Informatica 9 was released this week, something that I've been watching very closely. What's unique about this release is that it's really a trend setting technology in how we're going to address data integration going forward. 9 provides one-stop-shopping for those looking to leverage multiple data integration patterns in a single product.
Clearly, others see it as a trend as well, including Rob Barry over at Tech Target.
"The company has pulled together all of its relevant data management offerings into a single platform. Though the release is a big step for Informatica, some industry experts see it merely as part of a well developed trend."
Informatica 9 will provide an enhanced data integration platform, combining products in data integration, data quality, B2B data exchange, application information lifecycle management, complex event processing and cloud computing data integration. This data integration meta stack is really the direction of the data integration business, with a focus on a single layer that can provide traditional ETL-type data integration, data quality services, and most importantly the ability to address complex data sets using a single point of view, or data abstraction.
I've been a huge advocate of data abstraction, or the use of well defined data services to deal with the complex and heterogeneous physical databases that are a large part of the Global 2000 and government. A good data abstraction layer is able to solve many problems, and is a key component of an SOA. If you don't manage your data assets correctly, than you have no chance of doing much else right within and architecture.
Keep a close eye on this trend.
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