So let’s dissect the press release in our customary style (it can be found here):
[…] Informatica, the world’s number one independent software provider focused on delivering transformative innovation for the future of all things data, today announced new Informatica Cloud capabilities and offerings that help power multiple key Salesforce initiatives, including: Internet of Things (IoT), analytics connectors and vertical solutions.MyPOV – Good to follow the lead of the day, Salesforce’s Thunder where Informatica was mentioned as one of the partners.
Informatica is a leading Salesforce ISV partner providing pre-built native cloud integration and data management capabilities for Salesforce Clouds – including: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud and App Cloud – as well as vertical and role-based analytics connectors for the Salesforce Wave Analytics Platform.
MyPOV – Key is the ‘pre-built’ part – Informatica has gone a long way and invested a lot on the pre-built aspect, building native integrators on the platforms it supports. Informatica has early pushed to be a key player in the Salesforce ecosystem and is now seeing the advantages of that investment.
“Because Informatica supports every Salesforce offering, customers can leverage Informatica Cloud as a unified cloud integration solution across their Salesforce investments as they expand from one Salesforce org to multiple orgs, clouds and apps,” said Ronen Schwartz, vice president and general manager, Informatica Cloud. “Customers continue to benefit from the decade-long partnership between Informatica and Salesforce. Informatica Cloud makes it simpler than ever for business users, Salesforce administrators and LOB IT to integrate external data into their Salesforce Clouds and apps, while dramatically reducing time-to-market for new integrations and helping to efficiently scale out Salesforce deployments.”
MyPOV – Good quote from Schwartz – focusing on the business at hand. And administrator empowerment is always a good move in the Salesforce ecosystem.
New Informatica Cloud capabilities and offerings for Salesforce customers include:
● Internet of Things (IoT) – Informatica supports Salesforce’s IoT Cloud. Informatica empowers customers to stream and upload billions of events from applications, logs, devices and sensors to Salesforce — enabling companies to maximize the value of their data.
MyPOV – This is the ‘hot’ new announcement at Dreamforce – the Salesforce IoT cloud (my analysis here) and Informatica looks like one of the key partners to get the IoT data ready for the new Salesforce event handler.
● Analytics Apps Integration – Informatica provides a pre-built native connector that allows Salesforce administrators and IT to easily move external data into Salesforce Wave Analytics for business users’ access. Informatica now also enables integration of external data sources with the new Sales Wave Analytics app, a role-based analytics app that will deliver personalized templates, historical analysis and the ability to take immediate actions. This will help sales leaders manage forecasts, pipelines, team performance and more to accelerate business growth. Pre-built integrations to Wave Analytics help companies integrate a wealth of structured and unstructured data to extend analytics for every business need, making it easier than ever for anyone to explore and share data instantly, uncover new insights and take action from anywhere.MyPOV – Wave and now the Salesforce Analytics Cloud are key growing products for Salesforce, so good to see Informatica going after the new and growing business here, addressing integration needs of customers.
● Enhanced Data Masking for Cloud Platform Users – Informatica Cloud Test Data Management (TDM) enables new security capabilities for SaaS production and sandbox data via award-winning Informatica data masking technology.MyPOV – This s a vital product that is more and more popular in the Salesforce install base, helping customers to keep up with the increased testing needs and higher release cycles of the SaaS world. With data masking, more people can test new releases.
● Mission-Critical Connectivity for Vertical Apps – Informatica provides easy connectivity to on-premise and cloud vertical and horizontal applications. Customers can use Informatica’s pre-built integrations to accelerate time-to-market for their Salesforce implementations.MyPOV – This is the bread and butter of the Salesforce business that Informatica does. Would have been good to see some specifics on what is new.
● Enhanced Connectors – Informatica delivers several new versions of pre-built connectors for leading cloud applications and big data sources, including: Box, Hadoop, MailChimp, Concur, Eloqua, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
MyPOV – And that is the next category, after on premise, the integration with other cloud / SaaS properties. Again – specifics would have been good here.
Overall MyPOV
A key show for Informatica, that has bet on the Salesforce ecosystem big time. And the bet has paid off and keeps paying off. To achieve that, Informatica needs to solve integration problems that are close to the new Salesforce offerings on IoT Cloud and Analytics Cloud (covered) but also Apps Cloud (not mentioned here).On the concern side, betting on new Salesforce products is no guaranteed slam dunk as in the past, as Salesforce extends beyond the traditional home turf of CRM. But Informatica needs to invest in these areas in order to remain an early solution provider for the Salesforce ecosystem – so it is not an option for Informatica to stay out any of these major new Salesforce initiatives.
Overall a good announcement by Informatica, helping it to catch attention at Dreamforce and expand its footprint in the Salesforce ecosystem. Stay tuned.
More on Informatica:
- Event Report - Informatica World 2015 - Product Progress and New Approaches - read here
- News Analysis - Informatica's Sohaib Abbasi showcases Innovations for the Age of Engagement - read here
- Future of Work - One spreadsheet at a time, Informatica Springbok - read here
- Informatica pushes the cloud integration stakes - read here.
