Being private has allowed Informatica LLC to take risks developing products. And now its ambitious re-branding is aligning its image with said products, according to Bruce Chizen (pictured), executive chair and special adviser on Informatica’s board.

“Being private is great, because we get to do things you couldn’t do as a public company,” Chizen told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during Informatica World in San Francisco. (* Disclosure below.)

For instance, it allowed Informatica to focus resources a bit narrowly on developing products — which did not bother its customers, Chizen stated, claiming that the company’s subscribers’ brand loyalty is perhaps unmatched.

“If you don’t have great products and passionate R&D [research and development] organizations around the world, you can’t make up for that,” he said. Slick marketing will not save poor products — at least not in technology, he added.

Informatica clearly believes, however, that the time has come for a strategic marketing rethink, evidenced by its hiring new Chief Marketing Officer Sally Jenkins.

“Part of coming out, having a new logo, having a new digital campaign, changing the website — that costs money, but as a private company, we get to do that,” Chizen said. The company has the patience to wait a couple of years for the investment to pay off, he added.

Can Informatica beat free?

As many companies move to cloud providers (like Amazon) that offer big data tools gratis with a subscription, vendors of standalone products are likely feeling pressure to market themselves as superior, Burris pointed out.

But companies that are actually thinking of data strategically are willing to pay for better quality products, according to Chizen, adding that Amazon itself uses Informatica’s Master Data Management solution for its sales operations.

This strategic data management is about applying intelligence, both human and artificial, to the data to produce tangible business results. Real results from data and high-level customers like Amazon back up Informatica’s products, Chizen explained.

Will Informatica go public in the foreseeable future?

“I think we will be positioned to do something late 2018, early 2019. A lot depends on how the company continues to do; a lot depends on the market. The private equity investors are in no hurry,” Chizen said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Informatica World 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Informatica World. Neither Informatica Corp. nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE