The Dozen 2004Informatica Corp.Redwood City, Calif.Call it addition by subtraction: Informatica found a way to get its groove back. Looking to break out, the data integration specialist had sent its fleet, with great fanfare, into the young but promising analytic applications market. Becalmed and watching its treasure dissipate, the company humbly turned back and resolved to become more aggressive in pursuit of its original mission. With corporate governance, enterprise visibility, and customer data integration drawing heavy interest, Informatica arrived home in the nick of time to fend off close rival Ascential Software and emerging BI/integration combinations from Business Objects, among others. The company acquired Striva to take its case directly into mainframe environments. And then it produced one of the most interesting software releases of the year: SuperGlue. A key part of Informatica's "adaptive infrastructure" vision, SuperGlue offers visual BI analysis and standards-based management of heterogeneously sourced metadata, including from ERP systems. In the words of Ventana Research's Jack Hafeli, Informatica "affected the marriage of a BI solution with the company's core technical metadata and data integration 'roots.'" Speaking of BI, Informatica's other big release in 2003 was PowerAnalyzer4. The product of extensive R&D, Informatica produced an innovative user environment that can support the performance management essentials. What's next? An overhaul of its flagship PowerCenter is just over the horizon.
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