Posted on

The CLAIRE-ion Call at Informatica World 2019: AI Needs Managed Data and Data Management Needs AI

Knowledge of the Past, Uncertainty of the Future

From May 20-23, Amalgam Insights attended Informatica World 2019, Informatica’s end user summit dedicated to the world of data management. Over the years, Informatica has transformed from a data integration and data governance vendor to a broad-based enterprise data management vendor offering what it calls the “Intelligent Data Platform,” consisting of data integration, Big Data Management, Integration Platform as a Service, Data Quality and Governance, Master Data Management,  Enterprise Data Catalog, and Data Security & Privacy. Across all of these areas, Informatica has built market-leading products with the goal of providing high-quality point solutions that can work together to solve broad data challenges.

To support this holistic enterprise data management approach, Informatica has developed an artificial intelligence layer, called CLAIRE, to support metadata management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence services that provide context, automation, and anomaly recognition across Informatica’s varied data offerings. And at Informatica World 2019, CLAIRE was everywhere as AI served as a core theme of the event.

CLAIRE was mentioned in Informatica’s Intelligent Cloud Services, automating redundant, manual data processing steps. It was in Informatica Data Quality, cleansing and standardizing incoming data. It was in Data Integration, speeding up the integration process for non-standard data. It was in the Enterprise Data Catalog, helping users to understand where data was going across their organization. And it was in Data Security, identifying patterns and deviations in user activities that could indicate suspicious behavior, while contextually masking sensitive data for secure use.

What’s meant by CLAIRE? It’s the name tying together all of Informatica’s automated smart contextual improvements across its Intelligent Data Platform, surfacing relevant data, information, and recommendations just-in-time throughout various parts of the data pipeline. By bringing “AI” to data management, Informatica hopes to improve efficiency throughout the whole process, helping companies manage the growing pace of data ingestion.

Please register or log into your Amalgam Insights Community account to read more.
Log In Register
Posted on

Informatica Prepares Enterprise Data for the Era of Machine Learning and the Internet of Things


From May 21st to May 24th, Amalgam Insights attended Informatica World. Both my colleague Tom Petrocelli and I were able to attend and gain insights on present and future of Informatica. Based on discussions with Informatica executives, customers, and partners, I gathered the following takeaways.

Informatica made a number of announcements that fit well into the new era of Machine Learning that is driving enterprise IT in 2018. Tactically, Informatica’s announcement of providing its Intelligent Cloud Services, its Integration Platform as a Service offering, natively on Azure represents a deeper partnership with Microsoft. Informatica’s data integration, synchronization, and migration services go hand-in-hand with Microsoft’s strategic goal of getting more data into the Azure cloud and shifting the data gravity of the cloud. Amalgam believes that this integration will also help increase the value of Azure Machine Learning Studio, which now will have more access to enterprise data.

Please register or log into your Amalgam Insights Community account to read more.
Log In Register
Posted on

28 Hours as an Industry Analyst at Strata Data 2017

grid-725269_640
grid-725269_640
grid-725269_640

Companies Mentioned: Aberdeen Group, Actian, Alation, Arcadia Data, Attunity, BMC, Cambridge Semantics, Cloudera, Databricks, Dataiku, DataKitchen, Datameer, Datarobot, Domino Data Lab, EMA, HPE, Hurwitz and Associates, IBM, Informatica, Kogentix, LogTrust, Looker, < MesoSphere, Micro Focus, Microstrategy, Ovum, Paxata, Podium Data, Qubole, SAP, Snowflake, Strata Data, Tableau, Tamr, Tellius, Trifacta.

Last week, I attended Strata Data Conference at the Javitz Center in New York City to catch up with a wide variety of data science and machine learning users, enablers, and thought leaders. In the process, I had the opportunity to listen to some fantastic keynotes and to chat with 30+ companies looking for solutions, 30+ vendors presenting at the show, and attend with a number of luminary industry analysts and thought leaders including Ovum’s Tony Baer, EMA’s John Myers, Aberdeen Group’s Mike Lock, and Hurwitz & Associates’ Judith Hurwitz.

From this whirwind tour of executives, I took a lot of takeaways from the keynotes and vendors that I can share and from end users that I unfortunately have to keep confidential. To give you an idea of what an industry analyst notes, following are a short summary of takeaways I took from the keynotes and from each vendor that I spoke to:

Keynotes: The key themes that really got my attention is the idea that AI requires ethics, brought up by Joanna Bryson, and that all data is biased, which danah boyd discussed. This idea that data and machine learning have their own weaknesses that require human intervention, training, and guidance is incredibly important. Over the past decade, technologists have put their trust in Big Data and the idea that data will provide answers, only to find that a naive and “unbiased” analysis of data has its own biases. Context and human perspective are inherent to translating data into value: this does not change just because our analytic and data training tools are increasingly nuanced and intelligent in nature.

Behind the hype of data science, Big Data, analytic modeling, robotic process automation, DevOps, DataOps, and artifical intelligence is this fundamental need to understand that data, algorithms, and technology all have inherent biases as the following tweet shows:

Please register or log into your Amalgam Insights Community account to read more.
Log In Register
Posted on

Informatica Unleashes AI, Brand, Cloud, and Data-Driven Disruption at Informatica World 2017

New Informatica Brand for New Informatica Aspirations
New Informatica Brand for New Informatica Aspirations
New Informatica Brand for New Informatica Aspirations

Amalgam Insights (AI) recently attended Informatica World 2017, where executives, partners, and customers provided backing for Informatica’s ability to support “The Disruptive Power of Data,” (an Informatica-trademarked phrase) as well as its positioning as the Enterprise Cloud Data Management leader.

Please register or log into your Amalgam Insights Community account to read more.
Log In Register