I noted in a 2006 blog post that, “in many organizations getting access to information locked away in the data warehouse is still considered to be “in demand” not on demand.” Four years later, the terminology has changed, and adoption of cloud applications and platforms like Salesforce CRM and Force.com has skyrocketed, but for many developers the same challenge persists. Gaining access to corporate databases to build mobile, social or even analytical applications is next to impossible. And if access is granted, too much time and resources are required to implement, manage and maintain software and hardware infrastructure, instead of building innovative applications. That’s what’s so exciting about today’s Database.com announcement.

As Marc Benioff notes in this TechCrunch article: “We see cloud databases as a massive market opportunity that will power the shift to real-time enterprise applications that are natively cloud, mobile and social.”

Fantastic!

Now what if there was a way to easily migrate your current databases to this mulitentent database in the sky? That’s where Informatica Cloud comes in. Today more than 1000 companies, large enterprises to SMBs, rely on Informatica Cloud to integrate over 10 billion records a month between cloud and on-premise applications. Our goal is to make it easy for organizations to migrate to Salesforce CRM and Force.com and then synchronize their cloud data with other systems. This ensures that Salesforce is integrated tightly with their business processes and ultimately ensures that organizations get the most value from all of their business applications and platforms.

Many companies rely on Informatica to deliver real-time integration between Salesforce and back office systems such as Oracle or SAP. Replicating cloud-based data with on-premise data warehouses is also a very common use case for Informatica Cloud.  Today, we announced that we are extending Informatica Cloud to make it even easier to migrate any legacy database – the schema AND the data – to the cloud, with Database.com.  And the best part is you can do this without setting up any new hardware or software – or even writing any code.

For those of you at Dreamforce 2010, Informatica will be demonstrating the ease with which data can be replicated automatically from an on-premise Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases to Database.com with Informatica Cloud. On Wednesday December 8 at 3:15pm in the Database.com First Look session (room West 2001), we will show the demo of this new cloud integration capability. We’ll also be running the demo today at Informatica’s booth #500 of the partner expo. Stay tuned for the recording for those of you not attending the conference.

As Juan Carlos Soto,  senior vice president and general manager, Cloud and B2B, put it in Informatica’s supporting announcement for Database.com:

At Informatica, we’re excited about Database.com and we want to make it as easy as possible for developers to take advantage of it.