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Collaboration, data quality and data services functionality move Informatica beyond its batch-oriented roots
By Doug Henschen, Intelligent Enterprise, November 18, 2009, 1230 hrs
If you define yourself as "the data integration company," as Informatica has, you'd better be prepared to morph along with the category and customer expectations. With Informatica 9, a major new release announced recently, the vendor is stating that it's staying ahead of the technology curve with new collaboration, data quality and services-oriented architecture (SOA) capabilities. But for a release described as "the most important in the company's history," Informatica 9 doesn't press all the hot buttons in the data management market, demonstrating once again the company's habit of holding its cards close to the vest.
To better support business-IT collaboration, Informatica 9 introduces new browser-based analyst tools, auto-specification capabilities and a common metadata repository that lets analyst and developers share specifications and implementation assets. The idea is to eliminate the delays and miscommunications inherent in data integration projects when business and IT project leaders attempt to communicate though e-mail messages, spreadsheets and meetings.
"Informatica 9 helps business managers, analysts and IT to work together more effectively through shared metadata," says Judy Ko, Informatica's VP of product marketing. "The tools are designed and purpose-built for each type of user, but they share common data rules and data profiles, so there's no loss of information as they work together on integration projects."
To make data quality a "pervasive" endeavor, Informatica 9 taps the new collaboration capabilities to deliver browser-based tools that empower people outside of IT to play a role in data quality assurance. Here again, business managers, businesses analysts and IT types get their own, role-based data quality scorecards and tools that let them measure and proactively manage data quality.
Informatica is not alone in developing data stewardship, data quality and data profiling tools for people outside of IT, but most vendors have a long way to go to make data quality a core business competency, says Forrester data integration analyst Rob Karel.
"What all of these vendors are missing is that data governance is not a technology problem," Karel says, pointing to the need for supporting business processes. "Informatica has done a good job with this release, but if they truly want to create a collaborative workflow across business and IT, they'll have to go beyond sharing views and add approval workflows, escalation and other process capabilities."
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