>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE,
covering Informatica World 2018.
Brought to you by Informatica.
>> Okay, welcome back everyone.
This is theCUBE, here at Informatica World 2018
in Las Vegas.
CUBE's exclusive coverage.
I'm John Furrier, here for the wrap-up
of day two of Informatica World,
wrapping up the show coverage.
Peter Burris has been my co-host all week,
chief analyst at Wikibon.org, SiliconANGLE and theCUBE.
And Jim Kobielus, lead researcher on AI analytics,
big data for Wikibon, SiliconANGLE and theCUBE as well.
Guys, let's kind of analyze and dissect
what we heard from the conversations.
Peter and Jim, we heard from the customers,
we heard from the executive management, top partners
and top executives.
So interesting,
and Jim, you've been at the analyst one-on-ones,
the keynotes.
Good show, I thought it was well done,
the messaging, again, continuing the brand.
The 25th anniversary of Informatica.
Which, that's okay for me, but it's really
not 25 years old.
It's really like five years old.
When the private equity came in, they took the legacy
and made it new.
>> Well they're a continually renewed company.
They're a very different company from what they were
even ten years ago, and they've got
a fairly aggressive roadmap in terms of
evolving into the world of AI and so forth.
So they continually renew, as every vendor
that hopes to survive inflection points must.
>> Jim, what was your takeaway from your sessions?
I mean, you saw the keynote, you saw the messaging,
you had a chance to sit down one-on-one
and ask some tough questions.
You heard the hallway conversations amongst
the other analysts and customers.
What's your personal takeaway?
>> A personal takeaway is that Informatica
understands that their future must be in the cloud
and a subscription model.
That means they need to get closer to their
core established cloud partners,
Microsoft Azure,
AWS,
Google.
At this show, Microsoft, they had the most important
new announcements at this show,
were all about further integration of the
new ICCS, which is the Informatica--
>> Intelligent cloud service.
>> Integration and platform service offerings,
into the Azure cloud.
That was the most important new piece of news
in terms of enabling their customers,
they have many joint customers already,
to bring all of their Informatica assets
more completely into the Azure cloud.
That was quite important.
But there was of lot of showing from AWS here
on the main stage and so forth.
And we expect further deepening of their
Informatica footprint on AWS from those customers.
So a, Informatica's future and their customers'
future is in public clouds, and I think Informatica
knows that the prem-based deployments will decline
over time.
But this will be--
>> Still good now, so the migration--
>> Well it's a hybrid cloud store.
They have Informatica, a strong hybrid cloud store
in the same way that an IBM does,
or that a Hortonworks does,
because most of their customers will have
hybridized, multi-cloud models for deployment
of this technology for the long term, really,
with an emphasis on more public deployments,
and I think it's understood.
>> Peter, what's your thoughts?
You had some great observations and questions.
I was listening to you highlighted some of the
digital business imperatives that you've been
observing and researching and reporting on
with the team, but also these guys
have been doing it themselves.
Any takeaways from you on any change of landscape
on digital business, the role of data, the role
of the asset.
What's your thoughts on that?
>> Yeah, I think if we look at the 25 year history,
and Jim mentioned there've been a lot of inflection points.
The thing that's distinguished Informatica for years
is that it always was a company that sought to serve
underserved data requirements.
So it started out when relational database
was the rage, started out doing OLAP
and new types of analytics.
And then when the data warehouse became what it was
it became a data integration issue.
And you can kind of see Informatica's
always tried to be one step ahead of the needs
of hardcore data people.
And I think we're saying that here too.
They have got really, really smart people
that went private so that they could re-tool
the company and they are introducing
a portfolio that is very focused on
the next needs, the next rounds of needs
of data people.
>> That's a lot of cloud too.
>> They're a data pipeline power--
>> Well I would say they're a data pipeline
pure player, I think you're doing a--
>> The closest of anybody out there.
>> But I think the key thing is, right now,
they're at the vanguard of talking about data
as an asset, what it means to present
data as an asset, tools that should
provide for managing data as an asset.
And they have the pipeline and all
the other stuff, the catalog store
that they have is very tied to that.
The CLAIRE store that they have is very tied to that.
Data is very, very complex.
And often it takes an enormous
amount of manual labor.
>> I think they're checking the boxes
on some of the things that I've observed
over the years, going back to the early Adobe days
streaming data requires some machine intelligence,
obviously machine learning, AI, CLAIRE, check.
Ingestion of data, managing, getting it all
in an intelligent, not a data lake or data swamp,
in a fabric that's going to be horizontally scalable--
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> With APIs--
>> Well horizontally scalable actually means something,
it means expanding out through APIs
and finding new ways of leveraging data.
And I think we can make a prediction here
based on four years of being here,
that Informatica will probably be at the vanguard
of the next round of data needs.
So today, we're talking about cloud versus on-premise.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a year to two years
Informatica isn't talking more about how IoT data
gets incorporated--
>> And blockchain.
>> Yeah, IoT was not mentioned, nor was blockchain,
and I think those are kind of significant
deficiencies in terms of what we're hearing
at this show from Informatica in terms of
strategic--
>> Well hold on--
>> But I've think they've got a great team
and I expect to see more of that in coming years.
>> Well that's a double-edged sword,
when the hype's not there, they have
a lot of sizzle at stake.
>> When I say deficiencies, I mean in terms
of strategic discussions of where they're going.
I would have liked to have heard more
of Peter's discussion.
>> I would too, let's get to that in a second.
But I want to get your reaction
on the whole enterprise catalog piece.
Pretty much promoted by Jerry Held,
founder of INGRES, legend in the industry,
Bruce Chizen, really pumping that up.
Their quote was, "This is probably
"the most important product."
Now, is that a board perspective bias,
or is that really something that you guys believe?
>> That's really organic.
Metadata management is their core competency,
and really their core asset inside of
all their applications at Informatica,
and that's what the big data catalog
is all about.
It's not just a data catalog,
it's a metadata catalog for data discovery
and so forth.
Everything that is done inside of the
Informatica portfolio requires a central
metadata repository, and I think
we at Wikibon, in our recent report
on the big data market, focused on the big data catalog
as being one of the key pieces of infrastructure
going forward in multi-cloud.
You know, there's not just Informatica,
there's Alation, and there's Codero, Hortonworks
and IBM and others that are going deep
on their big data catalogs.
>> So you see that's a flagship product
for these companies.
>> Well let's put it this way,
AI has been around since the late 1940s.
The algorithms for doing AI have been around,
'40s, '50s.
The algorithms have been around for years.
But the point is, what's occurred recently
is the introduction of technology
that can actually run these algorithms,
that can actually sustain the algorithms
against very large volumes of data.
So the technology's gotten to the point
where you can actually do some of this stuff.
The catalog concept has been around
for as long as database managers have been around.
The problem was you could only build a catalog
for just that database manager.
The promise of building enterprise-wide catalogs,
that dream has been in place for years.
One of the worst two days of my life
was flying back from Japan, into New York,
and sitting in an IBM information model meeting
for analysts.
It was absolutely--
>> Was that the 40s or 50s?
(laughter)
>> That was in the 80s.
It was absolute hell.
But the point is that Informatica is now--
>> You were the prodigy.
>> Yeah, I was a prodigy.
Informatica is now bringing together
a combination of technologies, including CLAIRE,
to make it possible to actually do catalog
in a very active way.
And that's trend setting.
>> I think they're right too.
I think that's clearly, they make a good product
because I've got to say, you know, watching them
for five years.
This is our fourth year coming to Informatica World.
Our first meeting with Anil, when he was
chief product officer, was 2014 and so
we've seen the progression.
They're right on track, and I think they have
an opportunity with IoT and blockchain,
but the question I want to ask you guys is,
this event of about 4,000 people, not a huge
big data show, but it's really all about data.
There's no distractions.
The fact that they can't even get a lot
of IoT airtime means that there's been
a lot of core discussions.
>> They're really focused.
>> This is not like a Strata--
>> No.
>> Where everyone's marketing some tool or platform.
>> These guys are down and dirty with the products.
>> They are really focused on their core opportunities,
and like Peter was saying, they're really focused,
they're the premier, I see the data pipeline
solution or platform vendor.
The data pipeline is the center
of the AI revolution.
And so in many ways, all of the forces,
all of the trends have converged
to the advantage of Informatica as being the
core, go-to vendor for a complete data pipeline
for all your requirements,
including machine learning development.
>> There's one more thing.
We didn't hear blockchain, we didn't hear IoT,
although I bet you there's a lot of conversation,
one-on-ones between customers and Informatica
about some of those things.
But there's one other thing we didn't hear,
which I think is very telling,
and speaks to some of our trends.
We didn't hear open source.
Open source was not once mentioned on theCUBE,
except maybe you mentioned it once.
>> John: You're right.
>> Now, if we think about where the big data market
was forged, and where it was going to always remain,
was it was going to be this big, huge,
open-source play.
And that has not happened.
Informatica, by saying, "We're going to have
"a great individual product,
"and a great portfolio that works together,"
is demonstrating that the way to show
how the new compute model is going to work
is to take a coherent, integrated,
focused approach on how to do it.
>> It's interesting, I mean we could dissect this.
Open source is a great observation,
because is there really open source needed
if you have a pipeline thing?
I'd much rather have a discussion about
open data, which I think as your deal points to,
is getting into hybrid cloud as fast as possible
in a console.
To me, that's so much more powerful than open source.
>> Jim: Open APIs.
>> Open APIs where I can not get locked into Azure.
>> I think open source is still important,
but I'll bet you that the open source,
if you start looking at what these guys are doing
and others like them are doing,
my guess is that we'll see open source vendors
saying, "Oh, so that's how you're going to do catalog.
"Okay great, so let's take an open source approach
"to doing that."
And you know, Informatica's going to have to stay
in front of that.
>> They might be using some open source.
It might not be a top-line message.
But let's go the next level,
let's go critical analysis on Informatica.
What does Informatica need to do,
obviously they've got a tail wind,
they've got great timing with GDPR,
you couldn't ask for a better time to showcase
engineering data, governance and application
integration across clouds than now.
So they're in a good spot.
Where are they strong?
What do they need to work on?
>> Well okay, let's just focus on GDPR,
because it is three days from now
for that compliance date.
GDPR, I mean, Informatica's had some good
announcements at this show and prior to this show,
in terms of tools for discovery of all your PII
and so forth, so you can catalog it
in the big data catalog.
What needs to be built up by them
and other vendors as well,
is a more fully fleshed-out, GDPR compliance
platform, or portfolio, or ecosystem.
There's a lot of things that are needed,
like a standardized consent portal
so your customers can go in, look up their PII
in your big data catalog and indicate
their consent or their withdrawal of consent
for you to use particular pieces of data.
Hortonworks a few weeks ago at their data works in Berlin,
they made an announcement related to such a portal.
What I'm getting at is that more vendors,
including this, every big data catalog vendor
needs to have in their portfolio, and will,
and I predict within the next two years,
a consent portal as one of several
important components to enable not just
GDPR compliance, but really compliance
with any such privacy--
>> A subject portal that offers consent
but then is verified.
>> Jim: For example, but it needs
to be open source.
>> Here's what I'll say, John.
And we had a conversation about it with Amil,
the present chief product officer.
I think that if
Informatica, similar to what we think,
is on the right path, the world is moving
to an acknowledgment that data
has to be treated as an asset.
That tooling is required so that you can do so.
And that you have to re-institutionalize work,
re-organize work, and re-think, culturally,
what it means to use data as an asset.
>> With penalties down the road, obviously on the horizon.
>> Well there are penalties, and you know,
proximate like GDPRs, but also you're out of business
if you don't do these kinds of penalties.
But one of the things that's going to determine what's
going to gate their growth is how many people
will actually end up utilizing these technologies?
And so if I were to have one thing that I think
they absolutely have to do,
we're coming out of a world that's focused on
we use process, and process models and process-oriented
tools to build applications.
We're moving into a world where we use data,
data methods, data models to build applications.
This notion of a data-first world
as opposed to a process-first world,
Informatica has to take a lead on what it means
to be data-first, tooling for data-first,
building applications that are data-first,
and very importantly, that's how you're going to grow
your user base.
>> Sajit was talking about data value,
data value chains
or whatever it's called.
>> Supply chains.
>> Data supply chains.
I think there's going to be a series
of data supply chains
that are going to be well-formed, well-defined,
and ones that are going to be dynamic.
Seeing it happening now.
>> And actually that's an interesting discussion,
data value chains, data supply chains,
but really, data monetization chains.
The whole GDPR phenomenon is that
your customer's PI is their property,
and that you need their consent to use it,
and to the extent that they give you consent.
On some level, the customer's expecting
a return of value to them.
You know, maybe monetization.
Maybe they make money,
but more enterprises have to start thinking
of data as a product.
And then they need to license the IP
from whoever owns it.
>> Peter: This is a huge issue.
>> And vendors like Informatica need to understand
that phenomenon and bake it, as it were,
into their solution portfolio.
>> Either they're going to be on the right side
of history on that, or the wrong side,
because you're right and you just highlighted
Peter's point, which is that data direction,
not the process, to your point.
>> Data first.
>> If I own the data, it's got to be very dynamic.
Okay, my final comment would be, and I mentioned
this last night when we were talking,
is that I think that things are clicking for them.
I think they've got tail winds,
I think they're smart enough on the product side.
The trend is their friend.
They've got the clould deals in place.
They're in a nice layer in the stack
where they can be that Switzerland.
You've got storage vendors underneath,
there's a nice data layer, so in the position,
with coming over the top cloud-native Kubernetes
and containers--
>> This is going to get messy fast.
>> John: I didn't hear Kubernetes at all this show.
>> Hold on, let me finish.
This is going to be a robust Switzerland model
where I don't think they can handle
the onboarding of partners.
I think they have a lot of partners now
from their standpoint,
but I think they might have an AWS factor
where they're going to have to start thinking
really hard about how to be efficient
about onboarding partners.
To your point about adoption,
this is going to be a huge issue
that could make or break them.
They could scale the partnership model
through the APIs,
they could have a robust ecosystem.
That could show us 15,000--
>> If they could be a magnet brand inside Azure,
or a magnet brand inside AWS
for how you think about building new classes of value,
applications and others,
with a data-first approach,
then a lot of interesting things could happen.
>> Yeah, they could be a magnet brand
to avoid getting disintermediated
by their public cloud partners
because Microsoft's got a portfolio
they could place with theirs.
AWS has built one.
>> Everybody wants this.
>> Yeah, everybody wants them.
>> Guys, great job.
Peter, great to host with you.
Jim, great to have you on, making an appearance
in between your meetings, one-on-ones
and the analyst stuff.
>> I'm a busy man.
>> That's theCUBE here, wrapping up day two
of coverage here at Informatica World 2018.
The trend is their friend.
Data's at the center of the value proposition,
and more strategic ever, data engineering,
governance, application.
This is all happening right now.
Regulations on the horizon.
A cultural shift happening.
And we're out here in the open doing it,
sharing the data with you.
Thanks for watching Informatica World 2018.
(energetic music)