Informatica Corp., which made a name for itself first in analytic software and then in business intelligence development, is changing its stripes again.
The company, which has 2,000 customers and 600 partners, will announce this week its entrance into the data integration market, supported by the introduction of a software suite, PowerCenter AE (Advanced Edition).
PowerCenter AE provides users with a single, consistent view of data that can be integrated with several systems.
PowerCenter AE expands Informaticas core capabilities by including SuperGlue, a metadata analysis module, and PowerAnalyzer, a reporting module.
The company is combining the capabilities of both modules, in a sense, by enabling the metadata in SuperGlue to automatically populate the reporting environments in PowerAnalyzer as a data integration environment is built.
PowerCenter AE is geared for team-based development that lets multiple groups work collaboratively.
To further its data integration capabilities, Informatica, of Redwood City, Calif., is developing two more releases, code-named Zeus and Hercules.
Zeus, scheduled for release in the third quarter, will include higher levels of scalability and performance and the ability to access data from outsourcers and push data to them as well.
Hercules, due in the second half of 2006, will take batch integration capabilities and real-time capabilities and combine them with on-demand functionality.
Mark Cothron, data warehouse architect for Ace Hardware Corp., uses PowerCenter Standard Edition to integrate an e-commerce partner as well as to meld some operational systems. He said hed welcome automation of his manual PowerCenter work. “Weve had to put pieces in the middle because theyre an outside company with outside data,” said Cothron in Oak Brook, Ill. “If it goes from one week down to a day, thats better.”