Informatica Perspectives

Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking to Informatica customers about cloud integration at the Informatica 9 World Tour events. In most of the cities, we’re hosting a Cloud Breakfast to dive in to what Gartner has listed as one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2010. Not surprisingly, interest has been widespread. Attendees include people in IT and line of business (LOB) roles; people with PowerCenter skills and long-time Informatica Cloud customers; CRM administrators and IT architects; sales and marketing operations; ISVs and quite a few consultants.

One thing that they all have in common is that they’re thinking about the opportunities and challenges that the shift to cloud computing represents. As one attendee put it, “we can either get on the train or get run over by it!”

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Loraine Lawson did a great job covering the topic of the integration challenges around the cloud and virtualization. She reports that “…a recent Internet Evolution column [by David Vellante] looks more broadly at the cloud integration question and concludes that insufficient integration is holding up both cloud computing and virtualization.”

In fact, what currently limits the number of cloud deployments is the lack of a clear understanding of data integration in the context of cloud computing. This is a rather easy problem to solve, but it’s often an afterthought.

The core issue is that cloud computing providers, other than Salesforce.com, don’t consider integration. Perhaps they are thinking, “If you use our cloud, then there is no reason to sync your data back to your enterprise. After all, we’re the final destination for your enterprise data, right?” Wrong. [Read more]

I am very fortunate to have a CIO role that extends beyond the traditional responsibilities of IT. Part of my role includes the strategy and implementation of the recently launched Informatica Marketplace.

The Informatica Marketplace has generated a lot of buzz with our customers and partners. Last week while I was presenting at the Pacific Crest Annual Cloud Computing Conference I heard the excitement about our new offering from many of the attendees. Mostly, people appreciated our continued thought leadership and commitment to providing an open platform to host solutions for data integration, data quality and data management. And yes, it is an open platform to host solutions that not only support Informatica, but other vendors too - even competitors. Our fundamental belief is that the hand of free enterprise will ultimately win, so we are willing to provide an open platform to do so.

Here are a few questions I've heard and answered over the last few weeks: [Read more]

Today Informatica announced that Bay & Bay Transportation has used Informatica Cloud Services to achieve a six month project payback on their total Salesforce.com investment and a 900 percent return on their critical data integration project.

Bay & Bay is using the turnkey, on-demand Informatica Cloud Services to provide robust, bi-directional synchronization between its logistics management databases and applications with Salesforce CRM. Using an intuitive web based integration wizard, the company automatically maps source and target fields, configures powerful data transformations, and sets automated synchronization schedules. And being a true multi-tenant cloud-based service, there is no hardware, software, or infrastructure for them to install, manage, or maintain.

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The only way for HealthDetail to hold or increase margins was to think differently. The company’s provider directory business supplies accurate and compliant healthcare directories for Medicaid and other health insurers. The problem was that the volume of data coming in and the breadth of different sources it was derived from threatened to overwhelm the existing database. HealthDetail could either invest in dedicated database administration resources, at great expense, or consider a more innovative solution: cloud-based data integration.

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No question about it, we face an information tsunami. And many organizations do not yet have a coherent strategy to deal with all the new data that is surging their enterprises. Worse yet, when applications fail or slow down, they attempt to fix the problem by throwing more hardware at it – rather than dealing with the root cause of the issue – too much data. Most organizations are only just beginning to take the necessary steps to address these challenges and keep massive amounts of data from overwhelming their enterprise applications.

As part of my work with Unisphere Research/Information Today Inc., I recently had the opportunity to team with Informatica's Application ILM team to develop and publish a survey that explored ILM awareness and implementations among 277 managers and professionals affiliated with the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG).  (Full survey report available for download here.) [Read more]

This is my first blog for Perspectives and I wanted to talk about one of last week's announcements -Informatica introduced the first ever cloud archiving service optimized for databases.   Since then, I've had a number of questions from customers and analysts about what exactly makes it optimized?   Certainly, a number of vendors have the ability to land data in the cloud, so how is this different?  Let me capture the highlights:

• The data is massively compressed before transmission-close to 60:1. That can take the upload time down from days or weeks to hours or minutes. No need to constantly mail DVDs to Amazon to get data on S3. [Read more]

Time and time again, technology is proving itself to be an enabler of both organizational and personal transformation. Initiatives such as service oriented architecture, cloud and pervasive analytics are opening up new possibilities and opportunities for growth.

More than anything, SOA, cloud and analytics are paving the way for the composite or loosely coupled company - which may be an entity that delivers solutions to customers via an aggregation of third-party services, provided on an on-demand basis to meet customer demands. Most of these services will be passed through as cloud-based services, both from within the enterprise and from outside.

The first phase of the Informatica Marketplace, which opens up a 52,000-member-strong community of buyers and sellers to share and leverage data integration solutions, is a great example of this emerging trend. [Read more]

This month’s Informatica Newsletter features an interview with Ron Papas, General Manager of the Informatica Cloud. He’s asked, “What should Informatica customers know about the Informatica Cloud?”

I thought his answer was worth sharing here:
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This week ChannelWeb announced their 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors. As they note:

“What makes these 100 cloud vendors collected here so cool isn't just the technology. These guys attack the cloud with a certain panache. A sort of swagger, if you will. They get the job done and they look good doing it.”

ChannelWeb divided the “Cool Cloud Computing Vendors" into five categories:

• 20 Coolest Cloud Platform Vendors
• 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Vendors
• 20 Coolest Cloud Productivity App Vendors
• 20 Coolest Cloud Storage Vendors
• 20 Coolest Cloud Security Vendors

Informatica was recognized as a Cool Cloud Infrastructure Vendor. Here’s what they had to say: [Read more]