REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 5, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq:INFA), the leading independent provider of data integration software and services, today announces the availability of two independent third-party research reports that validate the increasing need for and accelerating uptake of comprehensive data integration platforms delivering real-time, data integration and data services. The reports, from Datamonitor and Ovum, together underscore the data imperatives that inform today's key business processes - from customer acquisition and service to compliance - and the business opportunities engendered by faster, richer, more accurate data.
Datamonitor, a leading provider of global business information, has published a market survey-driven report entitled The Importance of Data Integration on Realizing the Business Value of Enterprise Applications. According to the report, "despite massive ERP/CRM investments, enterprises are failing to address the fundamental data challenges." This failure is negatively impacting companies ability to reduce cost, increase market share and improve customer service, which are the top three business initiatives identified by Datamonitor-surveyed companies'.
"Realizing that effective business decisions hinge on reliable, accurate and timely data, companies are rethinking their approaches to data integration and increasingly turning to comprehensive data integration platforms as the necessary solution," said, Vuk Trifkovic, senior analyst, Datamonitor. "The platform approach enables them to access, improve the quality and deliver their data at decreased latencies, including real time, to any number of applications. Our study shows that companies recognize the immense value in this as they seek to improve existing business processes. But just as significantly, we believe that real-time data integration platforms will be increasingly considered as enablers of new business processes and models."
A concurrent report from Ovum, a leading global advisory and consulting firm, similarly examines the challenges of accessing and delivering business data in an agile fashion. Entitled Realising the Promise of SOA and BPM, the report details how to ensure the success of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Monitoring (BPM) initiatives with real-time, data integration and data services, noting that "process-driven data integration builds on a foundation of a unified and scalable, standards-based, data integration platform."
"As stated in the report, companies need to 'wake up and smell the data' and embrace real-time, process-driven data integration if they want the best return on their SOA and BPM investments," said Madan Sheina, analyst, Ovum. "Essential to enriching and speeding up SOA business services and BPM processes, process-driven data integration orchestrates sophisticated sequencings of data services, including accessing, cleansing, consolidating and delivering data at any speed, to ensure accurate, consistent and timely information."
According to both reports, the uncertain economy, globalization, mergers and acquisitions and increasing compliance demands are driving companies to be more agile, and raising the success-stakes for information-driven business initiatives and the SOA, BPM, CRM, ERP, multi-enterprise data exchange and other projects that support them.
Key findings and recommendations in the Datamonitor study include:
- Insufficient attention paid to data throughout the enterprise application lifecycle limits the potential of enterprise application platforms.
- Nearly 70% of IT decision makers surveyed say right-time data availability, quality and update frequency are key to business success.
- Inadequate data quality was identified as the number one data-related obstacle to business process success, followed by a poor understanding of the data lifecycle.
- Conventional approaches to data integration are rarely able to provide the data quality levels and varying data latencies required by today's business dynamics.
- A unified data integration platform will improve data quality as part of the integration process, deliver data at any required speed, and future-proof an organization against tomorrow's data latency, data quality and data volume demands.
- Once today's tactical issues are addressed, organizations will exploit data integration platforms to create new strategic business processes, services and opportunities.
Key observations in the Ovum report include:
- Many organizations miss the importance of data in supporting their SOA or BPM initiatives, and are thus unable to realize the promise of these projects; both SOA and BPM need a process-driven approach to integration that grows out of the data layer.
- A unified data integration platform removes the burden and complexities of data manipulation and integration from the SOA and BPM layers.
- Unless an organization addresses its variable data latency needs, business agility is at risk. The accelerating pace of business is driving companies to move as close to real time modes as possible.
- It's imperative to the success of SOA and BPM projects to resolve all issues with data formats, semantics, hierarchies, inconsistencies and inaccuracies within the source data.
- Process-driven data orchestration and human workflow capabilities, when applied to data integration, confer many of the SOA benefits of standards-based, loose coupling to assist in creating an agile IT infrastructure.
"Data is the lifeblood of any organization engaged in satisfying customers, building market share, collaborating successfully with partners and running an agile, streamlined business," said Girish Pancha, general manager, Data Integration, Informatica. "The Informatica data integration platform is a comprehensive, open, unified, and economical solution for discovering, accessing and delivering complete, trustworthy data. It supports all steps in the data integration lifecycle, enabling customers to holistically manage and govern business data to run more operationally efficient organizations. It makes it easy to reduce costs and improve customer service that customer and partner alike can appreciate."
For more detail on the findings and a discussion on how to realize greater value from enterprise applications join Informatica, Motorola and Datamonitor analyst Vuk Trifkovic on March 10th for Realize greater value from your enterprise applications: Improve your data assets with Informatica webinar http://vip.informatica.com?elqPURLPage=1148
About Informatica
Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq:INFA) is the leading independent provider of enterprise data integration software and services. With Informatica, organizations can gain greater business value by integrating all their information assets from across the enterprise. More than 3,450 companies worldwide rely on Informatica to reduce the cost and expedite the time to address data integration needs of varying complexity and scale. For more information, please visit www.informatica.com.
Note: Informatica is a registered trademark of Informatica Corporation in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.
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