PowerAnalyzer Competes

Informatica pursues BI identity

Well known for data-movement and integration technologies, important business intelligence (BI) underpinnings, Informatica Corp. positioned itself to compete in the larger BI market with its release of PowerAnalyzer 4.0.

This analytic platform now focuses on ease of use through Excel spreadsheet and Web-browser integration and by exploiting guided analyses and personas that tailor software functions to the needs of various classes of end users. The software also delivers facilities essential to business performance management applications: metric management, key performance indicator creation, dashboard displays, and scorecarding and other leading methodologies (such as Six Sigma) support.

Informatica's data and application-server integration, its provision of Java, XML, portal, and Web-service application programming interfaces, and support for Excel, Web-browser, and mobile clients are designed to ease the software's introduction into enterprise computing and business environments.

Although spreadsheet integration is not unique in the BI market, Informatica takes a step beyond competitors with the ability to embed Excel functions within the PowerAnalyzer interface, direct data export to pivot tables, on-demand updates, and spreadsheet-template upload. PowerAnalyzer dashboard interfaces are similar to those offered by competing BI vendors.

The analytics dimension features conventional query and reporting and online analytic processing-style slice-and-dice analysis, and also optional packaged modules for CRM, financial, HR, supply chain, and cross-functional analysis. Its ability to visually model analytic workflows is one that's not yet common. It's intended to facilitate root-cause analysis, although this capability appears to be limited by the packaged analytic framework and other architectural strictures. For example, the highly promoted Excel support doesn't include database write-back. It also lets analysts embed business logic in private spreadsheets rather than in a repository, which can prove limiting when logic locked in a spreadsheet isn't visible to the workflow modeler and other non-Excel interface elements. Last, PowerAnalyzer delivers only the mainstream data-analysis functions that are found in competing BI tools, underscoring Informatica's view that integration and usability rather than analytic depth are the keys to market share.

PowerAnalyzer 4.0 is a credible entry in the larger BI market and will prove compelling for organizations that require an easy, nondisruptive path for integrating mainstream analytics into an existing computing environment.

— Seth Grimes

Seth Grimes [grimes@altaplana.com] authors the Decision Support column.

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