Over the last six months, I have been fortunate to meet with dozens of senior technology and business executives from the top financial institutions across the globe to learn about their business needs, requirements, and technology investment to deal with the myriad of challenges facing the global financial markets from Dodd Frank, explosion of mobile payments, to big data.

The first thing I noticed regardless of country or language is how quickly the conversations around data have transitioned from the back offices of IT to the boardrooms and business lines across these firms over the last three years. Second, how data is recognized as a strategic asset for business success and like any valuable asset, the investments firms are hoping to ensure its quality, security and accessibility to those who need it most to comply with industry regulations, enable growth, accelerate value from ongoing mergers and acquisitions, reduce risk and lower business costs.

So what does this have to do with Informatica World 2012? Let me explain….

On May 15^th, Informatica will be gathering our customers and partners across the globe at the beautiful ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada including a number of our financial services customers who will be sharing how Informatica is helping address these critical business needs and help them “Maximize Return on Big Data” including:

• Banco Central Do Brasil: Significantly reduced IT costs by 20% with Informatica Data Virtualization
• BBVA Compass avoiding unwanted data breaches, defend their reputational risk, and ensuring client data privacy with Informatica Data Masking
• Charles Schwab showcasing tips and tricks using Informatica Data Integration to realize significant cost and time savings across IT and Data Management
• Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Maximizing value post-merger of three major exchanges while avoiding commodities and futures trading outages with Informatica Data Integration
• Fannie Mae: Leveraging Informatica for holistic data governance to comply with Dodd Frank and improve transparency with Informatica Data Quality
• Fidelity Investments: Enabling effective data governance for ongoing compliance with Informatica’s Metadata Management
• ING Groep N.V.: Improving business agility and time to market of new services with Informatica for real-time data integration
• PayPal: Taming the big data integration and processing challenges of today’s global payments industry
• PSA Insurance & JPD Financial : Maximizing the return on their salesforce.com investment with Informatica Cloud Integration
• U.S. Bank: Streamlining payment processing while reducing operational risk with Informatica B2B for SWIFT
• Zurich North America: Migrate and Integrate Financial Data after Mergers and Acquisitions with Informatica Data Integration and Master Data Management
• Square Two Financial accelerating legacy modernization investments for the 21^st century with Informatica Data Integration

Informatica World 2012 includes 90 breakout sessions scheduled throughout the event across 6 different tracks (Big Data, Platform & Products, Architecture, Best Practices, Tech Talk and Return on Data), keynote presentations from external experts and Informatica executives, over 2,500 hands-on labs with live demonstrations of all Informatica products including Informatica 9.5, our latest platform release, and a technology fair showcasing the latest and greatest from Informatica and our partners.

So if you have not registered for Informatica World 2012, click here to register today, Time is running out!  I look forward to seeing and meeting all of you in May!