February 1, 2008

As the largest independent provider of data integration software still standing, Informatica is launching a new program intended to communicate the message that as the “Switzerland” player in its market, that it is the safest and most logical bet for software vendors and integrators to partner with.

The new program, INFORM, codifies some of the existing provisions of Informatica’s program, such as access to Informatica consultants, joint marketing and sales pipeline management, training and enablement services, and for ISVs, access to OEM software. In effect, Informatica is not just publicizing a program it already had, but adding new features that are designed to make the company easier to do business with.

Significantly, the program is being lead by the person who performed the same role at Mercury prior to HP’s acquisition. Informatica, like Mercury, has remained one of the few players to preserve its independence and grow market share in an otherwise rapidly consolidating market.

(And as you might recall, Mercury was done in by one of the first, and incredibly blatant options scandals, although we believe that it would have had to eventually find a suitor because its governance products were eventually going to hit the wall.)

In fact, what's interesting about Informatica’s INFORM program was that it felt the need to raise its profile. Informatica is no stranger to partnering, and already has a successful program that counts dozens of integrators, and on the OEM side, household names like Oracle and SAP who in some cases also have competing products.

Raising awareness that Informatica has a partner program, and adding goodies like partner self-service portals are a logical strategy for an independent player that seeks to solidify its position by solidifying its partner ecosystem. While a lonely independent is vulnerable, taking down a vast cloud is another – not to mention the fact that effective partnering is a great way to extend your sales force.

Although not formally announced, part of the effort is to also to cultivate OEM relationships. Today, that involves conventional re-licensing of Informatica products, the best known of which is PowerCenter integration and ETL tool. But in a swipe against best of breed and open source providers, (Informatica is also making licensing more flexible, which for smaller ISVs can be translated to smaller and cheaper pieces. For instance, if you want to build PowerCenter into your product, you don't have to take all the adapters and if your clients are primarily using data marts, you won't have to license the high-availability features.

In the long run, we wouldn’t be surprised if this turns into an “Informatica inside” program where you could license and embed components of any of the company’s offerings, which also stretch to things like data quality and data profiling.

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