Integration Platform as a Service Announced

Image via CrunchBase

Last week Informatica Cloud Summer 2012 was announced. The company’s award-winning multi-tenant integration service now processes more than 1 billion cloud integration transactions per day and this release introduces a Cloud Connector Toolkit and Cloud Integration Templates that will be be available in a new Developer Edition.

Gartner analyst Yefim Natis has this to say about the growing significance of integration platform as a service (iPaaS):

“Gartner expects iPaaS adoption to grow significantly during the next five years. Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) can provide a foundation for hybrid cloud computing, engaging old and new applications and data, on-premises and in the cloud. iPaaS is a key component of any comprehensive cloud application infrastructure offering and an essential requirement for future leadership in PaaS markets by any vendor.”

You can read more about the Informatica Cloud integration platform as a service (iPaaS) components on the Perspectives blog and read some of the coverage here. I’ve also embedded the webinar we delivered on the release below:

 

Related articles

• Informatica adds developer edition to cloud data-integration platform (techworld.com.au)
• Informatica Upgrades Its iPaaS (web2.sys-con.com)
• Informatica Upgrades Its iPaaS (sys-con.com)
• Informatica Launches Cloud Development Edition (devx.com)
• First Look at Informatica’s Cloud Data Integration Apps Store (readwriteweb.com)

5 Requirements for a Big Data Integration Platform

Two articles caught my attention today – and not surprisingly both had to do with Big Data and Cloud Computing.

Microsoft’s, Google’s big data plans give IT an edge – an interesting take on Google vs. Microsoft with good details on both. Note the recent stat from Gartner in the intro: “By 2015, companies that have adopted big data and extreme information management will begin to outperform unprepared competitors by 20% in every available financial metric.”

Sounds like Information Management has gone Extreme. Very exciting!

The other article comes from Loraine Lawson, who recently interviewed the always quotable James Markarian from Informatica: Big Data Platform Should Support Data Exploration. He outlines five key requirememts for a Big Data Integration Platform:

1. Integration from a variety (there’s that word again!) of sources, from mainframes to messaging systems.
2. Data quality and data governance.
3. Text analytics and sentiment analysis.
4. Support for R.
5. A new attitude about analysis and design schemas.

You can read the entire interview here.

Here’s another interview with James, if you want more on the Big Data Integration topic:

Related articles

• Informatica Adds Support for ‘big Data,’ Hadoop (pcworld.com)
• Why Big Data Is Such a Big Deal (fool.com)
• Solving big data for big business (gigaom.com)
• Big Data: Informatica Tackles The High-Velocity Problem (informationweek.com)

Mock Gartner Quads and a Salesforce.com Movie

Strangely, my 2 year old slept in this morning so I fired up Twitter and immediately clicked through to these two posts – both equally funny and scary to think about at the same time.

1. Enterprise Irregulars: Variations on Hype Quadrants.. no Magic Hype… no, Hype Cycle.. or is it Magic Quadrant?
2. BusinessCloud9: Hollywood Plans Salesforce.com The Movie

Ok, my son is now up but I don’t think either of these need much commentary. Good stuff!

Enjoy your weekend.

Related Articles

• Variations on Hype Quadrants.. no Magic Hype… no, Hype Cycle.. or is it Magic Quadrant? (cloudave.com)
• Gartner Explains the Process for Creating a Magic Quadrant (readwriteweb.com)
• Unhyping Gartner’s Hype Cycle, Part 2. (cloudave.com)

Gartner: Data Warehousing at an Inflection Point

A few weeks ago at Informatica‘s annual industry analyst summit, one my favorite tweets was: “Who would have thought that 10 years later data warehousing would still be interesting?”

Well, today Gartner put out the following press release:  Gartner Says Data Warehousing Reaching Its Most Significant Inflection Point Since Its Inception. While there was surprisingly no mention of the impact of cloud computing, the release does make an important point about the shift in the balance of power from database management vendors to data integration vendors:

“Analysts maintain that there is a real opportunity for data integration tools vendors to challenge the database management system (DBMS) vendors as the primary data management architecture, and the DBMS vendors should not underestimate this potential competition.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “The State of Data Warehousing in 2011.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1533217.

Related Articles

• Gartner Ranks Data Warehousing Leaders (informationweek.com)
• Mega-trends driving data warehousing and business intelligence (dbms2.com)
• Innovation Transforms Data Warehousing (informationweek.com)

Gartner Integration, B2B and Cloud Services Brokerage Predictions

Gartner’s Benoit Lheureux has posted two Strategic Planning Assumption Predictions for Integration, B2B and Cloud Services Brokerage on his blog:

• By 2014, the CSB vendor landscape will have grown from dozens to hundreds of providers.
• By 2015, 50% of “Integration as a Service” (IaaS) will be consumed as an embedded feature of other IT offerings.

While I think that the IaaS acronym is accepted by most to mean Infrastructure as a Service (Public and Private Cloud), I do agree with the embedded nature of cloud integration. D&B360 is a great example. I like how Tom Carlock puts it in this Informatica Cloud video:

Related Articles

• Gartner’s “Creative” Cloud Magic Quadrant – On Analysts, Cogitation and Vested Interests (diversity.net.nz)
• Gartner Forecasts 16% Increase In Enterprise SaaS Revenue During 2011 (cloudave.com)

You Can’t Put the Cloud Horse Back in the Barn

Thanks to my friend @rssanborn for tweeting this 2015 Cloud Checklist:

1. Accept that many cloud providers already are better at security than you are.
2. Private clouds should not be your end game.
3. Know how to structure contracts.
4. Understand the workloads you’re supporting.
5. Seek coordination (not control) of cloud resources.

#5 in particular caught my attention. It speaks to some of the issues I’ve written about in this post about cloud politics and the role of data integration. I like how the author of the CIO Insight post, Tony Contzer, puts it:

“Those who try to put the kibosh on a business unit’s rogue adoption of cloud services are on the same fruitless path as the CIOs who fought Web browsers and voice over IP.”

The article features a few choice quotes from Gartner‘s Daryl Plummer (see his video interview in this post). He notes:

“Business units are not going to let you take back control. You can’t put the horse back in the barn.”

I was recently interviewed by Leigh Dow at ITToolbox and put it this way:

“With the SaaS model, the business can just go get software, do a trial with a credit card and start adopting and managing SaaS applications autonomously.  What often happens is a spiral of tools manifest in the company and at some point you get “SaaS sprawl.”  No different than what we saw in BI in the Data Warehousing space when data marts popped up and at some point they needed to be consolidated.  It is becoming a huge problem for IT. One customer told me, “we need to get on this cloud train or get run over by it”. Being the “department of no” isn’t an option.“

Related Articles

• ‘Go to’ clouds of the future, part 2 (news.cnet.com)
• Whose data is it anyway? (go.theregister.com)
• Gartner Forecasts 16% Increase In Enterprise SaaS Revenue During 2011 (cloudave.com)

The Role of IT in 2011: Just Saying No is Not an Option

I’ve been working on my 2011 cloud integration predictions and came across this fantastic interview on the Salesforce blog between John Taschek and Gartner’s Daryl Plummer. The provocative post is called, “IT: Become Relevant or Die.” Here’s the interview…be sure to have pen and paper ready for note taking (yes, I’m old school).

 

Related Articles

• Finally! The CRM 2011 Watchlist Part I (enterpriseirregulars.com)
• Debating failure and the cloud (enterpriseirregulars.com)
• Dreamforce 2010: Excitement, Kool-Aid, iPad (customerthink.com)

Gartner on the 3 Primary Drivers for SaaS

I enjoyed this video from Gartner analyst Robert Desisto on the 3 Primary Reasons Companies Look at SaaS.

Cloud, SaaS Fueling IT Spending Growth

On the one hand, there has never been more hype around cloud computing. On the other hand, according to recent forecasts released by Gartner:

“Cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technologies, along with unseasonably strong hardware sales in the first quarter, will give global IT spending a 5.3 percent bump for the year.”

Here’s today’s Gartner press release: Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 5.3 Percent in 2010. It contains fairly bad news for hardware vendors and good news for infrastructure solution providers:

“The infrastructure market, which includes all the software to build, run and manage an enterprise, is the largest segment in terms of revenue and the fastest-growing through the 2014. The hottest software segments through 2014 include virtualization, security, data integration/data quality and business intelligence.”

2010 Prediction: On-Premise Integration will Drive SaaS Adoption

David Linticum has weighed in with his Intelligent Enterprise prediction post – What’s in Store for SaaS in 2010? He makes some interesting comments about cloud outages, data leakage, and office automation. His 2nd major trend is all about the importance data integration to SaaS success:

“Second, we will see better integration with on-premise systems, which will drive much of the movement to SaaS in 2010.  A major issue with those looking at SaaS is how to sync data stored within SaaS providers with their existing on-premise systems. While this has been a focus of most data integration players, the solutions have not clicked with most of those moving to SaaS, and many are far too convoluted and expensive. However, in 2010 the value of this technology will be better understood, and the prices will fall as efficiency and speed-to-deployment increase.”

I also saw a tweet today from a Gartner conference, “by 2014, 75% of integration to cloud will be through pre-packaged solutions.” Makes sense to me.

So whether it’s Opportunty to Order, Account, Customer, or Product Master,  Pricebooks, Invoices, Contracts or just about any type of SaaS/Cloud integration process requirement, here are a few resources to help you avoid SaaS Islands in the Stream in 2010: 

• Three reasons SaaS/Cloud integration is getting so much attention.
• Questions to ask a SaaS/Cloud integration vendor.
• The importance of “thinking outside of the box” when it comes to SaaS/Cloud integration.