Cloud as a powerful platform has interested everybody by now, moreover some of the organizations have jumped a lot farther and are now providing end to end solutions based on cloud platform itself. Look at the types of salesforce.com, who provide a complete CRM package, all over the cloud.

With such services present on the cloud, how could the leader in the Data integration space lag behind in providing services for cloud. There comes Informatica, the undisputed leader in data integration space, with their cloud offering.

The latest release of Informatica Cloud Summer 2011 offers new features for management, IT control and security features designed specifically for firms that want SaaS and in-premise applications to integrate better. The number of such organizations is increasing exponentially. According to some research firms, the cost benefit of cloud or SaaS offerings is a big reason in fueling the growth of the the “hybrid IT” movement.

One of the most common examples of this would be the thousands of users of salesforce.com. Organizations that use CRM from salesforce.com, but have other systems in-premises. Such organizations need to get appropriate data from the cloud based application into their local systems for further processing. In such a scene, Informatica’s cloud offering comes in.

The cloud offering from Informatica provides a web based interface for building the “mapping”, the object that actually deals with attribute level transformations and validations in any data transformation flow. Informatica has quite a few plug-ins to address the specific needs of CRM data, which is even better for the organizations, since they don’t have to custom build such components. Overall, cost of development and maintenance of such a solution goes down considerably.

Informatica allow a rich interface to handle the task level detailing of such “mappings” that need to be run. For those who understand a bit of how Informatica tools work in a traditional setup, the cloud interface implements quite a lot of the features from mapping designer and workflow designer with much less hassle (most of the stuff intuitively provided for), and allows the integration by way of supporting complex pieces developed locally and then exported to the cloud interface.

Though the original ideas on Informatica cloud were inclined towards CRM, the platform has not achieved acceptance throughout the enterprise class software. Today there are plugins available from leading vendors like salesforce, SAP etc. With their MDM capabilities, Informatica is moving towards a much richer cloud integration.

Informatica Cloud Summer 2011: Summary of New Features and Functionality

According to Informatica, the new features of Informatica Cloud Summer 2011 include:

• Customizable Views that allow users to define queries based on personal preference and manage multiple cloud data integration tasks.
• Flexible Job Scheduling, enabling users to define blackout periods, such as non-business hours.
• REST API, allowing developers to perform data integration tasks from an external source to enable real-time cloud data integration.
• A Secure Agent Console Manager allows administrators to manage the security of all aspects of integration jobs which can be shared between on-premise and cloud deployments
• Informatica MDM Data Controls, allow Informatica MDM customers to embed the controls directly into cloud applications like Salesforce CRM to provide business user access to master data. .
• Fine-Grained Access Controls that allow Informatica Cloud administrators to establish role and group permissions and profiles.
• Multi Tenancy Management, allows customers to manage multiple Informatica Cloud instances.
• Two-Factor Authentication, would allow administrators to enforce IP range restrictions to allow controlled access only.
• Pre-built Connectivity on Informatica Marketplace, allowing customers to buy plugins directly from Informatica Mall

Quoting from their press release, “At Informatica, we’ve seen a major shift in cloud adoption, where IT organizations of all sizes are now working closely with the business to deploy cloud applications in the enterprise,” said Ron Papas, general manager, Informatica Cloud. “As a result, data integration, governance and security are increasingly becoming critical to successful cloud deployments. Informatica Cloud Summer 2011 will help enterprises effectively address these concerns in today’s dynamic hybrid IT environments.”