Informatica Pulls Together BI Capabilities

Informatica Corp., best known for its data warehouse building software, plans to launch an all-in-one business intelligence solution by early next month.

The company, which began a move into analytic applications in late 1999, will announce at its Informatica World 2001 users conference in San Francisco next week an integrated enterprise analytics suite that it says will meet all of a customers analytics needs.

The suite is comprised of the Informatica Analytics Delivery Platform, Informatica Applications 5.0, and the Informatica PowerCenter software.

At the centerpiece of the new offering is a new Analytics Delivery Platform that will replace technology Informatica currently licenses from BusinessObjects SA and Microstrategy Corp. The new platform is built on a Java 2 Enterprise Edition architecture, replacing the client-server architecture of the licensed product.

This Web architecture allows for broader enterprise-wide deployment to users across an organization, Informatica officials said. It also supports alerts and Web, wireless and voice interfaces to analytic dashboards, and will be easier to customize than the previous product.

Informatica, of Redwood City, Calif., will also announce next week that Version 5.0 of Informatica Applications. The technology will be enhanced to better support analytics of specific operational applications, such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, human resources and financials. This version of the analytic applications will also add data mining capabilities to support predictive analytics, officials said.

The new Analytic Delivery Platform and Informatica Applications will both use what Informatica officials call “analytic workflows,” allowing users to share information. Both products are built on Informaticas PowerCenter enterprise data integration platform.

The integrated suite, which doesnt have a separate name, will allow for faster implementation times, officials said, typically no more than 60 days.

The Informatica Analytic Delivery Platform is available now. Version 5 of the Informatica Applications will be available Nov. 5.