Delphix Continuous Compliance

I worked as a DevOps engineer for a company like Axoft, where I held roles as a system engineer, cybersecurity specialist, and software engineer. I have accumulated almost 10 plus years of experience across different streams, domains, and clients, using various tools. As part of my day-to-day responsibilities, I build, deploy, troubleshoot, and support systems whenever needed.

My experience with Perforce  tools was primarily related to code check-in. I also handled user management responsibilities, such as providing credentials and repository access to new users joining the company. Initially, I struggled with the check-in process because it was new to me, but after that initial period, I found it straightforward. As part of my role, I learn new tools continuously, and that initial struggle was just part of the learning process.

The best features Perforce  offers from my experience are user administration and code management. After that initial project, I never received exposure to more Perforce tools and never worked with another client using Perforce. I used it for almost two years on that one project.

Previously, I used different solutions before Perforce, which were Subversion and ClearCase. Since my Perforce experience was about 10 years ago and not recent, I felt that Git  and Bitbucket  were better options in recent times. They are decentralized repositories with options that felt more appropriate, which is why I shared those same preferences with you.

The best features Perforce offers from my experience are user administration and code management. Both the user administration and code management made those features useful in my day-to-day work. Everything has its own pros and cons. For the code side, it was very secure, and when it comes to user management, it was very user-friendly. The onboarding process was easy, and adding and managing users was straightforward.

Regarding specific outcomes or metrics, such as time saved or reduced errors, I noticed improvements were quite direct. Code check-in, check-out, and all those command line operations were fine. The UI was easy to access. If I were to see the current upgraded version of your tool, I might be able to evaluate what the past looked like compared to what the current version offers. However, based on what I know from my experience, that is what I can comment on.

Perhaps you should focus mostly on Identity Access Management  for Perforce, as the market is heading toward IAM , and it has become mandatory. Additionally, based on my experience, I would suggest trying to use a decentralized approach similar to Git , where when a user clones the repository, it becomes their own repository. This decentralized method is what Git is doing right now, and implementing it might help the company.

If you take a decentralized approach to the repository, it would be easier for users. Additionally, implementing Identity Access Management  aligned with current cybersecurity tools in the market might also help the company. Focusing in that direction would be beneficial.

I used Perforce on only one project for almost two years.

Perforce is stable in my experience. I felt downtime only one time, but it was not significant.

Perforce's scalability was fine. The security and everything was straightforward. The code and everything was pretty much fine. The users were doing well. Handling users and managing increases or decreases in user count was straightforward. The administration aspect was easy.

The customer support was fine. When the license renewal came into the picture, we reviewed and checked with customer support. The response was quick.

Previously, I used different solutions before Perforce, which were Subversion and ClearCase. Since my Perforce experience was about 10 years ago and not recent, I felt that Git and Bitbucket  were better options. They are decentralized repositories using decentralized approaches.

Perforce was deployed in my organization as on-premises because at that time, there was no cloud option available.

I did see a return on investment with Perforce in the sense that managing the users and the work was taken care of fine. However, regarding return on investment overall, I am probably not the right person to comment on that because it is higher management who can provide insights on that, not me.

It is hard for me to remember the pricing, setup cost, or licensing for Perforce. I think the licensing was based on user count. I felt the pricing was a little higher at that time, which is what I heard from my boss.

I never used Perforce Delphix . I only used the Perforce version control tool, which was around eight or nine years ago. We were checking in code and doing builds from there using Jenkins  for build and deployment. I never used Perforce Delphix .

Maybe this sounds odd because it is a version control tool and there is nothing more to define about it. It is simply a version control tool where you secure your code. Based on my experience, it was fine. However, I do not know how far you have updated the tool since it has been 10 years, so I cannot comment on the current state because I did not use it recently.

Maybe single sign-on would be a useful feature. I do not remember the specific tool name, but that is just a suggestion.

It is hard to answer whether I would advise someone to use Perforce because the market has moved far ahead of Perforce. I have not used Perforce recently, so it is hard for me to advise anyone to use it. Without knowing much about the current state, I cannot advise someone. I am not the right person to advise on this matter. Overall, I would rate this review an 8.

The current use case is to manufacture or generate synthetic data on the fly in different environments.

The solution's most valuable feature is data cloning. Once we have the rules established, we can clone the data as if it were equivalent to production data. The solution's data masking features reduced the risk of accessing production data, reducing incidents related to data privacy by at least 50%.

It would be good if any CI/CD and DevOps-aligned feature could be triggered through the DevOps pipeline. Right now, we have to trigger the jobs and then integrate them with DevOps, which requires some manual effort. The ideal state would be to have the ability to integrate with the DevOps pipeline.

There is a mainframe virtualization for which Delphix already has a partner. Mainframe virtualization is an important use case, and it would be good if it could be given as a package.

I have been using Delphix for one and a half years.

Delphix provides good stability.

I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten for stability.

The solution's scalability is not an issue, but the clients have their own adoption curve. Around 50 users are using the solution. Our clients for Delphix are enterprise businesses.

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution’s technical support is very good.

The solution's initial setup requires some technical expertise. The solution's deployment took six to twelve months. That's not because of Delphix. It was because of the client's ecosystem, which is sometimes very complex. I would say anywhere between six and twelve months is a reasonable time frame.

The solution's deployment has a pilot phase where we would take one or two applications and run them past the test data software. Then, we look for the results and accuracy. If they are appropriate and satisfactory, we incorporate more applications in the next release. Since each release takes about one month, we have to postpone it until next month.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten.

The solution's pricing was reasonable and lower than one million.

We are the solution service integrator. We implement and manage Delphix for the customer. The solution's data virtualization capabilities have resulted in a 30% improvement in velocity, a 50% reduction in incidents related to data security, and an overall 20% reduction in efforts related to test data.

Delphix is deployed on-premises or in the client's private cloud, which can also be classified as on-premises.

Identifying the use cases was challenging because every stakeholder had their unique use cases. We had to baseline the use cases because we couldn't accommodate all of them within the pilot phase.

In terms of the required support, the business users needed to support the pilot phase, which was another challenge. We had to get all the business teams together in one place and agree on the scope. Then, it was more of learning on the job. There was a continuous learning process, and we had to adapt and learn on the fly.

I would recommend Delphix to other users because the company is good and very supportive. The solution has a user-friendly interface, and the support team is also quite proactive.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My company predominantly uses Delphix because, for large data masking in terabytes, we need the kind of engine where it can play very well on an NMVe hard disk. My company also needs a master-slave architecture, like the one offered under big data or Hadoop's framework. Speed and the performance the tool offers are paramount to my company. When I looked at the topological architecture of how Informatica does the data masking, I saw that it is slightly different from the big data framework.

When it comes to unstructured and structured data, if Delphix can comply with the requirements for most of the structured data, it would be good, especially if it can include the data scanning part. The tool is useful for data masking. If I have a repository or if I give the repository to the tool, and if it scans all the data to figure out if there is any kind of PII/NPI data, I think it will make the tool full and complete.

I have experience with Delphix.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company has around 500 users of the tool.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

My company tried various other products during one of the PoC phases before finalizing Delphix for large-scale usage.

My company purchased Delphix since it met our budgetary requirements. The product is not cheap, but I can say that it is a good product for the functionalities it provides. I rate the product price seven to eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price.

The performance offered by the product, its price, and its ability to handle structured and unstructured data were good when compared to the other products in the market.

Delphix is actually meant for data masking. Speaking about how my company uses the tool for DevOps workflows, I would say that my company has a Jenkins pipeline, and we write all the scripts, after which the onboarding is completed in Delphix. In our company, we have a service process between the producers and the consumers. Once the onboarding is done, all the rules and data masking are taken care of, which is like a one-time deal. Unless the data structure changes, my company used to go to Collibra and get the schema to ensure that the requested fields were there in the schema, after which we used to read the data specific to that catalog and then mask it. The script gets triggered by Jenkins.

I have no doubts about how the solution provides and ensures data compliance and security. My company has been using Delphix for quite some time now. Initially, my company didn't have to deal with any big data. After my company had a requirement to deal with the big data in relation to its migration to the cloud, we had tons and tons of data coming in, owing to which we had to deploy the big data kind of a cluster like Delphix. My company has unstructured, structured, and some semi-structured data as well to do the masking, but we are able to deal with only a few such data and not with all of it. I have no problems with relational databases. In semi-structured data, I do have problems, but not with all of them, including data in Word and PDFs.

Delphix has been the most valuable in improving data operations, predominantly in the area of data masking from higher to lower.

Delphix's virtual data infrastructure has impacted our company's data management processes really well, especially whenever we want to deal with the area of testing in data science and wherever we need to write the models while taking data from a higher environment to the lower environment, maintaining the data masking posture, following the industry regulations and work in compliance with the security guidelines, which helped us tremendously, to fit the tool into our architecture framework.

My company has an agreement with Delphix to take care of the maintenance of the product. One person from my company will take care of the maintenance.

I recommend the product to other people who want to use it.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use the tool to create scenarios for test data. We have different third-party databases that have huge volumes of data.

The product helps us deal with RDBMS or MongoDB, where we have a large volume of data. It is a valuable product.

The product is efficient in handling large volumes of data.

The solution’s self-service portal must be more interactive and user-friendly. It must give more capabilities to the user. Virtual database capabilities should be added to future releases.

I have been using the solution since 2018. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool’s stability is fine. We could export large volumes of data. I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten.

We also use Broadcom Test Data Manager. Delphix has capabilities that are similar to Broadcom Test Data Manager.

The deployment was easy.

We do not see much ROI on the tool because we also use Broadcom Test Data Manager. However, I like how Delphix handles large volumes of data.

The product is a little bit expensive. It is almost similar to Broadcom Test Data Manager.

My advice depends on an organization’s needs. If an organization has a large volume of data, Delphix is a good choice. It is robust and very efficient with large volumes of data and different kinds of databases. If someone is looking for a one-stop solution with all features and capabilities, they must consider a different tool. Overall, I rate the product a six or seven out of ten.