Informatica Enterprise Data Management

Guest blogger Joe McKendrick is a nationally published known author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. He is a contributing editor to a number of national and international publications and Websites including Database Trends & Applications, Webservices.Org, ENT Online, and Enterprise Systems. He also serves as analyst for Evans Data Corp., for which he coauthors Evans' Web services survey reports, and is lead analyst for Evans' enterprise development management issues and database development surveys

Mr. Schmidt is vice president of Global Integration Services at Informatica Corporation. He advises clients on the business potential of emerging technologies, leads in the creation of strategies for enterprise initiatives, and plans, directs and supervises Informatica’s Integration Competency Center Practice. His career success has been built on solving complex problems by deeply understanding underlying factors, articulating a simple vision and mobilizing teams to effectively execute tactical solutions within the corporate strategic context.
Mr. Schmidt has practiced as an information systems professional in the Banking, Retail, Telecommunications, Education, Government and Utilities industries. Previous employers include Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of America, Best Buy, American Management Systems, and Digital Equipment Corporation. He is also Chairman of the Integration Consortium, has written a book and numerous articles on Systems Integration and Enterprise Architecture, filed several patents, developed Program Management best practices and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences.
John is based in Minneapolis where he lives with his wife and three children. When not spending time with his family, he can usually be found riding his road or mountain bike and occasionally competing in a Triathlon.

Don Tirsell, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Informatica, leads the platform product marketing team responsible for the success and continued market leadership of Informatica's enterprise data integration platform. Don is a 20 year enterprise software veteran with marketing, alliances and product development experience at leading companies such as Informatica, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Vignette and Kana Software.

James Markarian has spent 8 years at Informatica trying to accomplish an important goal: creating the world's finest platform for moving, manipulating and improving data. As CTO, James has helped the Informatica products evolve from their humble roots in RDBMS-centric data warehousing to their present status as modern day data Swiss-army knives in an effort to keep pace with the needs of our discriminating customers and partners. From hundreds of conversations with customers to writing dozens of articles and speaking at numerous engagements, he has heard of, written and talked about and occasionally thought privately to himself concerning enterprise-class data problems. Prior to joining Informatica, James spent 10 years at Oracle

Guest blogger Rick Sherman has worked in the data warehousing, data integration and business over the course of working on more than 50 implementations as a director/practice leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, while managing his own firm, and at Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP).

Rick has become widely-recognized for his articles, speaking engagements, and teaching. He is a published author of over 50 articles including his monthly column "The Data Integration Advisor" published in DM Review. In addition to teaching at industry conferences, he offers onsite data warehouse/business intelligence training, and teaches public courses in the Boston area. He also teaches at Northeastern University's graduate school of engineering, where he preaches the joy of data warehousing to a new generation of IT professionals.

He is the founder of Athena IT Solutions, a Boston-based consulting firm that provides data warehouse and business intelligence consulting, training and vendor services. Rick is happy to receive your feedback and suggestions for blog posts at rsherman@athena-solutions.com.

Ivan Chong currently serves as Informatica's VP of Product Marketing. However, for much of his time at Informatica, Ivan worked as a Product manager arguing with engineers about which new PowerCenter features customers most needed. Adding the ability to resize the PowerCenter Override SQL Editor dialog is a highlight of Ivan's career. Mr. Chong is also a 6-year veteran of Oracle Corporation, and graduated with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.