Informatica Perspectives

2008 has been a year to remember for Informatica, the data integration industry and IT as a whole. Consolidation and cloud computing were center stage for most of the year, and dealing with the challenges of a down economy certainly filled our headlines in the second half! Achieving operational efficiencies will surely be the theme for 2009.

Looking back, here are the seven most read Perspectives blog posts in 2008:

• Customer Centricity Strategies
• Where predictive analytics and decision support meet — operational DI for all types of BI needs
• Business Intelligence Strategies in a Down Economy
• Cloud Computing - integration is key
• Mergers and Acquisitions - why the high failure rate?
• 'Cloud Computing' is Ready for Enterprise Prime Time, But… (Part 2)
• SOA and BPM Tend to Overlook the Complexity of Integrating Fragmented Enterprise Data

What was your favorite post in 2008? What would you like to see more of in 2009?

Happy New Year and thanks for sharing your insights and views with us!

(PS – Look out for our Twitter feed in 2009)

Christmas is the time of year when magical things can happen, so it didn’t take much of an imagination after seeing a blog posting by Rick Sherman with his letter to Santa to get me thinking about what I would ask for. So here it is.

Dear Santa, [Read more]

As 2008 draws to a close, it's time to look into the future and consider the top predictions for IT in 2009.  IDC have made their predictions and Neil Raden posted his 2009 warehouse predictions on Intelligent Enterprise.  As I find additional predictions I'll keep you updated.  In the meantime, here are a few of my own:

1. Data will take center stage as the most strategic focus for all CIO's.   As we continue to see the vast explosion of data volumes, the delivery of trusted data across the enterprise will be the number one focus for them.
2. Enterprises will evolve their computing architectures from the application-centric compuing model of the last 20 years to a more data-centric computing model.  As data takes center stage, companies will look at how they build new applications on their data model, instead of building an integration hairball between applications to try to control their data model.
3. Cloud computing will become mainstream within large enterprises as they look to lower capital expenditure and reduce operating costs.  Integration will be seen as the major enabler to the effective utilization of cloud computing, helping to avoid it becoming the biggest headache for CIO's through further fragmentation and inaccuracy.
4. Data virtualization will become a real benefit to CIOs in enabling the abstraction of data definitions used by applications.
5. Ongoing consolidation will take place across major industries as cash-rich companies use this economic turmoil to scale and survive. Data integration will be seen as the most significant integration competency to drive fast return on the consolidation process.
6. Regulations will increase as governments demand more transparency into the processes of financial companies around the world.  This will drive further investment in IT to deliver the required trusted data quickly and accurately for compliance.
7. All CIO's will look at driving down costs across their IT organizations and will look to their suppliers to enable their ability to deliver more capability, with greater oprational efficiency.  In essence, "do more with less".

I'd be interested in your views of these and what you think the top predications for 2009 will be.  Comment and let's keep a record for the year.

As I discussed in my last posting, ELT or pushdown optimization can significantly improve data warehousing performance, while reducing costs.  I also mentioned it’s important to implement a data integration platform that supports both traditional ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) and ELT (Extract-Load-Transform) methods, because different situations call for different methods.

Taking this thought a step further, metadata is the critical binding agent that should cut across all data integration approaches, be they ELT or ETL or some other combination such as ETLT.  If the actual transformation logic and business rules are defined as metadata, the choice of where the processing actually occurs, be it the ETL server or the database/data warehouse, becomes a matter of configuration rather than of coding.  A truly metadata-driven data integration platform enables you to design and reuse the same transformation rules, regardless of whether you choose ELT or ETL for data warehousing.  [Read more]

For years, the data warehousing space had been fairly steady and predictable. Data warehouses grew by terabytes over terabytes, addressing a critical need to collect and analyze data to discover patterns in customer behavior and other business trends. However, data warehouses have also been notoriously expensive and complex to implement in their early stages, requiring major corporate budget initiatives.

Now, revolutionary forces are aligning and reshaping the world of enterprise data warehousing as we know it. [Read more]

In recent years, there has been plenty of attention on the dual approaches of service oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) to help businesses realize greater agility. However, the data equation often gets lost amidst all the buzz and excitement over SOA and BPM. Process-driven data integration and the delivery of data services as part of SOA are critical to the success of these efforts.

On Tuesday, December 9th, Ash Parikh, Informatica's resident real-time data integration and SOA expert — and a blogger here at the Perspectives community — will be joining Madan Sheina, principal analyst within Ovum's Software Applications group, in a Webinar to discuss the urgency of data integration within emerging SOA and BPM environments. Beth Gold-Bernstein, my colleague at ebizQ, will moderate.

Click here to register for and access the Webinar, "Guaranteeing Agility in SOA and BPM with Process-Driven Data Integration."  (December 9, 12:00 Noon Eastern)

As Ash and Madan will explain, most SOA and BPM efforts have centered on dealing with the integration of application silos and automating business processes at the application layer. With data being the backbone of these applications and business processes, many enterprise architects end up struggling with a number of data-centric issues and equipped with the wrong tools for the job. For example, there are issues caused by the inability to access diverse and fragmented data, by integrating enterprise data only to find out after-the-fact that the data is inaccurate and inconsistent, and by dealing with enterprise information that is typically delivered at various latencies.

Ash and Madan will also discuss how to leverage process-driven data integration, and make information-as-a-service a reality. These are approaches that can guarantee agility by enabling SOA and BPM with the seamless delivery of accurate, consistent and timely information.

"Guaranteeing Agility in SOA and BPM with Process-Driven Data Integration"  (December 9, 12:00 Noon Eastern)

Data is FOUNDATIONAL to SOA! This seemed to be the main message at the recently concluded SOAWorld Conference & Expo in San Jose. I heard this message being articulated in various ways at the sessions, the power panels, on the expo floor as well as from other attendees.

But, the best articlulation of this message came from industry expert David Linthicum. I was lucky to get out of my customer meetings in time to make it to Dave’s keynote address. I tried to capture some of Dave’s thoughts and recommendations around how to win with SOA the first time:

• Understand that SOA is something you do and not BUY
• Begin with architecture and not the technology
• Focus on the business need and identify all the ROI aspects upfront
• ROI with SOA is very strategic - think a year, not one or two months
• Understand the information management requirements and architecture
• Figure out how to get a single definition of CUSTOMER, SALE or PRODUCT
• Bind the information into the processes you have

In response to a question I asked Dave during his keynote about how he saw information architectures play in the overall SOA picture, he said that "DATA IS ABSOLUTELY FOUNDATIONAL TO SOA." He went on to elaborate that if a company designs its SOA without thinking about its information architecture, the company will fail to reap the benefits of SOA. He also noted that the typical problem is that different teams own the traditional SOA pieces and data, making things even more difficult to architect and implement the SOA correctly the first time.

Based on the various customer interactions I have been having, I fully concur with Dave. As a customer recently shared with me, they wished that they had started their SOA journey with a solid information-centric foundation that used sophisticated data services to serve up timely and accurate information to the various components in their SOA.

What do you think? Did you attend the conference, and if so, what were your observations?

A few months back, Rick Sherman, whose insights also grace this blogsite, talked about the high failure rates companies reportedly see with data warehouse and business intelligence projects. Done properly, data warehouses and business intelligence projects can deliver many-fold advantages to the business, both tactically and strategically. However, for many companies, these efforts do not live up to their potential.

Rick said one of the greatest challenges to such projects is the high expectations set by vendors and systems integrators.  He urged that data and IT managers do their “due diligence” before a project commences, which includes understanding “what it will realistically take to deploy what the business wants and, above all, set the proper expectations.”

Understanding the role of the systems integrator is an important piece of this undertaking. [Read more]

There is an old project dilemma that suggests you can’t have it fast, good and cheap – you can only pick two.  That trade-off may be true for custom one-off solutions, but it’s not true for integration development if you approach it as a repeatable process.  In fact I’ve seen organizations reduce their cost by a factor of 10 (or 1/10th if you prefer), while also delivering integrations rapidly and with consistently high quality. The secret to achieving this amazing result is to focus on time. [Read more]

Informatica and Teradata have worked together over the years to develop unparalleled technology integration and customer success in Enterprise Data Warehousing. We share hundreds of large scale enterprise implementations together and enjoy market leadership positions in our respective markets and a vibrant partnership.

Our latest collaboration, the Teradata "Accelerate" program seeks to replicate our joint customer success for organizations that want to see rapid results from an all in one, incremental solution. This approach makes a lot of sense in the current economic times where spend on large scale projects is harder to justify.

"Accelerate" includes all the technology and jump start kit needed to build a data warehouse. Informatica fits into the picture as the provider of the Data Integration layer of the stack, notably the only vendor for that part of the solution along with an array of BI capabilities from other vendors.

If you’re embarking on a DW project, jump on board and “Accelerate” your way to results!