Data Mart specialist Informatica Corp, of Menlo Park, has finally fleshed out the grand Enterprise Data Mart (EDM) strategy it unveiled in August (CI No 3,232) in the form of actual software, as opposed to the vision thing previously embodied in the ‘Tornado’ code name. The company claims the upgrade of two products and the introduction of two completely new ones builds on its aim to enable Data Mart customers to glide into the future in the shape of distributed Data Warehouses. The two upgraded offerings are PowerPlugs, a set of third party API (application programming interface) that allow third party products to plug in to the EDM (though so far only two, one for Sybase Inc PowerDesigner (formerly S-Designor) and Logic Works Inc’s ERWin, are ready for release); and version 4.0 of the company’s flagship PowerMart data Mart builder and manager. The new products, on the other hand, are PowerCenter, an ambitious true enterprise level piece of software for networking and centrally managing Warehouses, and rev 1.1 of PowerCapture, a product for ‘real-time’ capture and refreshment of incremental database changes from an operational system into a Data Warehouse.
Steep price
PowerCenter offers a wide range of functionality, including heterogeneous joins, global metadata sharing, repository object sharing or re-use, distributed server management and native mainframe support, the latter – as well as the steep price point of $225,000 – surely confirming Informatica is really serious about climbing up the decision support food chain. PowerMart, available in stand alone or networked editions, offers many of the same features, along with a component based GUI interface and additional user security features. Available the first quarter of 1998, all products will run on Windows NT and a set of Unixes including HP-UX, AIX and Solaris. The firm, founded in 1993, is now up to 120 customers worldwide, with over 40 production reference accounts, and is believed to be exploring an IPO early next year.
