Informatica, known since its founding 16 years ago as a data integration and data mart provider, has been closely watching developments in the SOA space for some time.

Now, the company’s new flagship product, Informatica 9, represents a radical departure from its traditional domain, and a step into the still-emerging world of SOA-structured data services. Informatica 9 is a data integration platform supports enterprise data integration, data
quality, B2B data exchange, application information lifecycle
management, complex event processing and cloud computing data
integration. 

I recently had a chance to chat with Informatica executives Chris Boorman and Ash Parikh, two of the moving forces behind the SOA data services strategy.

SOA based data services are a “fundamental architectural change in terms of our technology,” Chris explained. “We are providing the data services layer for SOA. Our SOA-based data services enable you to define that data abstraction layer for service oriented architecture.”

It’s not that Informatica is bullish on the way SOA has been unfolding — quite the opposite is true, Chris added. SOA has been screaming for relevance and business value. “In our opinion, SOA has failed to deliver the value that has been expected of it, primarily because it has lacked the data abstraction layer that enables organizations to basically define the data objects and the rules associated with data objects, that can then be permeated through — whether it be Web services or SQL or batch or anything else — to the applications that are using that data.”

Ash, who has been warning the industry about the quality of data surging through SOA-based infrastructures for some time now, says SOA data services open up many new avenues for connecting SOA with enterprise data management.

“It’s much more than just data access,” he points out. “It’s making sure the data that is delivered is of the greatest quality.” Plus, SOA data services creates a collaborative environment between IT, data managers, and business data owners.

In the real world, Ash says, “when people talk about data, they never talk about ‘data source X’ or ‘data source Y’ that’s sitting in a corner somewhere,” he says. “They report the data as a business representation of data — my customer data, my product data, things like that” This brings things in line with the perspective required of SOA architects, who need to better assure more timely and accurate and consistent views of their data and the product data.