Competitive Comparison ofSQL Server 2008 Integration ServicesA Comparison of SSIS with IBM Information Server, Informatica PowerCenter, Oracle Warehouse Builder, and Oracle Data Integrator

White Paper

Published: March 2008

Updated: July 2008

Summary: This paper compares SQL Server 2008 Integration Services to the extract, transform, and load offerings of competitors, including IBM Information Server, Informatica PowerCenter, Oracle Warehouse Builder, and Oracle Data Integrator. The paper shows that, while competitor products perform competently in many situations, they do not compare to the advanced features and capabilities available in SSIS.

With the launch of SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server® 2008, Microsoft and Unisys have announced a new world-record performance benchmark for loading 1 terabyte of TPC-H data into a relational database using SSIS.

SQL Server 2008 provides advanced ETL capabilities that enable “best of breed” integration scenarios in both heterogeneous and homogeneous environments using native drivers to multiple data sources, such as SAP, Teradata, and Oracle. The cost of SSIS is included in the license for SQL Server 2008.

For the latest information, see Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services.

ContentsIntroduction.................................................................................................................1

Microsoft SQL Server 2008........................................................................................2

SQL Server 2008 Integration Services...................................................................2

Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence...............................................................4

SSIS Support for Data Warehousing......................................................................4

SSIS Support for Business Intelligence..................................................................5

Competitor Comparison..........................................................................................6

Business Ecosystem and Support Infrastructure......................................................10

SQL Server 2008 SSIS.........................................................................................10

Competitor Comparison........................................................................................11

Pricing and Cost.......................................................................................................12

SQL Server 2008 SSIS.........................................................................................12

Competitor Comparison........................................................................................13

Conclusion................................................................................................................15

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IntroductionThe ability to transform corporate data into meaningful, actionable information is an important source of competitive advantage in today’s business world. Because of the changing demands of global businesses, companies view the selection of a data platform as a critical decision.

This decision involves determining which data platform can deliver the advanced features and capabilities needed to support the critical workloads of even the most demanding enterprise environments. Companies are confident in choosing Microsoft® SQL Server™ as the best solution. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is the database of choice for deploying reliable, highly available, high-performance, scalable, and secure applications.

A recent Gartner report shows that SQL Server is in the “leaders” quadrant for both the data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) platforms.

For more information, see the following articles from Gartner:

http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/article19/article19.html

http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol7/article3/article3.html

In addition, with the launch of SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Server® 2008, Microsoft and Unisys have announced a new world-record performance benchmark for loading data into a relational database using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services (SSIS). This performance benchmark demonstrates that over 1 TB of TPC-H data was loaded in under 30 minutes, beating the previous record of 45 minutes posted by Informatica in August, 2006.

For more information, see:

ETL World Record! on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN)

Informatica press release: http://www.informatica.com/news/press_releases/2006/08142006a_hp_server.htm

This paper provides a comparison between SQL Server 2008 Integration Services and the extract, transform, and load (ETL) offerings of competitors, including IBM Information Server, Informatica PowerCenter, Oracle Warehouse Builder, and Oracle Data Integrator. The paper shows that, while the competitor products perform competently in many situations, they do not compare to SSIS in key areas as shown in the following table.

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SQL Server 2008 Integration Services, ETL Competitor Comparison

Key Area Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services

IBM Information Server

Informatica PowerCenter

Oracle OWB

Oracle ODI

Supports heterogeneous data sources environment

Parallelism and scalability

Basic ETL functionality

Ease of use Debugging features BI/DW functionality Has ETL processing engine

Support ecosystem and infrastructure

Pricing and cost

Microsoft SQL Server 2008SQL Server 2008 is an enterprise-ready integrated data management and analysis solution. SQL Server 2008 enables customers of any size to share data across multiple platforms, applications, and devices, while making it easier to connect to internal and external systems.

SQL Server 2008 delivers high-end capabilities that are closing the gap with IBM, Informatica, Oracle, and other database vendors. With greater performance and, more importantly, the ability to manage large databases, SQL Server 2008 is a serious contender for supporting large applications.

For more information, see SQL Server   2008 Case Studies .

SQL Server 2008 Integration ServicesSSIS is an easy-to-use data integration tool that provides out-of-the-box, enterprise-class scalability options. SISS uses an advanced data-integration pipeline architecture, and delivers high-performance processing and native support for 64-bit platforms.

For more information, see the Microsoft SQL Server   2008 Integration Services Web site.

SISS contains a set of comprehensive, fully functional ETL tools that meet the demands of traditional ETL operations, and the evolving needs of non-

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traditional scenarios for data integration. SSIS is fundamentally different from the tools and solutions provided by major ETL vendors. SSIS offers improved scalability with thread pooling, enhanced lookup transformations, and convenient development and administration tools.

SSIS provides support for both heterogeneous and homogeneous environments. Due to the openness of the Microsoft Windows® platform, combined with the large number of SISS source-to-target connectivity options, SISS provides the best integration for customers who use multiple data sources and multiple platforms. SISS is also the best data integration tool for Microsoft customers. Customer references show that SISS is typically used in Microsoft-centric environments in large to medium size businesses.

In addition, SSIS is an integral part of the SQL Server BI platform that enables the development of end-to-end BI applications.

For more information see the Microsoft Business Intelligence Web site.

The tight integration of SQL Server 2008 with Windows Server 2008 makes it an ideal combination for deploying a BI solution. Microsoft recently received Gartner’s Business Intelligence Top Ranking for the ability to execute on BI implementation, including the competitiveness and success of its BI goods and services, its viability and investments in BI, and the execution of its sales and pricing.

For more information, see "SQL Server 2008—Microsoft strengthens its BI stack" in InformationWeek:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206104502&subSection=News

In fact, according to the analyst firm, Ovum, SQL Server 2008 contains major enhancements to SQL Server BI and data warehousing functionality that strengthen and improve the Microsoft BI stack.

For more information, see "SQL Server 2008—Microsoft strengthens its BI stack" from Ovum:

(http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=6716)

SSIS exploits the power of SQL Server 2008 and the Microsoft .NET platform. SSIS, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services all use a common Microsoft Visual Studio®-based integrated development environment (IDE) for streamlined productivity including debugging, called the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

SSIS is included in the license for SQL Server 2008. SQL Server 2008 also includes many other services such as data warehousing, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, data mining, manageability, advanced security, spatial data support, high availability, programmability, performance, and scalability.

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Data Warehouse and Business IntelligenceThis section compares SISS data warehouse and BI features and capabilities to competitor platforms.

SSIS Support for Data WarehousingSSIS provides support for data warehouse loading (traditional ETL), data profiling, data quality management, and non-standard data sources, including Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), data and text mining, and on-demand data sources.

Key SSIS data warehousing features include: Native drivers to multiple data sources

Identifying operational changes with Change Data Capture (CDC)

Powerful data transformation components

Advanced slowly changing dimension support

Integration with other SQL Server components such as Analysis Services for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and data mining, and the data warehouse features in the SQL Server database engine

Parallelism and multithreaded processes

Increased ETL performance with scalable lookup tasks

Profiling source and target data and data cleansing functions

SSIS can consume data from (and load data into) SAP and other common data sources by using native drivers. By using a specialized set of components called adapters, SSIS supports many data source formats including text files, managed (ADO.NET), OLE DB, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), flat file, Microsoft Office Excel®, XML, Teradata, and Oracle.

SSIS takes advantage of CDC when implementing an ETL solution. This ensures that only changed data is included in the extraction process, which eliminates the overhead of performing a full data refresh in each ETL operation that includes unchanged data.

SSIS includes a set of powerful data transformation components that perform data manipulations essential in building data warehouses. These transformation components include aggregate, sort pivot/unpivot, merge, join, and union all, derived column, data conversion, and audit.

SSIS uses standardized data integration best practices for data warehouses. In addition to core data warehousing transformations, SSIS contains built-in features to automatically manage dynamic slowly changing dimensions to support advanced data warehousing needs. Slowly changing dimensions support data mart-style tables in Relational Database Management Systems

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(RDBMS) or within SSIS Analysis Server-deployed data marts, making it easier to move atomic warehouse data to version-controlled data marts.

In SSIS, the Slowly Changing Dimension wizard enables users to easily specify their requirements for managing slowly changing dimensions and, based upon their input, generates a complete data flow with multiple transformations to implement the slowly changing dimension load. Support for standard Type 1 and Type 2 slowly changing dimensions, along with two new slowly changing dimension types (Fixed Attributes and Inferred Members), is provided.

SSIS loads Analysis Services Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing (MOLAP) caches directly from the data-flow pipeline. This enables SSIS to create relational data warehouses and to load multidimensional cubes for analytical applications.

SSIS breaks through scalability limitations by sharing threads among multiple components, which increases parallelism and reduces blocking. This allows SSIS to achieve a sizeable increase in ETL performance in large, highly parallel, multi-processor, multi-core systems.

SSIS uses persistent lookups to increase performance and to scale to the largest tables. You can configure Lookup transformations to cache some, or all, of the reference data before the input column is processed. SSIS can load a full cache from any source and allow the cache to be greater than 4 GB, even on a 32-bit operating system.

The Lookup component introduces the miss-cache feature. When the component is configured to perform lookups directly against the database, the miss-cache feature saves time by optionally loading the key values that have no matching entries in the reference dataset into cache. The miss-cache feature alone can contribute to an up to 40 percent performance improvement in some scenarios.

SSIS deeply integrates with the data mining functionality in Analysis Services. Data mining abstracts the patterns in a dataset and encapsulates them in a mining model. This mining model is used to make predictions on “what data belongs to a dataset” and on “what data may be anomalous.” In this case data mining is used as a tool for implementing data quality. SSIS basic data quality functionality meets or exceeds other vendors' basic offerings.

Support for complex data routing in SSIS can identify anomalous data and automatically correct the data and replace it with better values. This enables SSIS to perform “closed loop” cleansing scenarios. The Data Profiling task can be used to profile data stored in SQL Server. The information provided by the profile helps you identify potential problems with data quality.

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SSIS Support for Business IntelligenceSSIS supports both traditional and non-traditional scenarios and it is a true platform for data integration. SSIS is an integral part of the SQL Server BI platform that enables the development of end-to-end BI applications.

Key SSIS BI features include: Greatest support for heterogeneous environments

Integration with SQL Server Analysis Services in querying, executing, and processing OLAP cubes and data mining tasks

Implementing more responsive SQL Server Reporting Services solutions through enhancements to on-demand processing and instance-based rendering.

SSIS, Analysis Services, data mining, and Reporting Services all use a common Microsoft Visual Studio-based IDE called the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio

Enhanced integration with Microsoft Office 2007 empowers all users

In the context of BI solutions, cross-platform is defined as the ability to extract and exchange data between heterogeneous database platforms. SQL Server 2008 provides advanced ETL capabilities that enable “best of breed” integration scenarios in both heterogeneous and homogeneous database environments running on a range of server operating system platforms using native drivers to multiple data sources, such as Oracle, Teradata, and SAP.

This shared infrastructure enables metadata-level data integration between various development projects (integration, analysis, and reporting). An example of this shared construct is the data source view (DSV), which is an offline schema/view definition of data sources that is used by all three BI project types.

SSIS allows automated execution and processing of SQL Server Analysis Services tasks as part of the entire BI workflow. These tasks include Data Definition Language (DDL) statements in the cubes, dimensions, and data mining models. SSIS also allows automated prediction queries against data mining models by using Data Mining Extensions (DMX) statements.

Competitor ComparisonThis section provides a description of competitor data warehouse and business intelligence features and capabilities.

IBM Information Server (Formerly DataStage)IBM generates the majority of its revenue from services and hardware. IBM is also a leading DBMS platform provider (DB2). IBM offers to provide full data integration capabilities, while bringing together all of its data integration components by using common metadata, common design tooling, and a common look and feel.

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IBM Information Server is primarily used by large-scale enterprises. IBM uses its Information Server product to support information integration from heterogeneous sources.

For more information, see the following article about WebSphere DataStage from IBM:

(http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/integration/datastage/)

IBM Information Server is comprised of a suite of data integration and data management technologies and products with ETL features based on their DataStage acquisition.

IBM Information Server: Combines DataStage, QualityStage, and Federation Server products among others, using

a shared metadata platform.

Integrates the Information Analyzer and QualityStage applications for data profiling and cleansing.

Employs Metadata Server and Transformation Extender (formerly called DataStage TX) tools for heavy transformation requirements.

IBM Information Server provides functionality that supports modeling and metadata management. It delivers the metadata foundation for other IBM Information Server components via Metadata Server.

IBM also intends to bridge Information Server capabilities with IBM’s metadata, master data, content, and other information management solutions.

However, due to the complexity of the multiple products included with IBM Information Server, IBM has struggled to provide a consistent message about its data integration tools to prospective customers.

In addition, IBM Information Server requires the use of a proprietary language for development. Using this specialized language often entails the additional costs associated with training, ramp up, and adoption. In particular, there is considerable lack of professional resources having the expertise to support this proprietary language compared to the number of software engineers competent in SQL Server 2008 and SSIS.

Using a proprietary language also can have a limiting effect on product adoption and product support, and slow development efforts. Another disadvantage of this proprietary language is that it is not very easy to extend.

Moreover, professional support and high-level expertise for IBM Information Server is significantly less than that available for SQL Server. Using IBM Information Server may require the support of external consultants who are unfamiliar with your business—an option that is often cost-prohibitive for small and medium size customers.

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Informatica PowerCenterInformatica Corporation’s PowerCenter product provides data integration and data quality software and services. Informatica is primarily used by large enterprises. Informatica has only recently shifted its focus to data integration. Informatica is using its platform and application neutrality to generate interest for partners and customers having small architectural footprints.

Informatica is a “pure-play” data integration tools provider, which differentiates it from other competitors such as IBM and Oracle. The Informatica PowerCenter is a unified enterprise-wide data integration platform for accessing, discovering, and integrating data from business systems.

For more information, see the Informatica PowerCenter Web site:

http://www.informatica.com/products/powercenter/default.htm

PowerCenter features include: Data federation capabilities as an extension to PowerCenter.

Data profiling and data quality capabilities.

Support for reusable components in the ETL context (called maplets).

Support for the PowerCenter Unstructured Data Option.

Integration of the SuperGlue metadata product into the PowerCenter Advanced Edition as the Metadata Manager component.

However, PowerCenter is not a complete, integrated ETL solution. PowerCenter has received very few enhancements and innovations over time and its technologies are becoming outdated compared the products of other vendors.

PowerCenter: Requires third-party database storage, reporting tools, and so on.

Lacks adequate features and capabilities related to modeling, metadata management, and process-oriented integration.

Does not provide adequate support for BI.

Uses some OEM components to attain high-connectivity support.

Is very expensive to implement.

Oracle Warehouse BuilderOracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) transforms raw data, typically in different formats and from disparate systems, into information optimized for business reporting and analytics. OWB can be used to design ETL processes and implement data integration for all data movement requirements.

For more information, see the following articles from Oracle:

http://www.oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/warehouse-builder.html

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/warehouse

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Using a common metadata repository, OWB combines data integration capabilities with enterprise data quality tools to provide data integration optimized only for Oracle databases. OWB’s current data integration tooling has severe limitations in these areas:

OWB has a two-step ETL process because it generates SQL and relies on the Oracle database server to run the SQL statements that it produces. That places the processing burden on the Oracle database server. Most of the other data integration tools use an ETL processing engine to transform data to relieve the burden on the database servers.

OWB provides connectivity to non-Oracle source platforms and applications. Target load and connectivity is optimized for Oracle databases and data warehousing environments.

OWB uses a very traditional import/export metadata sharing approach, which includes manual metadata integration for a complete solution.

Oracle’s range of data management/MDM tools is confusing. Oracle has many data management products, but which product is most appropriate for a certain task is unclear. Oracle’s data management offerings include its data hub products for MDM and several data integration tools. Each of these products uses its own metadata to contribute to the manual portion of the metadata management environment.

OWB offers only limited support for operational data integration techniques such as Enterprise Information Integration (EII) and CDC.

Starting with Oracle 10g, Oracle DBMS licenses include a very basic version of OWB. Customers must purchase additional add-ons for advanced ETL functionality such as heterogeneous data sources, performance and scalability, impact analysis and lineage reporting, data profiling, and enterprise application gateway.

Oracle Data Integrator (Formerly Sunopsis)Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) (based on the acquired Sunopsis Data Conductor) provides heterogeneous connectivity in the data management layer of Oracle’s Fusion Middleware.

For more information about Oracle Data Integrator, see the following information on the Oracle Web site:

http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/oracle-data-integrator.html

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oracle-data-integrator

ODI E-LT (extract, load, and then transform) architecture uses disparate RDBMS engines to process and transform the data, which eliminates the need for an ETL transformation server. The drawback is that ODI E-LT requires additional processing power from either the source or target system. In this case, the existing systems need significant CPU and memory cycles to perform the transformation processes. Few production systems have this kind of flexibility.

ODI provides an integration platform for IT infrastructure that supports SOA, business intelligence, and master data management. ODI is a comprehensive data integration platform that covers data integration requirements, including high-volume, high-performance batches, event-driven “trickle-feed” integration

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processes, and SOA-enabled data services. ODI supports multiple data sources connecting to multiple targets.

However, ODI integration with Oracle Database technology is very limited, and there is an additional licensing cost to implement ODI. ODI is generally only suitable for organizations that have ongoing needs for productivity gains. ODI is also not recommended for one-time migration projects.

In addition, there is a shortage of experienced ODI consultants compared to the number of software engineers who are competent in SQL Server 2008 and SSIS. Professional support and high-level expertise with ODI is also lacking. Using ODI may require the support of external consultants who are unfamiliar with your business—an option that is often cost-prohibitive for small and medium size customers.

Business Ecosystem and Support InfrastructureThis section describes the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 business ecosystem and support infrastructure associated with its data warehouse and BI features and capabilities.

SQL Server 2008 SSISThe Microsoft global presence provides a huge customer base for best practices, excellent support, and a distribution model that supports both direct and channel partner sales. Microsoft has invested in developing a global partner ecosystem that is equipped to address the data warehouse needs of a wide range of businesses worldwide.

Microsoft provides full support to large enterprises and to small and medium size businesses. In particular, Microsoft can support large enterprise accounts that are primarily Microsoft technology-based, and businesses for which Microsoft has an acceptable connectivity and scalability offering.

SQL Server is the fastest growing database and much of that growth is among large enterprises that have mission-critical requirements. SQL Server 2008 is designed for enterprise dependability. Compared to other database solutions, SQL Server 2008 can provide significant time and cost savings when deploying and managing line of business (LOB) applications.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) for SQL Server 2008 is low. When used in a Microsoft platform, SSIS brings savings in cost, better features, and tighter integration with the underlying platform.

Moreover, the combination of SSIS and its support for bulk data movement, interfacing with BizTalk Server 2006 R2, and real-time, message-based capabilities, makes Microsoft a strong contender in the data integration space.

Microsoft supports extensible tooling using scripts for the SQL and .NET languages, which is an instance manager in the SSIS controls. SSIS includes

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adapters for applications such as PeopleSoft, SAP, or mainframe and midrange DB2.

Competitor ComparisonThis section compares the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 business ecosystem and support infrastructure to competitor platforms.

IBM Information ServerIBM Information Server primarily used by large enterprises, and comes with a very high acquisition cost. This often places it beyond the reach of most small and medium size customers. All add-on modules such as Web services, SAP, and so on, entail additional costs.

IBM has partnered with a few key enterprise customers to develop custom solutions to meet their needs. It has adapted some of these solutions into vertical industry offerings. However, these solutions are often large enterprise- and North American-centric solutions and do not fully meet the needs of customers on a global basis.

IBM solutions do not easily scale down to address the budget and unique requirements of small or medium size businesses. In addition, the IBM marketing messages for data integration tools have not always been consistently articulated by its sales force, nor clearly received and understood by customers and prospects.

Informatica PowerCenterInformatica is primarily used by large enterprises. Informatica does not have product pricing or a distribution strategy that effectively addresses the needs of all enterprises. In addition, medium size businesses might have difficulty justifying the cost and complexity of implementing PowerCenter.

Similar to IBM, Informatica has partnered with a few key enterprise customers to develop custom solutions to meet their needs. It has adapted some of these solutions into vertical industry offerings. However, these solutions are often large enterprise- and North American-centric solutions and do not fully meet the needs of customers on a global basis.

PowerCenter has a very high cost of acquisition, placing it beyond the reach of most customers. PowerCenter is expensive to deploy and has a high TCO.

In addition, PowerCenter appears to be designed for expert ETL users and developers. New users will find PowerCenter difficult to adopt, especially users who are new to ETL technology.

OracleCompanies currently using Oracle Database products may find it convenient to considering using OWB. However, relatively few Oracle customers actively use OWB as an ETL tool.

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Using Oracle OWB and/or ODI entails the cost of acquiring additional Oracle licenses. OWB and ODI also require investing the time and resources needed to manage these products long term, including acquiring the database skill sets—these requirements affect the TCO.

Oracle’s OWB ETL solution remains part of the Oracle Database group and continues to complement Oracle’s data warehousing business. A basic version of OWB is embedded in the Oracle 11g Database.

OWB provides advanced features such as increased scalability, impact analysis and lineage reporting, and data profiling, although they are offered as options at an additional cost. Enterprise and data quality features are not included with the base product; these features require separate licensing.

ODI has a very small installed base, and it has limited architecture and hardware requirements. ODI has very little integration with Oracle Database technology because it is actually a rebadged third-party offering. There is a lack of professional resources and consultants who are experienced with ODI, and it has a high licensing cost to implement.

Pricing and CostThis section describes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 pricing and cost considerations associated with its data warehouse and BI features and capabilities.

SQL Server 2008 SSISSSIS is included in the license for SQL Server 2008, along with many other services such as data warehousing, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, data mining, manageability, advanced security, spatial data support, high availability, programmability, performance, and scalability. Deploying SSIS incurs no cost when implementing an ETL solution on the Windows platform.

Because ETL is built into the product, it offers a significant savings on licensing: Basic ETL with the Standard edition (Retail USD $5,999 per processor)

Advanced ETL (including complex routing and transforms) in the Enterprise edition (Retail USD $24,999 per processor)

The inclusion of SSIS in SQL Server 2008 makes the cost acquisition extremely reasonable compared to other data integration tools. Not only is the initial cost acquisition less but, because of its tight integration with Visual Studio and SQL Server 2008 BI tools, the cost of application development and maintenance is also significantly less than other similar tools.

The TCO of SSIS (and the rest of SQL Server 2008) makes enterprise-class data integration approachable to all segments of the market. This takes data

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integration and BI out of the exclusive domain of the largest (and richest) companies.

For more information, see SQL Server and Oracle Total Cost of Administration.

SQL Server 2008 has the best price-to-performance ratio for these reasons: The initial hardware and software cost is significantly lower than competing solutions at the

same level of performance.

The IT hardware investment can be maximized because SQL Server installations can be consolidated to fewer physical servers. This frees up IT resources for other high value activities.

Most of the cost of an application platform is associated with ongoing maintenance. Microsoft delivers a platform that cuts the cost of maintenance by dramatically improving manageability.

Competitor ComparisonThis section compares Microsoft SQL Server 2008 pricing and cost to competitor platforms.

IBM Information ServerThe IBM family of data integration tools is now under the WebSphere brand, in the newly formed IBM Information Integration Solutions unit.

For more information about IBM software pricing, see:

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/info/app/ecatalog/index.html

IBM provides process-oriented data integration functionality, such as Information Connectivity and Integration (ICI), in WebSphere Business Integration (WBI). However, this functionality is offered from a separate platform with a distinct architecture because IBM's products for process and application integration are a separate product family.

IBM Information Server, Principal SKUs, and Indicative Prices

IBM Principal SKUs Indicative Price

IBM Information Server Pack for SAP R/3 Server License and Software Maintenance (12 months)

$93,750.00

IBM Information Server Pack for PeopleSoft Enterprise Server License and Software Maintenance (12 months)

$93,750.00

IBM DataStage CDC for Microsoft SQL Server, Server License and Software Maintenance (12 months)

$62,500.00

IBM WebSphere DataStage CDC for Oracle Server License and Software Maintenance (12 months)

$93,750.00

IBM WebSphere DataStage 4 Base Processors License and Software Maintenance (12 months)

$250,000.00

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Informatica PowerCenterThe PowerCenter platform has its roots in traditional ETL-style data delivery. Informatica has added data federation capabilities as an extension to PowerCenter, although very few customers have implemented this option.

PowerCenter ships as two standard editions, with multiple options for each edition: PowerCenter Standard Edition (SE) is a single, unified enterprise data integration platform

that consists of a high-performance, highly available, and secure data server, a global metadata infrastructure, and GUI-based development and administration tools. The basic configuration of PowerCenter SE ships for approximately USD $140,000.

PowerCenter Advanced Edition (AE) expands PowerCenter SE with metadata analysis, team-based development, and Web-based reporting capabilities. Three key features distinguish PowerCenter AE: Metadata Manager, Team-Based Development, and Data Analyzer.

PowerCenter options include:

Data Cleanse and Match option Data Federation option Data Profiling option Enterprise Grid option High Availability option Mapping Generation Option

PowerCenter has a very high cost of acquisition, often putting it beyond the reach of small and medium size customers. For example:

PowerCenter Base costs $50,000 per CPU.

PowerCenter Advanced costs $300,000 per CPU.

PowerCenter connector costs $100,000 per connector.

Oracle Warehouse BuilderBasic OWB functionality is bundled at no charge with the purchase of an Oracle Standard Edition One, Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition database, or the Internet Developer Suite (IDS).

Oracle Database 11g includes the core features of OWB as a no-cost database feature. The Base product is designed for building data marts or data warehouses, regardless of size or complexity. It includes a multi-user metadata repository, data modeling capabilities, and a range of transformation and extraction techniques.

Additionally, OWB has three options that meet specific integration requirements: Enterprise ETL Option (cost USD $10,000 per processor). This option is specifically aimed

at performance and productivity. It includes advanced data load options, developer productivity through reusable components, embedded slowly changing dimension management, end-to-end data lineage and impact analysis, and support for advanced configuration management.

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Data Quality Option (cost USD $15,000 per processor). This option is another separate license of the product. The Data Quality option provides support for data profiling, data rules such as essence business rules, and information compliance.

Connectors Options (each connector cost is USD $20,000). These options provide optimized access for leading operational applications. Oracle provides connectors for Oracle e-Business Suite, Peoplesoft Enterprise, Siebel (CRM), and SAP R/3.

Oracle Data IntegratorThe ODI product is sold by Oracle’s Business Intelligence group. Since Oracle’s union with Hyperion, this group is managed by, and has a strong presence of, ex-Hyperion employees. The group also encompasses Siebel Analytics products and staff from Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel.

The installed base of Sunopsis is quite small (particularly outside of the United States) and most sales are still driven by resellers who sold Sunopsis in the past.

ODI is often sold in conjunction with other business application products such as Oracle analytics packages (formerly Siebel analytics).

The ODI license has a minimum of 50 named users per processor, and a minimum “buy-in” price of USD $20,000 [(1 processor @USD $5,000) + (50 named users @ USD $400 each) = USD $25,000].

ConclusionSQL Server 2008 offers a scalable, secure platform for developing and deploying data warehouse and BI solutions. SQL Server 2008 enables customers of any size to share data across multiple platforms, applications, and devices, while making it easier to connect to internal and external systems. Microsoft provides full support to large enterprises and to small and medium size businesses.

SQL Server 2008 is designed for enterprise dependability. With greater performance and, more importantly, the ability to manage large databases, SQL Server 2008 is a serious contender in the ETL space. SQL Server 2008 delivers high-end capabilities that are closing the gap with IBM, Informatica, Oracle, and other database vendors.

SQL Server 2008 Integration Services (SISS) contains a set of comprehensive, fully functional ETL tools that meet the demands of traditional ETL operations, and the evolving needs of non-traditional scenarios for data integration. SSIS is fundamentally different from the tools and solutions provided by major ETL vendors.

SSIS provides support for both heterogeneous and homogeneous environments. SISS provides the best integration for customers having multiple data sources and multiple platforms. SISS is also the best data

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integration tool for Microsoft-centric environments in large to medium size businesses.

In addition, SSIS is an integral part of the SQL Server 2008 BI platform that enables the development of end-to-end BI applications. The tight integration of SQL Server 2008 with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 makes it an ideal combination for deploying a BI solution.

SSIS is included in the license for SQL Server 2008, along with many other services, as noted in this paper. Deploying SSIS incurs no cost when implementing an ETL solution on the Windows platform.

SSIS can provide significant time and cost savings as compared to ETL competitor products.

In contrast, IBM Information Server primarily supports large enterprises. IBM Information Server data integration tools are overly complex and include multiple products. IBM Information Server requires the use of a proprietary language for development. Professional support and high-level expertise with the product is significantly less available, as compared to SQL Server 2008. IBM Information Server has a very high acquisition cost that is often beyond the reach of most small and medium size customers, and all add-on modules have additional costs.

Informatica PowerCenter is primarily used by large enterprises. PowerCenter is not a complete, integrated ETL solution. PowerCenter has received very few enhancements and innovations over time and its technologies are becoming outdated compared to those of other vendors. Informatica does not have product pricing or a distribution strategy that effectively addresses the needs of all enterprises. Medium size businesses might have difficulty justifying the cost and complexity of a PowerCenter implementation.

Companies currently using Oracle Database technology may find it convenient to considering using OWB. Basic OWB functionality is bundled at no charge with specific Oracle Database products. However, relatively few Oracle customers actively use OWB as an ETL tool. OWB’s current data integration tooling has severe limitations in a number of areas, as noted in this paper.

ODI integration with Oracle Database technology is very limited, and there is an additional licensing cost to implement ODI. ODI has a small installed base. It is actually a rebadged third-party offering.

Using either Oracle OWB and/or ODI entails additional Oracle licensing costs. Many of the advanced features of OWB are offered only as options at an additional cost. Both OWB and ODI require an investment in the time and resources needed to manage these products long term, which has an impact on the TCO.

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