Informatica Perspectives

While the market is showing signs of recovery from the "Great Recession" most state budgets have been feeling the squeeze from the lag in recovery. In a recent article titled The Sorry State of Finances, Liam Denning explained that, "55% of state revenue, before federal transfers, comes from personal and corporate income tax." Denning also stated that, "the first three quarters of 2009 were the worst for state tax since at least 1963."

There is an apparent lag between recovery in the private sector and a state receiving tax revenue. So what can states do about this problem while they suffer in the red? Mr. Denning said, "Since states can't run general funding deficits, closing gaps mean raising taxes, cutting services and resorting to one-time measures." Mr. Denning's list of solutions is certainly accurate, but does it include all options that states have? What about employing new technology to discover fraud or recover uncollected revenue? [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]

It’s not that often that I see such a great article on SOA. Most of the time these types of articles are full of theory or are written by software vendors pushing their own solutions.
It makes much more sense to read from an experienced hands-on expert, as they share their SOA journey. In fact, take a look at William El Kaim’s extensive article entitled MySOA: Agile, Governed and Sustainable. [Read more]

Lately, we've had a great deal of discussion here at the Perspectives community over the emerging role of data services within a service-oriented architecture (SOA) context.

At the end of October 2009, I had the honor of joining a group of thought leaders and industry experts at the SOA Symposium in Rotterdam to sit down and worked to clear the air, once and for all, as to what it means to service-orient a system, and arrive at a consensus as to what SOA should mean to organizations. The result was a document called the "SOA Manifesto". [Read more]

Is data architect a role that's interchangeable with enterprise architect? Many observers see the two roles are overlapping to some degree. However, perhaps it’s time that data architecture be recognized for having a distinct role in today's enterprises.

With the rise of service oriented architecture and distributed computing, enterprise architects have been emerging as key players in their organizations – assuring that applications and systems are designed within a coherent framework and follow a roadmap designed with the business in mind. Now, the same discipline needs to apply to an enterprise's data resources. [Read more]

The year 2009 – and the first decade of the 21st century – is drawing to a close, and what a time it's been.

The economy was buffeted around by the financial crisis, companies tightened their spending, and cuts hit hard and fast. But there has also been a deepening realization that the secret to success in this new environment wasn't to batten down the hatches and cut away, but rather, to run businesses smarter. More companies learned that to forge ahead, they needed to better leverage both their human and technology resources – employing smarter data strategies, including business intelligence and analytics.

The year ahead promises more of the same. Here are some up-and-coming trends that will shape the data management space in the year 2010: [Read more]

It is that time of the year again. A tough year comes to a close and we all look forward to the coming year with varying degrees of anticipation. What will the new year bring? Before I comment on various predictions, I wanted first to say that I hope 2010 brings you happiness and prosperity. I hope you get what you want and I send good wishes to all - whether friend or competitor! In terms of business and technology, I believe that 2010 is going to be another challenging year. However, there are several trends that I believe will assert themselves strongly in the enterprise. So, here goes with my 2010 predictions:

1. The Data Driven Enterprise becomes a reality in 2010. Significant change will start occurring as enterprises recognize the value of data and the negative impact on business success coming from decades of Application-centric lock-in. CIO's will turn to architects to remove the IT hairball that threatens their tenure. This IT hairball (a mismash of various application integration technologies) will bring down at least one large enterprise due to operational failure propagating across application integrations. [Read more]

I am a technology opportunist. I stay away from unproven segments when they are overhyped with no sustainable business model, or too amorphous with definitions and segmentations debated at every turn. But I like to get in early enough so that we have the opportunity to reshape and redefine the requirements to lead the segment. So I made a point to visit the Dreamforce Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco this year to hear directly from the customers and partners to assess the maturity of cloud computing. The timing was good as Informatica had just released Informatica Cloud 9 (Learn more about the Informatica Cloud Platform).

At the show, I had a chance to catch up with John Bair, CTO of Launchpoint. Launchpoint offers cloud-based information management services. [Read more]

On November 10, Informatica made history with the launch of Informatica 9. In my mind, being a SOA enthusiast, another equally significant event transpired – the birth of SOA-based Data Services – transformational SOA data integration that can revive your enterprise architecture.

So, what exactly are SOA-based Data Services and why am I so excited?

[Read more]

For those of you who have been following my blog for some time, you no doubt remember the May article on THE NEXT BIG THING and the 10 Weeks to Lean Integration series. You also hopefully recall the discussions about the Integration Factory being the dominant integration platform technology for the next decade. While elements of the factory capability have been around for years, the Informatica 9 platform now offers the ability to build high-speed, efficient, “green” integrations with seamless collaboration between Business and IT. [Read more]