Informatica Corp. today said it is making its flagship PowerCenter data integration software compatible with the popular Salesforce.com service. The move is the first step toward connecting customers' on-site applications with Informatica's software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
The Redwood City, Calif.-based company said PowerCenter Connect for Salesforce.com is available now via Salesforce.com Inc.'s AppExchange.
"The last six years have seen a rise of business data outside the corporate firewall due to business process or IT outsourcing," said Brian Gentile, Informatica's chief marketing officer. "We need to be able to handle all of that off-premise data."
Informatica will charge between $75,000 and $82,000 per CPU and will develop connectors for other SaaS applications based on customer demand. "I wouldn't be surprised if the next available connector is NetSuite or Siebel-On-Demand," said Gentile. Informatica is also developing a completely hosted data integration platform that will work with various SaaS, business-process outsourcing and IT outsourcing applications.
Companies will be able to avoid having to install any Informatica software on-site, as they do today. The Informatica On-Demand Data Integration Platform will be available on a limited basis to Informatica's partners in the fourth quarter and will be generally available in the first quarter of next year.
"We're seeing a wave of [small and midsize firms] and even large-scale enterprises that are starting to do their work using hosted applications," said Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at Salt Lake City-based Burton Group Inc. "If Informatica didn't move there, they would become increasingly irrelevant."
O'Kelly said that Informatica still faces "big competitive challenges" as one of the few remaining independent data integration vendors. Vendors such as Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and IBM are tightly tying strong data integration products into their database offerings.
"With the 'super platform' trend, vendors are arguing that the suite, not the point product, becomes best of breed," O'Kelly said.
Informatica is holding its annual Informatica World conference today through Thursday.