on-premises and cloud-based applications, databases, and platforms. It also offers multi-cloud capabilities, enabling integration with data stored in different cloud providers.
#9 Security and Compliance
Many PowerCenter customers mistakenly assume data processed by IDMC goes through third-party data centers beyond their firewall. IDMC provides processing behind your firewall in addition to elastic processing and pushdown. All of this is wrapped in robust security features, including encryption, authentication, and access controls. It also helps customers adhere to compliance regulations by offering features like data masking and auditing.
#10 Data Quality and Governance
IDMC includes data quality and data governance capabilities, allowing customers to ensure the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of their data as it moves between systems and applications. There is no need to manually import assets between external products as everything is built in.
#11 Real-Time Integration
IDMC supports real-time data integration and streaming, enabling customers to make informed decisions based on up-to-the-minute data.
While this list is not exhaustive, we hope it gives you some food for thought on the options that exist and what has changed in 2024 for PowerCenter migrations.
Please reach out to us if you are considering a migration or want to explore the best options for your business.