Last week we completed the acquisition of Siperian – the proven leader in multi-domain MDM. This is our fourth acquisition in the last 12 months and potentially the single most important acquisition that Informatica has ever done since moving beyond ETL with the acquisition of Similarity Systems in 2006. You can read the press release about Siperian here, and watch a video of my colleague Ivan Chong, General Manager of our Data Quality Business Unit, here.
There has also been a lot of talk about the acquisition in the last few days – such as the commentary from Forrester research analyst Rob Karel, Ventana Research analyst Mark Smith, or Lorraine Lawson over at ITBusinessEdge. However, I wanted to give my perspective on why I believe this is important to you, our customers:
It is often said that the most pressing need for companies these days as it relates to their data is the ability to “master their data”. Most Master Data Management products focus on one domain (customer information) or another (product information). But business problems are not one-dimensional – they are multi-dimensional which is why multidomain MDM is so important and valuable. It’s about understanding and harnessing the relationships across these items. That’s what gives you unprecedented control and insight!
You really have two choices when it comes to MDM technology: you can take an application vendors fixed data model and try to adapt your business to it OR go with a flexible, modular approach that adapts to your business. If you’ve been an Informatica customer, you are familiar with the latter and the benefits you get. You have always been able to start with our Platform on a small, discrete project and then scale up to meet your growing business needs. If you needed to add functionality, such as data quality or incorporate unstructured data, you could do that without rewriting or re-architecting your deployments. You could change easily and economically. Siperian has been providing customers this choice as well. So the Informatica Siperian MDM offering will be no different!
Whether you are considering Siperian for your MDM project (if not, call me!) or are already using Siperian, you can have the utmost confidence in the technology and its future. Siperian MDM is built on Informatica’s Identity Resolution technology (so you have always been an Informatica customer). Many of you are already joint customers and use Informatica’s Platform for your data integration and data quality needs. Siperian’s closest partners are also Informatica’s closest partners. What this means to you is easily extendable technology, that is already proven to work together which can be supported by a broad and experienced community.
Also, it has never been more clear how you benefit from our neutrality. Master Data Management implies managing data from different systems, multidomain MDM even more so. Providing you the ability to integrate all your data from any source and any location (even the cloud) is what Informatica does. You choose how much you want to deploy, what systems you want to integrate and expand as your business demands … that is how IT can give your company a competitive edge!.
In the coming months, we will be holding a number of web events to inform you of this great offering. We will also be talking about the Siperian MDM solutions at our forthcoming 50 city world tour – we’re coming to a city near you so please do join us and find out more about Informatica solutions. You can find details of our first webinar here, and our World Tour of Informatica Days here.
Join us and consider three ways how our latest product addition can help you and your company gain a competitive edge!
We’re looking forward to working with you!
