IW10: Data matters 'even more' in the post-Great Recession era

Informatica CEO and chairman Sohaib Abbasi has told delegates at the company's conference the importance of data matters more in the economic recovery, allowing organisations to adapt to the top business trends of today.

Sohaib Abbasi has told delegates at Informatica World in Washington DC that data matters more than ever in the post-Great Recession era. The Informatica chairman and CEO outlined several key themes of Informatica World 2010, which all fell under the umbrella theme of 'beyond boundaries'.

The experiences of the Great Recession, Abbasi argued, show data matters and it matters even more in "uncertain times of change".

"No-one can predict the future," he said, "but we can all be better prepped with regular and trustworthy data."

Abbasi said the role of the company's community base, many of whom were sat in the audience at Informatica World, had never been more important, and he maintained their respective skills were absolutely required by their employers as companies shape five distinct trends in business: globalisation; consolidation; growth; operational efficiency; and governance.

Briefly focusing on the continued consolidation of the IT industry, Abbasi argued one of the primary risks of consolidation for companies was the prospect of being locked in with a single vendor, or locked out of proprietary data. "Can you afford to be locked in with one of those [consolidated] giants, or locked out of your data?" Abbasi rhetorically asked delegates, before pointing towards what he called Informatica's track record of neutrality.

He pointed out three of the key trends in IT at the moment, Cloud Computing, mobile, and social computing, and described the industry as undergoing "the biggest change for 15 years". As such, the need for robust data integration and management was of paramount importance (of business critical importance, according to Abbasi) as all three play a part in helping deliver on those business trends in the coming years.

Informatica has continued to perform well throughout the economic downturn. In October, Abassi revealed record quarterly turnover for the company of $161m, equating to year-on-year growth of 31%. At the time, the CEO said the increase was due to "the ever-increasing customer demand and our expansive product portfolio," and outlined Informatica's ambitions to exceed $1bn annual turnover in the years ahead.

The company is currently working across eight business categories, including many away from its traditional base of data integration and data quality, ultra messaging, and massive data management.

As Abbasi explained in his keynote at Informatica World, the company's move into the Cloud Computing space is already making significant headway, with a partnership with Dunn and Bradstreet allowing the growth of the company's Informatica Cloud infrastructure offering further. The partnership was later demonstrated to good effect on stage on an iPad, with Dunn and Bradstreetss D&B360 platform (underpinned by Informatica Cloud) seamlessly integrated into a Salesforce.com page.

Turning to Cloud Computing, Abbasi said one of the risks of the trend was the risk companies faced of losing control of their data, something again he argued could be avoided by his company's neutrality.  Having identified the three pillars of Cloud Computing, Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service, and describing them as a "compelling" value proposition for companies in the post-Great Recession era, Abassi revealed the control and management of data was one of the biggest challenge facing the IT trend.

Abbasi's call to arms to the company's customer and developer base followed equally resolute sounding remarks from Informatica CMO, Chris Boorman, who had earlier argued the data and data integration "matters more than ever before, for both public and private sectors".