To partner with Amazon Web Services or not to partner with Amazon Web Services? Tension is building in the tech community over the dicey position of startups and smaller companies that decide to integrate with AWS. While companies want exposure to Amazon’s massive customer base, they also worry that their collaboration will create a monster that will eventually eat them. We spoke with one SVP who offered an outlook that may allay the panic.

Ronen Schwartz, SVP and GM of data integration and cloud integration at Informatica Corp., said that competition with partners is nothing new to them. “Informatica in all of its years was living in a coopetition environment,” meeting with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team. (*Disclosure below)

“In the on-premise world it was with the Microsofts and SAPs and Oracles of the world. And in the cloud, it is Microsoft again, and AWS, and Salesforce and so on,” he explained.

Schwartz said that the specter of competing with Amazon does not scare him so much, because as customers have diverse needs, differentiated solutions will all find takers.

While Schwartz conceded that it will be hard to compete with Amazon for hardcore developers, “We believe that enterprises, companies that want to have their IT, optimize their operation, etc., etc., they will choose Informatica or similar offerings.”

Working the data niche

Schwartz said that specialized data operations have helped Informatica win enterprise customers. “The usage of data in the cloud in Informatica has grown 300 percent year over year just from last year to this year,” he said.

He mentioned that Informatica will be unveiling the Enterprise Information Catalog, which helps enterprises understand what data they need to move to cloud, when and how.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (*Disclosure: AWS and other companies sponsor some AWS re:Invent segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE