Informatica World 2021 – The Recap
Every year, Informatica World is full of big announcements, technology innovation, and exciting industry insights and moments. Informatica World has come to be lovingly referred to as the industry’s event on data and data management, with the backdrop of the latest technology trends – such as cloud and AI.
But Informatica World 2021 tops everything – by miles. During the months of planning, it was clear this would be a great event, but I think we actually surprised everyone, including ourselves, with how great. I could see from the reactions in the event chat that people were excited, impressed, inspired, and at times, even moved to tears (yes, at a virtual conference – more on that later).
Let’s start at the top.
Launch of the Industry’s First Intelligent Data Management Cloud
Those watching on Day One saw our CEO Amit Walia introduce Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC), the industry’s first and most comprehensive cloud-native and AI-powered data management platform.
At over 22 trillion cloud transactions per month, the Intelligent Data Management Cloud delivers the enterprise scale you need. And with over 200 cloud-native intelligent data services, you can catalog, ingest, integrate, prep, cleanse, master, and share all of your data, wherever it is, process it in any way you want, ensure its trusted and democratized on a foundation of governance, while delivering intelligent insights with a 360-degree view of your business.
IDMC is every cloud-native intelligent data service you will ever need for data management—at scale and in the cloud – in a single platform
You have an infrastructure cloud, an analytics cloud, an applications cloud, a database cloud, a data warehouse and lake cloud – but you don’t have a cloud for end-to-end data management. That is, until this week. True digital transformation requires a data management cloud to put data at the center of your digital transformation. With IDMC, the wait is finally over.
Big Announcements with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud
You also saw the strength of our partner ecosystem on display. Informatica is the only independent and neutral cloud data management company that partners at a strategic level, with all three hyper-scalers. At Informatica World you had a chance to hear from all three as Amit held conversations with Charlie Bell from AWS, Rohan Kumar from Azure, and Debanjan Saha from Google. And we made several key announcements:
- Data governance and catalog-as-a-service on AWS: Specifically designed to empower customers with trusted data, this is the most comprehensive cloud-native data governance, quality, and catalog SaaS solution on AWS.
- A FREE cloud data integration service on Microsoft Azure: The new Cloud Data Integration Free Service lowers the barriers and cost to cloud by helping you get started quickly and easily with IDMC on Azure.
- Intelligent data management for large-scale analytics on Google Cloud: Now you can reach higher levels of productivity and scale for high volumes of enterprise data with Informatica’s Cloud Data Integration (CDI) Elastic on Google Cloud, including support for Databricks.
Industry Trends, Innovators, and Inspiration
The rest of Day One was jam-packed. Mark Beyer, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner took us through data management market trends. Data leaders from Charles Schwab, Eli Lilly, and New York City Health & Hospitals shared their real-world stories of how Informatica is helping them transform with data. Tembi Sibanda of Peloton took us inside this exciting data-driven company and earned virtual applause with her advice to “test, test, test.” Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, fired up the audience with her challenge to close the gender gap in tech and increase diversity.
Baseball legend and investor Alex Rodriguez made us feel right at home with him, speaking insightfully about the role of data in both his sports and business careers, and on a lighter note, revealing the food he’d want to have with him on a desert island.
And a huge shout-out to all our 2021 Innovation Award winners, including Intelligent Disruptor of the Year, Unilever. You can see all of these amazing companies in this short social video clip.
Throughout, host Eva Saha kept things moving with skillful interviews that brought out key insights and warm conversational moments from guests.
I mentioned at the beginning that this Informatica World was about more than just amazing technology. It was also about connecting and celebrating resilience, especially after this difficult year for so many.
Our closing keynote speaker, Sekou Andrews, CEO and Founder of SekouWorld Inc., took us all on an incredible journey, probing what we mean by growth, questioning “the next level,” and challenging us to go deeper. It was truly transformational and very moving. When you have attendees saying that they brought their kids in to watch his remarks, you know you’re not at your usual tech conference.
Informatica World wrapped up with roundtables and the Next-Generation Enterprise Architecture Summit. Now, I invite all of you to take a deeper look at IDMC at our upcoming Spring launch as we showcase innovations across data warehouse and lake modernization; application modernization; data governance, privacy and cataloging; Business 360; and CLAIRE/AI. Register for the event in your region (North America and Latin America, EMEA, and APJ).
Thank you for watching and see you next year at Informatica World 2022!