Informatica Outlines SaaS Plans

Published: May 30, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Informatica unveiled plans for delivering its data movement and cleansing software as a service (SaaS) over the Internet at its user conference last week. The first stage is composed of a connector that allows its PowerCenter users to pull data from their Salesforce.com CRM implementations. The company plans to widen its SaaS stance over the next two stages, which will unfold over the next nine months.

It used to be that any self-respecting business kept a tight watch over its own applications and its own data. Just the thought of relying on a third-party to maintain the integrity and availability of its valuable customer information--to allow somebody else to run its servers!--was enough to send a CIO into an introspective funk.

Times have changed. Not only have many companies taken a "best of breed" approach toward their application and platform decisions, these companies also began to realize they could save a lot of money by outsourcing the "non-core" business processes that tend to not vary much from company to company--such as payroll and human resources--to third parties that specialized in those fields and could reap the benefits of scale.

The integration woes followed. At least with the best of breed approach, users still had their servers, and only needed tools, such as PowerCenter, to help them standardize and integrate their data across their various platforms and applications. But how do get your hands on that data when the software is delivered over the Web as a service? How do you get to the data when the software is hosted by a third-party, and all you basically have is an interface?

These are the problems companies like Informatica are struggling with. Make no mistake about it--problems like these keep companies like Informatica in business. And to hear Informatica tell it, there is an integration storm brewing on the horizon in the form of SaaS. But from the sound of, there's something to it.

"What's happening is that the initial problem of information fragmentation is going on steroids," says Ivan Chong, vice president of product marketing for the Redwood City, California, company. "It's getting much more complex. The information is outside of their firewall. . . We don't think a separate technology should solve it. On-premise data and off-premise data should be handled in the exact same way."

Because the data exists over the Internet, "You can't just do a flat file dump and then FTP it, because the protocols there are not allowing customers to do self service," Chong continues. "You need to know how it's organized, how recent it is." Sending that data over the Net also raises security concerns.

Informatica's solution to this problem is to give users a choice. They can continue to run PowerCenter on an in-house Unix, Linux, Windows, or mainframe server. (It still does not run on iSeries servers, although it does support iSeries as a data source and target.) And for organizations that are embarking on a SaaS strategy, they will soon have access to PowerCenter as a service, too.

Informatica's SaaS strategy has three components, and is actually the last stage of a larger three-part strategy Informatica launched over a year ago. The company executed its second stage in November; see "Informatica Aims to Virtualize Data with PowerCenter 8".

The first stage of part three is the delivery of a connector for Salesforce.com. Informatica chose Salesforce.com because of that company's success in selling access to CRM capabilities over the Web. Salesforce.com's customer base hit 20,500 in January, and has almost 400,000 subscribers, making it the leader in on-demand CRM. Informatica and Salesforce.com also have a number of mutual customers, including ADP, Cisco Systems, Sprint, Merrill Lynch, Staples, Kaiser Permanente, and SunTrust. That connector is available now.

The second and third stages of part three involves "Hercules," the code-name for Informatica's plan to have SaaS providers and other outsourcers integrate PowerCenter into their offerings, and to run PowerCenter in their data centers.

The second stage, due in the third quarter of 2006, calls for the release of Informatica On-Demand Platform version 1, which will provide additional connectivity to additional application-focused SaaS offerings. This product will be aimed at providing application-specific integration at the project level, as opposed to a general purpose integration layer, which is the goal of the final stage of Hercules.

The second stage, due in the third quarter of 2006, calls for the release of Informatica On-Demand Platform version 1, which will provide additional connectivity to additional application-focused SaaS offerings. This product will be aimed at providing application-specific integration at the project level, as opposed to a general purpose integration layer, which is the goal of the final stage of Hercules.

Informatica wants to make the process and experience of accessing PowerTerm's features the same whether users are running it themselves or whether they're accessing it from an on-demand provider. "The question is, Where does PowerCenter reside," Chong says. "You want to define your rules apart from where it works. So the same product that does on-premise does off-premise, too."

Delivering a common experience with SaaS and in-house products will give users flexibility, Chong gave. "Say a customer is working with a legacy CRM system on mainframe, and they're moving to Salesforce.com tomorrow. You don't want to force them to change their reports," he says. "[Customers] may not want the extra footprint. But they still want to do data cleansing, to be able to get rid of redundant data and bad addresses. So the software could sit on site, or it could be with the service provider."