Informatica On Demand

Posted by Todd Funasaki in: Informatica On Demand > Integration

Informatica's annual user conference was held in Orlando, Florida last week. Several sessions highlighted our on-demand strategy. Sohaib Abbasi, Informatica's CEO, demonstrated the Informatica On Demand hosted data integration service during his keynote session. He also talked about our on-going strategy for on-demand data integration.

Girish Pancha, Informatica's EVP of Products discussed the company's long-term product roadmap. He showed the roadmap for our on-demand products and services and highlighted that fact that the on-demand delivery model allows us to deliver products in shorter release cycles.

James Markarian, Informatica's CTO, gave a very compelling keynote presentation about how macro-economic and societal trends affect the market for technology solutions. He gave a preview of how Informatica's products will leverage the innovation developed in on-demand services, including the ease of use aspects of the browser interface.

I moderated a panel discussion about on-demand business intelligence. The audience, consisting of implementation partners and Informatica users responsible for delivering enterprise data integration and data warehousing projects, came to catch a glimpse of their likely future and determine for themselves if the state of on-demand analytics is based more on BI or BS.

The panelists included Mike MacDonald, CEO of Visual Mining, David Weld, CEO of Seatab and Paul Doscher, CEO of Jaspersoft. The session included a lively discussion about how these CEO’s are using the SaaS model to deliver business intelligence solutions to their customers. Here are a couple of highlights:

1. On-Demand vs. On-premise: Complimentary, not Competitive

All three of the companies offer on-premise and on-demand versions of their platform. They also provide business intelligence solutions that allow their customers to analyze data that is created and managed in both on-premise and on-demand applications. Their customers are realizing the benefits of the on-demand model and they are responding with innovative solutions.

2. Business Intelligence Requires A Solid Data Integration Foundation
I started off the session by describing Informatica’s On Demand vision of delivering data integration services as a service. Mike Macdonald made the point (see diagram below) that VisualMining’s service needs a data integration platform like Informatica On Demand to deliver the data from the source systems to their platform.

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Posted by Todd Funasaki at 01:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by John Hegstrom in: Informatica On Demand > Integration

I recently read an article “Is the Mainstream Ready for SaaS?” published in IT-Director.com. I believe that the advantages of SaaS provide some real advantages for mainstream IT departments.

It's clear that IT departments are increasingly under pressure to reduce costs. A large percentage of IT budget goes to operations and maintenance of hardware, software, and infrastructure. As the cost of supporting infrastructure increases faster than the overall IT budget there is less money to spend on new applications and features.

SaaS providers operate their software in their own data centers. They manage the hardware, software, and infrastructure. Customers don't need to be concerned with upgrading software, doing tape backups, server monitoring, hardware maintenance, or other low-level tasks. This allows the IT staff to spend more of their time on value-add activities, such as business process design, end user enablement, and business intelligence.

I agree with the statement in the article about businesses wanting access to applications wherever they are located. Enlightened IT departments will embrace SaaS because it allows them to spend less time and money on IT infrastructure support and more time and money on value-add business services. They will also welcome data and business process integration, allowing their companies to gain a strategic advantage from their data, regardless of whether it resides inside or outside their firewall.

By adopting SaaS, customers are finding new challenges to making the most of their data. It’s up to the software vendors to understand those challenges and make the solutions attractive, affordable, and credible.

Posted by John Hegstrom at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)