I can understand developers picking up SSIS cause it ships with SQL server and is therefore considered 'free' . It may suffice if you have no comparison.

What I do not understand why anyone would compare it favorably to Pentaho. PDI ships with at least twice as many features 'out-of-the-box' ,extremely easy to use debugging, logging (server / db) for each and every purpose, great and stable GUI, limited set of internal datatypes etc, etc.

I build the same pilot with both SSIS and Pentaho, where SSIS literally took 3 times as much time. The interface feels like wading through mud, excrutiatingly messy with datatypes, and even unstable at times. The debugging features are laughable.

My background is INFA's Powercenter (PC). Though not as complete as PC, for small to medium projects I rate Pentaho over PC as well