M.
Reed - April 25th, 2000
Event
Summary
"Sybase, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYBS) and Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA)
announced a worldwide OEM agreement in which Sybase will resell Informatica
PowerMart data-integration software with Sybase Industry Warehouse Studio,
an integrated set of analytic applications, data models and tools for
building and managing enterprise business intelligence solutions, and
Adaptive Server IQ with Multiplex, a high-performance database for business
intelligence.
As
part of the agreement, Sybase also gains the right to globally resell
other products from Informatica's family of data-integration software
products. The agreement is designed to provide Sybase customers with a
comprehensive analytic solution to meet their enterprise business intelligence
needs.
Sybase
Industry Warehouse Studio is a comprehensive business intelligence solution
composed of industry-leading architectural products in five areas: data
modeling, administration, management, integration, and visualization/analysis.
Sybase will embed Informatica PowerMart as the data-integration component
of its Industry Warehouse Studio solutions. Sybase will also resell Informatica
PowerMart as the preferred data-integration solution for Adaptive Server
IQ with Multiplex.
"Sybase has chosen to OEM Informatica's data-integration technology because
of its proven ability to consolidate data from across the enterprise,
including sources such as the Web, ERP systems, RDBMS and mainframes.
Informatica's proven scalability and rapid time to implementation were
also key factors in our selection," said Eric Miles, vice president and
general manager, Sybase Business Intelligence Division. "By making Informatica
available as part of Sybase Business Intelligence solutions, our customers
can benefit from even stronger, more robust solutions for achieving business
intelligence."
"By
bringing together the leading technology providers and system integrators
to create a comprehensive business intelligence offering, Sybase is helping
large organizations take a major step toward transforming themselves into
intelligent enterprises," said Diaz Nesamoney, president of Informatica.
"We're pleased to enter into this alliance with Sybase, which is an important
validation of Informatica's technology and the proven success of our customer
base."
Informatica
PowerMart is an integrated software suite for deploying and managing line-of-business
data marts. PowerMart delivers an open, scalable solution that is able
to source large volumes of fast-changing data from multiple platforms,
handle complex transformations, and support high-speed data loads. The
integrated Sybase and Informatica products will be available from Sybase
in the second quarter of 2000."
Market
Impact
Sybase is continuing its quest to improve its market position by imbedding
PowerMart into its application solutions. In recent years, Sybase has
failed to regain its previously strong position in the database server
market, so it has attempted to reposition itself in vertical applications.
Informatica has a strong presence in data integration, and should provide
Sybase with an improved market positioning, however, the integration between
the two products will have to be seamless, or this will result in nothing
more than a marketing alliance.
User
Recommendations
Customers evaluating business intelligence solutions should include Sybase/Informatica
on a long list of candidates. If Sybase is successful in completely integrating
the five product areas they discuss, comprised of data modeling, data
administration, data management, data integration, and visualization &
analysis of that data, this product suite could provide close to an end-to-end
solution.
One additional component that should be discussed with Sybase is integrated
data cleansing, which would help to round out the solution.
Another
issue that is not discussed in the vendor's press release is the level
of metadata integration, which needs to be extremely tight in order to
allow for bi-directional replication. Informatica's MX2 application programming
interface (API) strategy, which provides "plug-in" capabilities to other
products, will likely be used to satisfy this part of the solution.