Competitive Comparison of
SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
A 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.
Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 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
1
1
Introduction
The 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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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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
Oracl
e ODI
Supports
heterogeneous data
sources environment





Parallelism and
scalability





Basic ETL
functionality




Ease of use


BI/DW functionality



Has ETL processing
engine


Support ecosystem
and infrastructure

Pricing and cost

Debugging features





Microsoft SQL Server 2008
SQL 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 Services
SSIS 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 nontraditional scenarios for data integration. SSIS is fundamentally different from
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence
This section compares SISS data warehouse and BI features and capabilities
to competitor platforms.
SSIS Support for Data Warehousing
SSIS 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
(RDBMS) or within SSIS Analysis Server-deployed data marts, making it
easier to move atomic warehouse data to version-controlled data marts.
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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.
SSIS Support for Business Intelligence
SSIS 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.
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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 Comparison
This 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.
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:
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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(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.
Informatica PowerCenter
Informatica 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
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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 Builder
Oracle 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
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.
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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
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
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.
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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 Infrastructure
This 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 SSIS
The 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
adapters for applications such as PeopleSoft, SAP, or mainframe and
midrange DB2.
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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Competitor Comparison
This section compares the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 business ecosystem
and support infrastructure to competitor platforms.
IBM Information Server
IBM 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 enterpriseand 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 PowerCenter
Informatica 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.
Oracle
Companies 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.
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
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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 Cost
This section describes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 pricing and cost
considerations associated with its data warehouse and BI features and
capabilities.
SQL Server 2008 SSIS
SSIS 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
integration and BI out of the exclusive domain of the largest (and richest)
companies.
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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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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 Comparison
This section compares Microsoft SQL Server 2008 pricing and cost to
competitor platforms.
IBM Information Server
The 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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Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
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Informatica PowerCenter
The 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 Builder
Basic 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:

14
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.
Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
14

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 Integrator
The 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].
Conclusion
SQL 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
integration tool for Microsoft-centric environments in large to medium size
businesses.
15
Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
15
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.
16
Competitive Comparison of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
16
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