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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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.

[Read more]

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.

[Read more]

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]

This week we announced that salesforce.com customers have once again recognized Informatica Cloud Services with the Data Integration AppExchange Best of '09 Award. It’s a tremendous honor to win this award as it is 100% driven by customer reviews. According to the salesforce.com Community site:

“The Best of '09 Customer Choice Awards are given to partners based on exceptional user reviews posted to the AppExchange during 2009; and, are a special way for the community to recognize partners for their ongoing commitment to driving customer success.”

There are two fundamental drivers for the growing adoption of cloud integration services:

1. Growing adoption of cloud-based applications and platforms like Salesforce CRM and Force.com are leading to an even greater data fragmentation challenges in companies of all sizes.
2. Departmental, line of business purchases and implementations of software as a service (SaaS) applications have led to a need for easy to use, self-service integration solutions that non-technical users can manage, while IT organizations remain in control. (See the post on Avoiding a Cloud Data Disaster if this sounds familiar.) [Read more]

In his whitepaper, Best Practices in Leveraging a Staging Area for SaaS-to-Enterprise Integration, David Linthicum outlines the difference between direct, point-to-point data integration and staging integration. He defines them as follows:

• Direct: “Moving information from one data source and data schema to another, and translating the differences in semantics from the source to the target system.”
• Staged: “A temporary location where the data from the source system or systems is replicated in order to support more complex and valuable data integration operations, including support for many large data sets and data operations that are more complex and of higher value.” [Read more]

According to the New IDC IT Cloud Services Survey:  Top Benefits and Challenges, integration with in-house IT remains a top 10 challenge. Informatica’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Boorman went further in his 2010 Predictions From The World Of Data Integration. He notes in his third prediction that:  “Cloud Data Integration will eclipse both security and availability to be the defining capability that drives Cloud Computing success."

Because ‘tis the season, here are 5 more cloud integration predictions for 2010:

1. Greater SaaS application adoption and the emergence of more cloud platforms will result in greater data fragmentation and the need for an independent, enterprise-strength data integration and data quality platform as a service and a marketplace for prepackaged integration services. [Read more]

On the 1^st October 2009, I participated in a webinar “The Right Way to Do Data Integration for Applications,” hosted by David S. Linthicum, a recognized expert in SOA, Cloud computing and Enterprise Application Integration. It was an event that was very well attended and generated a lot of interest from the attendees judging by the large number and quality of questions that were submitted. I recommend that you listen to the replay and download the associated white paper he wrote on that subject.

David covered some of the limitations he has encountered over the years with the way Enterprise Integration Application (EAI) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technologies deal with the integration of data, deployed in a SOA initiative. [Read more]