Informatica MDM vs Microsoft MDS comparison

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Informatica Logo
5,362 views|3,851 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Microsoft Logo
1,944 views|965 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Informatica MDM and Microsoft MDS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Informatica MDM vs. Microsoft MDS Report (Updated: July 2022).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution's most valuable features are its data quality, match-merge engine, and CLAIRE AI engine, which helps with AI automation.""We can see all our information on a single screen.""It has improved our organization because it has made our data more reliable. Data is the most important asset these days, and in order to trust your data, you need these tools to make sure that your data is clean and reliable.""I think that it's a good solution...It is stable because we have the experience to deploy this solution.""The most valuable features of Informatica MDM are it is cloud-enabled and has all the elements that are supposed to have in terms of MDM as a solution. All the features that are there. It is very well-integrated with any of the SAP and non-SAP applications. It is quite user-friendly. The user experience that you receive in Informatica MDM is quite good.""The most valuable features of Informatica MDM are its reliability, match functions, and integration capabilities. The out-of-box functionality of deduplication and built-in data models ensure faster implementation.""It's good for tool management, maintaining the golden record of customer status.""We've used the solution for quite some time, so in our organization, the product is pretty mature."

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"The solution is easy to install.""Unlike specialized tools, MDS is adaptable for various industries, making it a versatile choice for master data management.""The tool is easy to use.""Technical support is very good.""The ease of use is valuable.""Enables non-technical people to directly interact with the BI system.""What I like about Microsoft, is that it has a huge database with many users.""It's very easy to use."

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Cons
"Compared to other tools in the market, Informatica MDM is costly.""Their support should be improved. We have had some trouble with their support from time to time. Its scalability should also be improved. I would also like to have a bit more modern and friendly UI for the end-users. There should definitely be a simplified way to configure and set it up.""Data integration should be improved.""Informatica MDM could improve the interdependency with integration. The solution sometimes becomes a bit difficult to change considering a lot of interdependency with the integration. There can be some improvement in the workflows and they can introduce more artificial intelligence.""The biggest pain point for us is the documentation. Typically, you have to go through knowledge forums and knowledge groups to find out about the syntax issues for interfacing with new products. Typically, you've got to deal with someone who has been through the pain before. Their documents are not really up to date with current innovations happening in the industry. As big as they are, you can't really expect it, but that's our pain point.""Informatica MDM can improve the data catalog and data marketplace.""If I compare it with other MDM solutions in the market, one thing that can definitely be improved is automation to help with the configuration. Currently, when we are creating any staging of base object tables, all the columns have to be configured manually in the Informatica Hub Console. A lot of tables and different kinds of business columns have to be configured manually. There should be an automated process for this, especially in the Dev environment. When people are creating tables and columns from scratch, if there is a backend automated process for that, it would be really helpful. In Stibo, a similar feature is there wherein you can tag attributes to certain objects. It would be helpful if Informatica also provides a similar option. It would reduce the manual effort. It could be that such a feature is already there, but I am not aware of it.""From multiple masters that are there in Informatica MDM, we can improve the financials."

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"In the next version, I would like to see integration with Azure.""The only drawback is that it does not have the matching, merging, and all true MDM components. For these, you have to use another competent called Data Quality Services (DQS). You need to plug it in and use it along with MDS for true MDM. Both of these are integrated together, but you have to do them separately, whereas, in Profisee, there are a couple of screens where you can configure the matching process, create matching rules, and other things, and everything is in one product, which is not the case with MDS. In order to implement a true MDM, you need MDS, DQS, and SSIS. You have to use MDS to store your golden records, DQS to configure and standardize all your rules and matching percentages, and SSIS to load the data to DQS and MDS. At the same time, you also need Melissa Data to clean up your addresses to validate and standardize the addresses. That's the main component of true MDM. It would be good if they can create a true matching component inside MDS and merge MDS and DQS.""It would be a better option to have an on-cloud version.""Most of the Microsoft partners, especially digitally, are separate. Personnel are business people, and they do not have technical expertise, so you end up as a company spending a lot of money training your staff and your engineers.""JMD repositories have records that come in thousands and millions, which takes a long time to process.""From my understanding, MS, as of 2021, will not maintain the product going forward.""The solution could be better integrated into Microsoft's other products.""The Microsoft license cost could be lower."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "it's expensive, but if you're looking for a stable solution, Informatica MDM is a good one to choose."
  • "It's pretty high for us. It's more on the higher side, like low to middle high."
  • "It is expensive. That's probably the biggest drawback. The business has heartache paying the license, but that's mainly because they don't realize what value it brings. The key thing about the MDM solution is that it is in the backend, and no one sees what it is actually doing. You don't know it is a problem until it is not there."
  • "Informatica MDM's pricetag should come down. They have to cut some costs."
  • "There is no doubt that it is very expensive, but the brand value comes at a cost. Other MDM solutions in the market that haven't proven themselves like Informatica are also pretty expensive. We need to understand that MDM itself is very expensive to implement. So, Informatica is also pretty expensive. I would rate it a two out of five for being pretty expensive."
  • "It's offers value for money. They're more competitive with respect to pricing and offerings."
  • "Informatica MDM recently changed its pricing model. It's usage-based but I don't have much insight into the current pricing."
  • "Informatica MDM's price could be lower."
  • More Informatica MDM Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing of this solution is good."
  • "With Microsoft, we buy everything though an agreement, so we purchase volume licensing every year."
  • "I would like to see better pricing."
  • "MDS is a part of the SQL Server enterprise license. I am not aware of any additional costs."
  • "SAP is more expensive than Microsoft."
  • "The solution does require a license and we have enterprise licenses."
  • "Microsoft MDS is an expensive solution."
  • More Microsoft MDS Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Richard Tibbetts
    InitZero - PeerSpot reviewerInitZero
    Real User

    Hi @Richard Tibbetts,


    There's no short answer to your question. Nearly all existing MDM solutions on the market offer a broad range of patterns to ingest master data from various sources and distribute cleanse and consolidated information, also to the Azure stack. Many vendors offer prebuilt connectors for the most common sources (databases, various file types, storages, business applications including MS Dynamics, Salesforce, etc.), but also support a generic way of ingesting/exposing data via Rest APIs, file drops, etc.


    MS MDS is an extension of the MS SQL server 2016. I don't know Microsoft plans to extend it, but I know that Profisee and CluedIn are very active in promoting their solutions as-built having Azure in mind and being a part of the stack.


    Informatica MDM has three types of offerings these days: on-prem, hosted MDM, and cloud-native option - they differ in the functionality and integration options.


    Obviously, there are many more MDM tools on the market particularly good in various data domains (products, customers/suppliers - so yours, multi-domain, etc).


    I think that you should start your MDM journey by answering which current challenges you try to solve or what new capabilities you need to enable to the organisation. Once these questions are answered and based on your organization's Enterprise Architecture principles, look for the best fitting tool. It may (or may not) be the one that fits the best into the Azure Reference Architecture.


    I hope this helped.

    InitZero - PeerSpot reviewerInitZero
    Real User

    It's probably worth to add the Microsoft promotes using CluedIn as MDM solution on Azure stack. Please have a look at the Microsoft documentation:


    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...


    Last week Microsoft and CluedIn had a joined demo seesion. Perhaps you can ask for a link to a recording: https://www.linkedin.com/posts...


    GaryM - PeerSpot reviewerGaryM
    Real User

    I agree with @InitZero... 


    I would add that there's no future roadmap for MDS and they don't have an Azure solution for it.  Since it's a free product with an SQL license, don't expect Microsoft to invest in it.  


    Even though we are highly dependent upon it currently I'm starting to look towards the future where we need to find a replacement - hopefully, a PaaS solution. It would be great if Microsoft came out with something in Azure but I'm not hopeful at this point.

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The solution's most valuable features are its data quality, match-merge engine, and CLAIRE AI engine, which helps with AI automation.
    Top Answer:Informatica MDM is an expensive solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing nine and a half out of ten.
    Top Answer:Compared to other tools in the market, Informatica MDM is costly.
    Top Answer:More generic related things can be included in the services.
    Top Answer:Microsoft MDS is cost-effective because it comes with SQL Server Enterprise Edition at no extra software cost. The main expenses are for deployment, but it saves money by reducing the need for custom… more »
    Top Answer:More generic related things can be included in the services.
    Ranking
    Views
    5,362
    Comparisons
    3,851
    Reviews
    22
    Average Words per Review
    558
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    1,944
    Comparisons
    965
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    391
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Siperian, Customer 360
    Microsoft Master Data Services, Microsoft MDM, Microsoft SQL Server Master Data Services, MS MDS
    Learn More
    Overview

    Informatica MDM solution delivers the market-leading foundation on which to build that trusted 360-degree view. Companies around the globe rely on Informatica MDM to give business users easy access to the data that drives their strategic decisions about cutting costs, increasing revenues, improving operations, reducing risk, and capitalizing on opportunities. As the industry’s only true end-to-end MDM solution, it incorporates data integration, data quality, data governance, business process management, and master data management on a single vendor-agnostic platform to ensure faster time-to-value.

    Microsoft Master Data Services (MDS) is an SQL server solution for master data. MDS enables users to organize and manage a business's master set of data into models while also creating rules for updating the data and control over who can edit it. In addition, the master dataset can be shared with other people in your organization through Excel.

    In Master Data Services, you create a model, which is the highest level container in the structure of your master data. This model can then be used to group similar data. Within the model, there can be one or more entities that are similar to a table. Those entities contain members that are the data records. For example, your model can include commodities such as style, color, and product if you manage online product data. The color entity may contain members for various colors. Models may also have attributes that contain values that describe entity members and can be defined within the entities.

    There are also attributes that contain values that help describe entities within entity members. There are two different types of attributes:

    • Free-form attributes - include numbers, dates, text, or files.
    • Domain-based attributes - includes values that can be used as attribute values for other entities.

    Features of Microsoft MDS

    Microsoft MDS offers a variety of features that provide a central management of master data, while accommodating access to editors and other consumers of the information. These features include:

    • Data Validation: With a proactive monitoring process in Business Rules, users can ensure data validity before the lists are used.

    • Domain Agnostic: Any data type or data schema can be supported by the MDS system.

    • Security: Without risking unauthorized changes, IT teams are empowered to control access at the attribute, entity, and record levels.

    • Web-based UI: There is no need to install software, as the web-based user interface gives access to a vast user base.

    • Versioning: Each model in MDS can be versioned, allowing for users to tab particular versions for subscribing systems.

    • Hierarchy Management: MDS offers functional and versatile management of business hierarchies with various hierarchy types and specialized controls.

    • Transaction Logging: MDS offers a transaction log to keep track of changes, as well as the ability to explain why changes were made.

    Reviews from Real Users

    For those managing large quantities of master data, Microsoft MDS is a solution of choice for a number of reasons. Two of those are its ability to empower everyone to interact with the BI system as well as its integration with Azure active directory.

    Satyam S., a senior software developer at a manufacturing company, notes, "Enables non-technical people to directly interact with the BI system."

    An individual contributor at a pharma/biotech company writes, "One of the main features I have found useful is the integration with Azure active directory."

    Sample Customers
    UPMC, Citrix
    ETA a.s., Apeejay Surrendra Group, Blue Star Infotech, Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation, The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, New Belgium Brewing
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Retailer8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Non Profit15%
    Retailer15%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Government8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise6%
    Large Enterprise78%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    Informatica MDM vs. Microsoft MDS
    July 2022
    Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica MDM vs. Microsoft MDS and other solutions. Updated: July 2022.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Informatica MDM is ranked 1st in Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions with 45 reviews while Microsoft MDS is ranked 2nd in Master Data Management (MDM) Software with 19 reviews. Informatica MDM is rated 8.0, while Microsoft MDS is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Informatica MDM writes "Optimize business processes while ensuring that users see a return on their investment from the use of the product". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft MDS writes "Useful Excel plug-in, good scalability, and good integration with SQL Server and other Microsoft products". Informatica MDM is most compared with Reltio Cloud, SAP Master Data Governance, Profisee, TIBCO EBX and Stibo STEP MDM, whereas Microsoft MDS is most compared with SAP Master Data Governance, Profisee, Reltio Cloud, TIBCO EBX and Oracle Data Relationship Management. See our Informatica MDM vs. Microsoft MDS report.

    We monitor all Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.