Informatica Perspectives

In my last post, I talked about the enterprise integration challenges that still challenge enterprises, even if they have moved processes to cloud computing or Software as a Service providers.

Will integration issues dampen the enthusiasm around cloud computing? What's the role of data environments in these new scenarios? To address these questions, I recently had the opportunity to speak with Chris Boorman, chief marketing officer with Informatica, and Ron Papas, senior vice president and general manager for Informatica On Demand, about the enterprise data management implications of this growing trend. (Chris also recently posted some of his observations here.)

"We believe that we are seeing a platform shift taking place," Chris said in our discussion, noting that cloud computing is quickly becoming an accepted way of deploying and using applications across enterprises of all types and sizes. However, he adds, "On-demand computing cannot succeed in the enterprise without data integration."

As cloud computing engagements increase in sophistication and edge ever closer to the mission-critical core of the enterprise, recognition is growing that there are enterprise data management issues that still need to be worked out. "Our belief is that cloud computing or on-demand computing is simply a way of further fragmenting data, because customers are absolving themselves from responsibility for the management, storage, security, and backup and recovery of the availability of that data," Chris pointed out. However, he emphasized, "you must never, ever, absolve responsibility for the quality and the ownership of the data, and having such quality and ownership as part of your core business processes. And that requires integration."

One of the challenges with cloud computing is that applications and services are now easily accessible to business end-users, who can acquire these capabilities without input from their IT or data management teams. This inevitably requires integration work after the fact, particularly as cloud applications move closer to mission-critical needs. "In the case of CRM, such as that offered by Salesforce.com, data integration is a must-have, it turns out," said Ron Papas. "All these CRM applications are front-end or customer facing, whether it's a marketing application, sales system, or call center."

Ron added that "just like any other application, you can't really be a silo or an island out there by yourself. For you to really gain the benefit, you really need to integrate that application with the other systems that you have."

The handling of data by third parties is also a source of concern for enterprises. Cloud computing may even complicate issues around data integration and data security. For example, there may be issues in relying on outside providers to manage or store enterprise data. A provider may have a major network outage, go out of business, or decide to change its business model. The cloud provider may even be using another cloud provider to store or process data.

Ron said data replication is essential as companies move to cloud computing environments. As he notes: "your data is in the cloud, and certainly you need to provide a copy, sometimes for compliance reasons and sometimes some companies don't feel comfortable that the data is being managed by someone else so they want a local copy at all times, refreshed. So data replication is the perfect use case for that problem.

At the recent InformaticaWorld conference in June, Informatica unveiled a set of offerings as part of Informatica version 8.6 that address cloud computing requirements, including data quality, data replication, and integration. Informatica also announced a cloud-based integration service, Informatica On Demand Data Loader, and at the conference, demonstrated live integration between applications and data from Salesforce.com with Google Apps Spreadsheet.