Talend 

• Talend is an open-source data integration tool (with the full suite , ESB , MDM , BPM , DQ).
• It uses a code-generating approach. Uses a GUI, but within Eclipse RC, with an intuitive use
• Very large community , and more than 800 connectors ( the biggest connectors library )
• It has the biggest ETL community and many finance companies and investors supporting it.
• It generates java code which you later run on your server / deploy using manual or automatic
• It has data quality features: from its own GUI, writing more customised SQL queries and Java.
• It can run on remote and on local and the jobs can be used as java executable jars independently
• it has a on premise and Cloud version
• its mature and up to date on Big data technologies ( i.e Spark, Hive , AWS ..etc )
• Fairly priced and has subscription model independent from your project size.

Informatica

• Informatica is a very good commercial data integration suite.
• It was founded in 1993
• It is the market share leader in data integration (Gartner Dataquest)
• It has 2600 customers. Of those, there are fortune 100 companies, companies on the Dow Jones and government organization.
• The company’s sole focus is data integration
• It’s pricing model is based in credit and long term contracts also depends on the size of the project and the number of nodes

• It has quite a big package for enterprises to integrate their systems, cleanse their data and can connect to a vast number of current and legacy systems.
• Its very expensive, will require training some of your staff to use it and probably require hiring consultants as well. (I hear Informatica consultants are well paid).
• Its very fast and can scale for large systems. It has “Pushdown Optimization” which uses an ELT approach that uses the source database to do the transforming – like Oracle Warehouse Builder.

Talend vs Informatica, comparison

Why Talend is one of the best products, and not only a challenger as described by Gartner ?

Talend

Based in Redwood City, California, U.S., Talend offers Open Studio for Data Integration, Enterprise Data Integration, Platform for Data Services, Platform for Big Data and Integration Cloud. Talend’s paying customer base for this product portfolio is estimated to number more than 3,600 organizations.

Strengths

• Portfolio relevance and cost model. Reference customers appreciate the solid performance of Talend’s functionality, its support of diverse use cases, and the lower TCO of Talend’s technology, relative to competitors. Talend’s free open-source offering and affordable developer-based pricing for fully featured software appeal to customers and frequently attract usage for augmenting data integration capabilities.

• Commitment to big data and evolving trends. Talend continues to benefit from an early commitment to big data and Hadoop, with new customer adoption and technology advancements such as in-memory processing (with Apache Spark) and the enabling of real-time scenarios. Momentum to support big data, combined with a new iPaaS offering and plans for self-service data preparation capability (using data virtualization and iPaaS) in 1Q16, position Talend to expand its market reach.
• Adaptable capabilities in a unified product set. Talend’s portfolio, including data quality, MDM, business process management, an ESB, and a recently added metadata management tool, sets out to deepen synergies across information- and application infrastructure-related use cases. Customers value the configurability of Talend’s tools, which makes them flexible enough to adapt to the business requirements of data integration processes and the availability of artifacts built by Talend’s practitioner community.