ICC Master Class Education Series

Integrating data and processes in an organization is essential – but it’s hard work and requires experienced staff. Integration is essential for a number of reasons including:

• Elimination of unnecessary complexity arising from past mergers or acquisitions
• Rationalization of duplicate and redundant data from siloed solutions
• Government mandated regulatory standards
• Board-mandated governance, information security or disaster-recovery requirements
• Business need for a “single version of the truth”
• Marketing need for business intelligence concerning a 360-degree view of the customer

As important as it is for organizations to integrate their systems, it is hard to achieve because it runs head-on into a host of organizational and legacy issues such as:

• Conflicting goals between organization functions
• Inconsistent data definitions embedded in application software from different vendors
• Incompatible architectures between systems
• Poor or non-existent documentation for legacy systems
• Lack of funding to “clean up” the fragmented infrastructure
• Conflicting project schedules and priorities that prevent team alignment

So if integration is critically important but hard to do, what can you do? Either hire an expert or become an expert yourself. Wikipedia defines Master Class as “a class given to students of a particular discipline by an expert of that discipline.”

The Informatica ICC Master Class education series is designed for those organizations or individuals who want to increase their level of integration competence to a level of mastery. Organizations that do so will realize a competitive advantage in their industry. Individuals that do so will see their value to the organization increase so that they can take on new and greater challenges.

The ICC Master Class series are workshop-style (i.e. interactive with group exercises) training sessions with the following characteristics:

• Have entry criteria – these are not “beginner” sessions. The expectation is that students know the basics in advance either through study or practice (ideally both).
• 2 days in length – shorter sessions don’t allow sufficient time to get into the subject matter in sufficient detail for a “master” – and longer sessions start to get too detailed and specific for a mixed audience.
• Group size of 10-20 – less than 10 is too small for group dynamics and workshop exercises and more than 20 is too large for the instructors to spend sufficient time coaching individuals.
• Two instructors per session – no one knows it all, so it’s important to have at least two people to provide a broad perspective, introduce some variety, maintain a high energy level, and provide individual attention.
• Subject focus – the ICC discipline has a number of sub-specialties each of which demand expert attention and typically have different students. The current series targeted for 2008 includes:
  1. Management and Strategy, this session is technology-neutral and is targeted at IT executives or executive-facing staff.
  2. Architecture and Operations, this session is targeted at architecture and integration staff that work with Informatica products and other supplier products.