Welcome to Informatica! Meet James and Andrew
Informatica ANZ
Informatica helps data-driven leaders unleash the power of data to drive their intelligent disruption.
In a 3-part series, our Pre-Sales Director, Brad Starr welcomes his newest team members. We are very excited to welcome James Nguyen and Andrew McLaren to our growing team at Informatica!
Both join us as Senior Data Management Consultants. James previously worked for Deloitte where he helped customers implement, deliver and manage business intelligence and data warehousing, integration and transformation projects. Andrew previously worked as a consultant and project manager within enterprise data warehouse ETL/ELT with analytics and solution design.
We sat down with James and Andrew to find out what attracted them to Informatica, what they are most excited to learn here, and how they see data management changing in the future…
Why did you choose Informatica?
James: I had great experiences using Informatica’s PowerCenter previously which was renowned for its data integration capabilities.
Over time, I continued to follow Informatica and the Gartner Magic Quadrants and observed that Informatica had won numerous awards as a leader in other areas of the data management space, such as Master Data Management and Enterprise Data Catalog.
Andrew: Previously I had designed and developed in Informatica PowerCenter. I always found it to be a powerful tool for ETL and the ability to create mapplets for shared and repeated tasks made development significantly easier.
What’s been the biggest surprise since coming on board?
James: One of the biggest surprises was learning that Informatica had transitioned beyond just being a leader in its traditional flagship for data integration and ETL. They now delivered an Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform to customers, encompassing all aspects of data management into an integrated unified platform which incorporates:
I was also amazed by the overwhelming support and warm welcome into Informatica, as well as being impressed with a well-structured onboarding program for product mastery and career development.
Andrew: The complete shift to iPaaS with vertical and horizontal integration of developed objects, the ease of merging data quality objects as a drag and drop, quick and easy access to Master Data Management (MDM), data quality, integration, and catalog within all of the tools was more than impressive.????
What are you most excited to learn at Informatica?
James: I’m most excited to learn about IDMC and all of its capabilities spanning Cloud Data Governance, Cloud Data Quality, Cloud Data Integration, Cloud Mass Ingestion, and more. I’m looking forward to further innovations with new features in future releases.
Andrew: MDM, Cloud Data Quality, Cloud Data Governance, Cloud Mass Ingestion and Cloud Application Integration.
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MDM is undervalued in projects where it should be considered the first step of discovery before design. My experience has been that security and MDM are an oversight in projects – often left until late and underbudgeted with the intent of “fixing” in subsequent releases. Instead, it should be the tool that enhances or replaces the traditional exploratory work prior to the design phase.
Looking back at the past 2 years, would you change any of the tools you used to migrate data to the cloud and why?
James: Looking back, leveraging Informatica’s IDMC solution would help to lower the total cost of ownership by consolidating various data management tools into one – leveraging the rich set of prebuilt connectors, templates and support for multi-cloud that customers can easily adopt, customize and re-use.
For example, Cloud Mass Ingestion as part of IDMC could have been utilized to migrate data quickly for an initial load from Source (such as Oracle DB, SQL server) to Target (Salesforce, Snowflake) through an easy-to-use 4 step wizard without the need for coding. It also offers schema-drift capabilities to help customers manage the changes in the schema automatically, and provides real-time monitoring on ingestion jobs with lifecycle management and alerting capabilities.
Andrew: Without a doubt I would shift design to no code/low code options for mass migration of data; particularly in design for clients with limited resources for support.?
This is a far better use of time for data engineers – what could be better than using templates and prebuilt solutions to add intelligence while passing on the patching and system support to a PaaS or Saas provider!?
Where possible, I’m moving data away from the traditional JDBC/ODBC database connections and refining the process to webservices and API. The nature of storage and the inclusion of NoSQL with relational databases, along with the vast amount of data from IoT, has made API and OpenAPI the most relevant shift in data integration in the last 10 years.
How do you see data management changing in the next 2, 5 and 8 years?
James: Data management will be a key focus as more organisations embark on their journey to cloud and take on a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud approach. This may introduce greater complexity, coupled with increasing regulations and compliance for data governance and protection.
Organisations will look for data management capabilities that can simplify and automate their data management requirements through recommendations made with AI and machine learning. There will also be increased uptake of advanced serverless offerings; leveraging serverless computing to process data integration pipelines without the need to manage hardware or software.
Andrew: In 2 years, vast amounts of data will continue to collect in data swamps, leading to inefficient machine learning models (either from stale data or the absence of relevant data). Providers of data management will further integrate data quality tools as the base of all integration tools, along with discovery of sources and further sharing of data with a broader market while being compensated. Statistical analysis of sources for relevance will become the norm. Discovery tools will compare what is available and then search marketplaces to fill gaps in reference data and incorporate the data with a micro transaction.
In 5 years, no project will begin, or online system exist, without extensive data governance.?Legislation like the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will have equivalence across the globe, and breaches will in effect cost more to companies than any initial development costs.
In 8 years, Skynet. If not a move back to private clouds, there will be more hyperscalers in the market. Some will focus predominantly on an economic or geographic region due to similar issues with government data and privacy.
All will use some form of Informatica model for IPU (i.e.: use any service you wish and pay by consumption).?Serverless and elastic will be built into all offerings and unknown to the consumer. Coding will not be gone, but will be more scripting to join old and new services.