Informatica World 2008

During yesterday's keynote session and on this blog, both Sohaib and I talked about cloud computing, the fragmentation of data, and how you need to access it, move it, clean it and trust it in order to succeed in today's global information economy. Enter Informatica.

We're not the only ones talking clouds these days - check out the post on Salesforce.com's force.com blog, titled "The Right Stuff is Better than More Stuff."

Here's a good snippet from Peter Coffee's entry:

Clear supremacy for the cloud is now emerging, though, in the form of superior integration among cloud-based tools (e.g., salesforce.com and Google Apps) and — probably even more important — both cloud-based and on-premise data sources (viz. today's announcement from Informatica).

Our annual user conference, Informatica World 2008 kicks off tomorrow at the Las Vegas Hilton. This is our tenth year with the conference and a lot has changed…

Back in 1999, our first user conference was held in San Diego and it was small enough that all attendees fit onto one Hornblower Yacht for our cruise around the harbor! Our partner expo was held in a parking garage - we had to wait several hours to clear the air of car exhaust.

Over the years our customer base has grown tremendously, and Informatica World has grown along with it. This year we expect more than 1,200 customers, partners, and integration experts to join us in Las Vegas.

Over the course of the next three days, we’ll host more than 56 breakout sessions, 11 Birds of Feather discussion groups, 6 education sessions, and more than 250 demos, 1:1 meetings and focus groups in the Hands on Lab. And of course, we have an amazing partner expo - we've graduated from the garage to a big, beautiful ballroom.

So, what is the prevailing topic at Informatica World? The “dry heat” of Vegas, of course!

Beyond that, we’ll be talking a lot about data integration (surprise!) and the expanding role it is playing in your businesses and the technology landscape today.

With so much activity at the conference this year, we decided to extend it virtually for those who couldn’t join us.

Within this blog, we’ll track the news and highlights of the key discussions taking place during the show. Subscribe to the RSS feed so you get real-time updates on the Innovation Awards, real-time recaps of the keynotes, and a few fun photos and videos.

We hope you will enjoy this blog, and encourage you to join the discussion.

Bill Cox is Vice President of Corporate Communications at Informatica, where he is responsible for the company’s positioning and global communications strategy. Mr. Cox has spent 13 years in the enterprise software industry leading strategic marketing and communications programs at companies such as Microsoft and PeopleSoft. Before joining Informatica, he served four years at Microsoft where he was Director of Corporate Communications, responsible for cross-company public relations and analyst relations efforts. Prior to Microsoft, Bill spent six years at PeopleSoft in several marketing management roles including driving the company’s corporate positioning, executive communications, and analyst relations efforts. Bill began his career at Applied Communications where he drove competitive communications programs for Oracle, Informatica, and StorageTek.

Ash Parikh is responsible for driving Informatica's product strategy around real-time data integration and SOA. Ash has over 17 years of industry experience in driving product innovation and strategy at technology leaders such as Raining Data, Iopsis Software, BEA, Sun and PeopleSoft. Ash is a well-published industry expert in the field of SOA and distributed computing and is a regular presenter at leading industry technology events like XMLConference, OASIS Symposium, Delphi, AJAXWorld, and JavaOne. He has authored several technical articles in leading journals including DMReview, AlignJournal, XML Journal, JavaWorld, JavaPro, Web Services Journal, and ADT Magazine. He is the co-chair of the SDForum Web services SIG.

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.

Ivan Chong is currently General Manager for Informatica's Data Quality Business Unit. He has also headed up Informatica's Product Marketing as well as worked in the Corporate Strategy group doing business development. For much of his career at Informatica, Ivan served as Vice President of Product Management. Mr. Chong is also a 6-year veteran of Oracle Corporation, where he held various product management positions for the Oracle Tools division and was awarded a patent in the area of database visualization. His experience also includes two years with internet advertising startup, NetGravity, a company that developed mission critical server products for high traffic commercial web sites. Mr. Chong has spoken at numerous user conferences both in the US and internationally. He graduated with undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Mr. Boorman, Informatica Chief Marketing Officer, is responsible for Informatica's global voice to the market which includes corporate, partner, and field marketing. He joined Informatica with over 20 years of international marketing leadership experience at enterprise software category leaders including SDL, salesforce.com, VERITAS and Oracle. Most recently, Boorman was Chief Marketing Officer at SDL, a leading Global Information Management enterprise software vendor offering language translation technology and services. Prior to joining SDL, Boorman was vice president for EMEA marketing at salesforce.com, the worldwide leader in on-demand Customer Relationship Management services. Before salesforce.com, Boorman led EMEA marketing for nearly a decade at the leading enterprise software vendor, VERITAS. He also held various positions in Consulting, Pre-Sales Support and Product Marketing during his 10-year tenure at Oracle. Additionally, Boorman was a founding board member of the European Storage Networking Industry Association as well as a board member of the Fibre Channel Industry. Boorman attended Southampton University in the UK earning a Doctorate in Magnetism and Engineering, a Masters Degree in Cryogenics and Applications and a First Class Honors Bachelors degree in Physics.