Category Archives: SaaS
World’s Best Entry Level Data Integration Product Has Finally Arrived!
For those of you hanging out at Informatica World, this is not news. For those of you who aren’t in Vegas with us, you missed the unveiling of the world’s best entry level data integration platform. So you heard it here second, not first. Next time, if you want to hear about this kind of stuff first, you have to show up at Informatica World! <shameless plug for INFAWorld 2013 complete>
So, what is it that I am bragging about? PowerCenter Express, that’s what. This is the latest addition to the Informatica PowerCenter family of products, specifically designed for entry level data integration and data profiling. This product will be downloadable over the Internet and installs in as little as 5 minutes. It is super simple to use but has all of the rich transformation functionality you are used to from Informatica. Also, you don’t have to install a separate profiling product, everything is self-contained. The product comes with built in “cheat sheets” that walk you through how to use the product in a step by step fashion. In addition, there is complete documentation as well as video based tutorials.
But best of all, PC Express delivers the kind of product quality you are accustomed to from Informatica. What does that mean? It means that unlike most of the entry level data integration products available for download, PC Express just works. It doesn’t crash just because your ETL job requires more memory than you have on your machine, it gracefully caches to disk.
But wait, there’s more. For the first time ever, Informatica is offering a FREE version of our market leading PowerCenter product. There will be two versions of PowerCenter Express:
- PowerCenter Express Personal Edition – available for FREE for a single developer at a time
- PowerCenter Express Professional Edition- available for $8K/user per year subscription (at the time of this blog post)
And one last important point. PC Express is based on the same virtual data machine as our enterprise class products and our cloud based products. This means that at some later date, if you decide you need more scalability, more users, or enterprise class features like high availability, you can easily migrate from PC Express to the other Informatica data integration product lines.
So if you are at Informatica World, you will be receiving an email outlining how you can download and try out PowerCenter Express. If you aren’t at Informatica World, maybe you have a friend who will share the secret website location where you can get a sneak peak at PowerCenter Express. If you don’t have any friends who went to Informatica world, well, you will just have to wait until the download site goes public in July. And next time you will know that you better go to Informatica World if you want to get early access to cool stuff.
Hybrid IT and the Latest Informatica Cloud Release
In a recent Information Management blog post, Alex Bakker from Saugatuck Technology noted:
“There is an underlying problem facing many, if not most enterprise IT leaders and organizations: these technologies [Cloud, Mobile, Social, Analytics and Integration] have developed much faster than enterprise IT groups and practices have been able to adopt and manage them.”
Sound familiar? Gartner (and others) have referred to the new reality of enterprise IT as Hybrid IT. At Informatica World next month, we have an entire track on this topic.
The good news is a topic that was once considered the “Achilles heel of cloud computing” is increasingly being recognized as the key enabler of cloud success: integration and data management. With that in mind, Informatica rolled out our Summer 2013 release this week. Here are some highlights and useful resources. (more…)
Five Ways You Can Extend PowerCenter with Informatica Cloud – Part 2
In Ashwin Viswanath’s previous video blog, he spoke about why it is important to have a cloud integration solution that has purpose-built integration applications. In this video, he delves deeper into the security aspects of cloud integration and how to rapidly provision integration environments for distributed business units, subsidiaries and departments in a quick and efficient manner.
Five Ways You Can Extend PowerCenter with Informatica Cloud – Part 1
In Ashwin Viswanath’s previous blog post, SaaS Data Integration for SaaS Applications, he explained how SaaS applications are much more dynamic than on-premises business applications with new fields and objects added with just a few clicks. This same agility is required when it comes to integrating SaaS applications, which is why it is important to have a hybrid IT strategy for your data integration architecture. Informatica PowerCenter together with Informatica Cloud can help you get started with such a strategy.
More Evidence that Cloud Computing is Changing Data Integration
In a recent Sand Hill article, Jeff Kaplan, the managing director of THINKstrategies, reports on the recent and changing state of data integration with the addition of cloud computing. “One of the ongoing challenges that continues to frustrate businesses of all sizes is data integration, and that issue has only become more complicated with the advent of the cloud. And, in the brave new world of the cloud, data integration must morph into a broader set of data management capabilities to satisfy the escalating needs of today’s business.” (more…)
Announcing Informatica Cloud Spring 2013
On Wednesday we announced our latest cloud integration release – Informatica Cloud Spring 2013. It’s a major step forward in terms of breadth and depth for our software as a service (SaaS) solution. Why, you ask?
- Didn’t all of our cloud integration customers get upgraded to the Winter release in November?
- Didn’t we just broaden into cloud-based master data management (MDM)?
- Don’t we have 3-4 releases per year?
Well, yes…but…there are a few aspects to today’s announcement that I think are particularly noteworthy. Here’s a summary.
Why Your SaaS Applications Also Need Archiving
Just like your on-premise database applications like E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and custom applications, SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Oracle CRM On Demand, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Eloqua and others will experience large data growth causing performance issues and increasing costs.
As data grows in your SaaS applications, the performance of accessing transactions and reporting will degrade. Your SaaS vendors will also require more time, effort, and cost to maintain and manage this data. Backups, upgrades and replication of these environments will take longer and application availability will be impacted due to longer maintenance windows. Your SaaS application vendors will require more storage to house the additional data and this cost will be passed on to you. (more…)
SaaS Data Integration for SaaS Applications
It’s no secret that software as a service (SaaS) applications like Salesforce CRM, Eloqua, Workday, NetSuite and Concur, to name a few, often get their start in the enterprise through individual departments, divisions and subsidiaries. Known for their rapid deployment times, frequent feature releases with API updates and end-user ease of use, SaaS applications are typically much more dynamic than on-premise business applications. New fields and objects can be added with a few clicks by line-of-business administrators, analysts and operational roles. So when it comes to data integration, waiting for IT to redevelop and deploy mappings every time there is a metadata change typically doesn’t meet the expectations of business users and application owners, who are used to greater speed and agility in the cloud.
Ballooning Data Sets Cause Application Performance Problems
According to a 2011 Ovum survey, 85% of respondents cited ballooning data sets as the cause of application performance problems. Many IT organizations fell short in 2012 letting unmanaged data growth impact the business. This year, Informatica is witnessing a surge of interest in Enterprise Data Archive solutions. This interest is being created because executives want to invest in innovative technologies for real-time and operational analytics. Yet, with little to no IT budget increase, IT leaders are getting creative.
Businesses are moving from on premises applications to Software as a Service (SaaS) freeing up time and resources – yet the legacy application being replaced all too often stays in the data center consuming costly resources. IT leaders are recognizing the quick win of retiring legacy applications. An application retirement strategy supports data center consolidation and application modernization initiatives – while ensuring data is retained to meet regulatory compliance and business needs. Significant cost savings are realized because mainframe systems can be turned off, maintenance costs go away. With this new source of revenue, executives can fund their analytics projects and drive competitive operations. (more…)
Salesforce.com Recognizes Informatica for Cloud Data Integration
This week we got the news that for the fifth year in a row, Informatica Cloud has won the 2012 Salesforce.com AppExchange Customer Choice Award. Informatica Cloud Integration for Salesforce was recognized as the winner in the very crowded IT and Administration category, which includes administration and IT, data cleansing, integration, IT management and other applications.These awards are based on the number and quality of customer reviews on the AppExchange. (more…)
Loading ...