The speed of innovation is accelerating as the state of mind and culture of technology users and vendors are shifting toward openness and collaboration. Dr. Eric Von Hippel from Massachusetts Institute of Technology put it this way in “Democratizing Innovation”:
“When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services—both firms and individual consumers—are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents.”
Informatica has a 45,000+ member-strong developer network called Informatica TechNet. We also have a vibrant local user group community around the world. Both online and through local live events, the Informatica developer community actively exchanges best practices, knowledge and technical tips. We are also in touch with our customers who enlighten us regarding their innovative use of our products and offer us suggestions on product directions that they’d like to see. So, it was welcome news for us to hear about Teradata Developer Exchange launch. After all, Teradata and Informatica have a large installed base of joint customers across Enterprise Data Warehousing and Data Integration that support successful data warehousing. When I meet one of these joint customers, in many cases, the first thing that comes out of his or her mouth is, “can you introduce me to other customers using Informatica and Teradata who are doing something amazing?”
Our innovative communities are becoming more and more used to sharing their foundational knowledge with others. Across industries, our users discuss connecting data warehouses with portals and web sites, leveraging Web services by campaign management, optimizing real-time performance including real-time data loading, and managing data quality. We encourage you to check out both communities, Informatica TechNet and Teradata Developer Exchange and find out for yourself how you can benefit from networking and learning from peers, partners and colleagues. Better yet, you can participate in the discussion groups and/or launch a new community of interest – you are the force of democratizing innovation.
