Informatica Eyes Virtual Databases

"This will make Informatica 9 even more applicable for in-memory use cases for reading, writing and managing the data that resides in different systems and applications in subsequent releases," says Ash Kulkarni, director of product management and marketing at Informatica.

The current version of the platform, launched in December 2009, includes Informatica Data Services, which provisions trusted data and which has been enhanced through the vendor's recent acquisition of messaging provider 29West (DWT, March 29). The virtual database will also draw on 29West messaging technology, according to Kulkarni. "We are working on the distributed virtual database functionality. That involves using the 29West technology under the covers to allow us to synchronize all of these distributed virtual databases," he says.

The vendor plans to lay the groundwork for the virtual database capability by building out links between core 29West products with Informatica products this year.

"More of the customers are asking to run our data services as a single layer across their entire environment where they imagine having dozens applications hitting the database," says Kulkarni. "They want this virtual database deployed in a distributed fashion, almost as an in-memory cache, and to have all those caches automatically synchronized under the covers." Vendor officials expect that the distribution and synchronization capabilities should also be available next year, he adds.

The vendor will also use technology from master data management (MDM) provider Siperian, which it acquired in January, to support its increased virtual database in Informatica 9, according to Kulkarni.

"We are thinking about how to define the virtual data models and virtual data objects, and work with them in memory, then read and write from physical systems as needed," he says. "On top of that, we imagine having very specific models and very specific objects for dealing with different kinds of master data elements. That sort of metadata and contextual information would come from our MDM business."

Informatica's virtual database provides a variety of ways to receive data, such as SQL and Web services, according to Girish Pancha, executive vice president of data integration products at Informatica. "Not only can the data services technology serve out this information, but it can also write back," he says.

In other Informatica news, its 29West business unit announced today, April 26, that it has signed a deal with ITRS Group to develop and interface between the ITRS Geneos performance monitoring platform and 29West's Ultra Messaging middleware products. The new linkage will provide Ultra Messaging users with dashboard functionality via a new graphical user interface (GUI) and will be marketed by both vendors, according to officials.

Michael Shashoua and Tanzeel Akhtar