Informatica Announces "Business Components" Software
for Accelerating, Simplifying Deployment of Analytic
Applications
ACTION ITEMS
Informatica Corporation, provider of one of the leading software platforms for powering analytic applications, has debuted Business Components, a new family of software products for speeding and simplifying the complex process of moving data from corporate operational systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, into analytic applications. The Business Components product family is designed to accelerate the conversion of raw corporate data into customized business information to help corporate decision-makers react more nimbly to today's increasingly competitive, ever-changing market conditions.
Business Components are pre-defined templates that shield data warehouse, data mart and analytic application developers from the complex process of consolidating data from corporate data stores, transforming it into business information, and loading it into analytic applications for business analysis.
By providing a business-level view of data, Business Components will help enable IT professionals who are not familiar with the internals of complex operational systems such as SAP R/3 to easily build and maintain analytic systems. They will also help accelerate the process of building and maintaining analytic systems, and insulate entire decision support systems from disruptive changes in the IT environment resulting from, for example, mergers and acquisitions, software upgrades or new-product introductions.
"As the number, complexity and sophistication of ERP and other packaged transactional applications increases, it becomes less likely that the data warehouse or analytic application designer will have sufficient knowledge of the data locked up in these systems to be able to fully leverage it for enterprise decision support," said Henry Morris, vice president, data warehousing and applications, IDC Research. "Informatica's Business Components will address the issue of source system complexity and represent an important first step for Informatica toward delivering on their vision of end-to-end data transformation at a business level."
"Companies have traditionally had to wrestle with the intricacies of extracting operational data for analysis from large corporate data stores such as ERP and mainframe legacy systems," said Diaz Nesamoney, president of Informatica. "Business Components are the first products designed to make this process simpler and faster by providing an insulating layer between these complex data sources and analytic applications."
In addition to accelerating the development and deployment of ERP data warehouses and analytic applications, Business Components will deliver a number of other key benefits, including:
First Union Direct Sees Strategic Application for Business Components
Steve Meyer, vice president of performance reporting and analysis at First Union Direct, is one of several Informatica customers to have seen the new Business Components technology.
"We've taken a look at Informatica's new Business Components, and are very interested in the opportunity they offer in terms of improving our ability to extract data from multiple, complex systems, as well as to standardize key business rules and definitions across the enterprise," said Meyer. "By simplifying the process of turning raw transaction data into useful business information, Business Components have the potential to help First Union improve its ability to quickly make strategic business decisions based on information generated by our decision support system."
Purchase Pre-Built Business Components or Customize Your Own
Companies will be able to choose pre-built Business Components or use Informatica's Business Component Framework to develop their own customized Business Components solutions.
The first in a family of pre-packaged solutions to be made available from Informatica are Business Components for SAP R/3. Business Components for SAP R/3 are designed to help insulate data warehouse architects from the complexity of R/3 source tables, and allow them to work more productively with SAP R/3 source data. The first set of Business Components to be developed for SAP R/3 encompass common SAP R/3 modules, including Sales and Distribution, Controlling, Materials Management, and Finance and Accounting. Informatica plans to deliver additional pre-packaged Business Components around other common packaged applications later this year.
"There are many different approaches to accessing the rich set of data locked up within SAP R/3, some providing better business semantics and change resilience than others," said Colin White, founder of DataBase Associates International, Inc. "Informatica's Business Components for SAP R/3 is an exciting new technology that can provide customers with significant productivity gains and offers the ability to isolate data warehousing systems from underlying schema changes in SAP R/3."
Informatica will also make an authoring mode to build customized Business Components available within the next version of its PowerCenter data integration software. The Business Component Framework currently in beta will be designed to allow customers, partners and ISVs to build individualized Business Components to extract data from all types of ERP, legacy and relational systems into all types of analytic applications.
Pricing and Availability
Available as add-on software to Informatica PowerCenter, Business Components and Business Component Framework will be commercially available in the fall of 1999. Pricing for Business Components will start at $25,000. The Business Component Framework will be delivered as part of the company's PowerCenter base product.
Informatica's platform consists of PowerCenter, an enterprise data integration hub for rapidly deploying scalable, enterprise-class decision support applications; and PowerMart, an integrated software suite for deploying and managing line-of-business data marts and analytic applications.
Designed from inception to be multi-platform, all Informatica products run on both Unix and Microsoft NT servers, use Windows 95 and Windows NT clients, and work seamlessly with all major databases, including Oracle, Microsoft, Informix, Sybase, IBM, VSAM, and flat file databases.
About TDWI Conference
The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) is the premier educational association in the data warehousing industry and represents more than 34,000 members and associates from corporations, consultancies, and government agencies in 45 countries. TDWI accomplishes its goals through sharing information about best practices and real-world lessons learned by data warehousing visionaries, practitioners and pioneers. The Data Warehousing Institute convenes annual worldwide conferences and courses on data warehousing and business information strategies where experienced professionals share real-world experiences.
About Informatica
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Informatica develops and markets enterprise software products and services that enable many of the world's largest companies to build and manage business intelligence and analytic applications across the enterprise. Informatica has more than 400 Global 2000 customers worldwide and maintains partnerships with Cambridge Technology Partners, EDS, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, SAP AG and Siemens Business Services. For more information, call (800) 653-3871, or visit Informatica's Web site at http://www.informatica.com.