UPDATED 15:58 EDT / FEBRUARY 20 2020

BIG DATA

New Informatica CEO recognizes synergy between DevOps and DataOps

Informatica LLC is in the business of helping customers navigate the demands of digital transformation, yet the company has experienced a major transformation itself.

The data management firm launched Intelligent Cloud Services with artificial-intelligence features, transitioned to a subscription-only model, and developed strategic partnerships with major players, such as Microsoft Corp. and Amazon Web Services Inc.

A new chief executive officer also took the helm in January, five years after Informatica was taken private. The company started the new year with a revamped product lineup that included new governance and analytics features for its data catalog.

With a new chief executive, business model and product portfolio, Informatica is riding the current wave of interest in enterprise data.

“If you’re building a great customer service app, you’ve got to first figure out what data you need to service a customer,” said Informatica CEO Amit Walia (pictured). “That is a very fundamental shift that has happened. DevOps is getting complemented by what we see as DataOps.”

Walia spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, in Palo Alto, California. They discussed key industry trends that shape Informatica’s business strategy, the evolving role of cloud adoption to meet customer needs and how the company’s solutions help address skill shortages in the industry.

Transforming business initiatives

Informatica’s transformation was driven in large part by three major initiatives the company observed in its customer base. These involved the move of data warehousing and analytics to the cloud, a need for governance and privacy tools to properly manage information, and a mandate to transform the overall customer experience, according to Walia.

“All of these things are complex and hard to do,” Walia said. “Our goal is to help customers adopt these technologies not for the sake of technologies, but for the sake of transforming those three business initiatives.”

This process of transformation includes adoption of tools for a multicloud, hybrid computing world. In December, Informatica released its Enterprise Data Catalog 10.4, which included enhanced metadata scanners for enterprise systems on-premises and across cloud platforms.

“Cloud adoption is still relatively in its early innings,” Walia noted. “Customers move their analytical workloads first. The operational workloads are still in their infancy, so that is a big vector of growth and a big trend that we see for the next five-plus years.”

Abstracting away complexity

Part of Informatica’s strategic approach has been to address the issue of skill shortages in the tech industry. Although the company has plenty of customers in Silicon Valley with access to top talent, that’s not always the case for other businesses.

“If you’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s not a whole lot of developers who understand the latest cutting-edge technology that happens here,” Walia said. “Our goal has been to solve that problem for our customers. We abstract away that complexity so they are dealing only at a higher level.”

Walia is no stranger to either Silicon Valley or the company he now leads. He joined Informatica in 2013 and rapidly became a part of the firm’s leadership team before ascending to the top spot this year.

“It’s the true American Dream,” Walia said. “I came here in 1998 as a lot of immigrants did. I believed in the opportunity, and there is something very special about America.”

Here’s the complete video interview, one of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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