Breaking News—Informatica Launches Version 9 of its Data Integration Platform

Informatica today announced version 9 of its data integration platform with the theme of "Enabling the Data-Driven Enterprise." The Informatica platform is a comprehensive offering that provides for enterprise data integration, cloud data integration, B2B data exchange, and data quality across the whole enterprise. Major new features in version 9 of the platform focus on the areas of SOA-based data services, pervasive data quality, and Business-IT collaboration.
Arvind Parthasarathi, vice president of product management for Informatica, tells 5 Minute Briefing that "the key elements of building a data-driven enterprise are the ability to provide relevant, trustworthy, and timely data to the organization. Informatica 9 enables all three of these through the feature areas of business-IT collaboration, data quality, and multi-modal data provisioning services. Features in version 9 that enable Business-IT collaboration include the ability to provide users with views into their data based on the way they are used to seeing it. This allows business users to participate in the entire process of getting the data they want. Data quality is provided via capabilities such as highly accurate global matching and address cleansing with domain aware pre-built rules and reference data.
Regarding multi-modal data provisioning services, Parthasarathi continued by saying "we provide the right data to users at the right time based on their business needs. The right data means data in its most relevant form for its intended use including various data types and data technologies. The right time can vary according to the amount of data latency any given business process can tolerate and Informatica offers numerous data delivery styles and technologies in a sliding-scale fashion to meet all various needs. This includes batch ETL, real-time change data capture, and federated query capabilities."
According to Informatica, version 9 is the single most important release in the company's history, and is a comprehensive solution for solving the challenges of managing data across the enterprise. With Informatica 9, companies can lower the costs and time to discover data and deliver it the way it is needed. They can also identify the bad data that is impacting business decisions and fix it faster. This is facilitated by Informatica's support for all data domains and all applications across all geographies. Lastly, version 9 enables the control and management of data wherever it is located, whether that be on-premise, in the cloud, with partner networks or any combination of these.

New Features of Informatica-9

1. Informatica 9 supports data integration for the cloud as well as on premise. You can integrate the data in cloud applications, as well as run Informatica 9 on cloud infrastructure.

2. Informatica analyst is a new tool available in Informatica 9.

3. There is architectural difference in Informatica 9 compared to previous version.

4. Browser based tool for business analyst is a new feature.

5. Data steward is a new feature.

6. Allows unified administration with a new admin console that enables you to manage power centre and power exchange from the same console.

7. Powerful new capabilities for data quality.

8. Single admin console for data quality, power centre, power exchange and data services.

9. In Informatica 9, Informatica data quality (IDQ) has been further integrated with the Informatica Platform and performance, manageability and reusability have all been significantly enhanced.

10. The mappings rules are shared between the browser based tool for analysts and the eclipse based development leveraging unified metadata underneath.

11. The data services capabilities in Informatica 9 , both over sql and web services ,can be used for real time dash boarding.

12. Informatica data quality provides world wide address validation support with integrated geocoding.

13. The ability to define rules and view and run profiles is available in both the Informatica developer (Thick client) and Informatica analyst (browser based tool-Thin client).these tools sit on a unified metadata infrastructure. Both tools incorporate security features like authentication and authorization ensuring..

14. The developer tool is now eclipse based and supports both data integration and data quality for enhanced productivity. It provides browser based tool for analysts to support the types of tasks they engage in, such as profiling data, specifying and validating rules & monitoring data quality.

15. There will a velocity methodology. Soon it’s going to introduce on I9.

16. Informatica has the capability to pull data from IMS, DB2 on series and series and from other several other legacy systems (Mainframe) environment like VSAM, Datacom, and IDMS etc.

17. There are separate tools available for different roles. The Mapping architect for Vision tool is designed for architects and developers to create templates for common data integration patterns saving developer’s tremendous amount of time.

18. Informatica 9 does not include ESB infrastructure.

19. Informatica supports open interfaces such as web services and can integrate with other tools that support these as well including BPM tool.

20. Informatica 9 complements existing BI architectures by providing immediate access to data through data virtualization, which can supplement the data in existing data warehouse and operational data store.

21. Informatica 9 supports profiling of Mainframe data. Leveraging the Informatica platform’s connectivity to Mainframe sources.

22. Informatica 9 will continue support feature of running the same workflow simultaneously.

23. Eclipse based environment is build for developers.

24. Browser based tool is a fully functional interface for business analysts.

25. Dashboards are designed for business executives.

26. There are 3 interfaces through which these capabilities can be accessed. Analyst tool is a browsed tool for analyst and stewards. Developers can use the eclipse based developer tool. Line of business managers can view data quality scorecards.