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Informatica Improves Operational Efficiency At DAU

Informatica Corp announced that the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) has successfully implemented the Informatica PowerCenter data integration platform, in conjunction with Informatica PowerAnalyzer data-visualization software, to more closely manage general administrative costs, better utilize and apportion funds, and increase student satisfaction.

The DAU is a multi-campus university that provides continuous training and career management to nearly 134,000 members of the Department of Defense's Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) workforce throughout their professional careers. The university's administrators are now using Informatica's software to better track and analyze total class costs, budgeted versus actual expenditures, teacher certifications, employee time accounting, graduation and attrition rates, and other performance metrics.

"The DAU is the vital link for ensuring that a fully trained and qualified workforce is in place to provide for the needs of our war fighters around the world," said Chuck Cameron, professor of financial management at the Defense Acquisition University. "The use of data integration products and services has significantly sharpened our ability to provide such a critical service to the defense community, by helping us make optimum use of funds and derive actionable operational insights such as professor time utilization and cost per student."

With six campuses across the country and a global e-learning environment, the DAU utilizes numerous disparate legacy and mainframe information systems, including a custom-built mainframe application for defense finance accounting, a budgeting software package, a time-management system, the defense civilian pay system, a professor-certification database, the U.S. Army training and resources system, as well as a third-party system that tracks survey data from all of the University's 90,000 graduating students each year. PowerCenter consolidates this student, employee and finance data from diverse sources into the DAU's central data warehouse, which is then accessed by university administrators via a PowerAnalyzer-enabled dashboard.

"The DAU experiences both the challenges of a government agency as well as those of a large, distributed university -- accountability to multiple constituencies, the need to streamline operations and control costs, and a plethora of disconnected legacy data sources," said John Entenmann, executive vice president of corporate strategy and marketing at Informatica. "We are pleased to help another important government organization meet this challenge by providing a unified data integration and visibility solution, which enables the DAU to integrate valuable data from myriad disparate sources, both inside and outside the university."