Informatica kicked off their main user conference, Informatica World, in San Francisco on Monday, May 24th, 2016. The focus of this conference was on the maturation of the Big Data market. Neuralytix believes that the Big Data market has matured to the point where vendors will need to be begin to demonstrate business results.
Further, given the state of the Big Data market, these business results will have to evolve beyond the three typical business cases that have become very common in this market, specifically, gaining a 360° of the customers, using Big Data to identify fraud and risk management, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. While these are all valuable business cases, the winners over the next several years will understand and harness the power of data and analytic insights to move beyond these cases.
Traditionally, Informatica has focused their marketing message on the IT department. The reason for this is historically data management has been the domain of IT. Data management has not been seen as a driver of business value the same way that business applications have been. However, with the rise of advanced analytics, data is increasingly becoming seen as a key driver of business value. A majority of executives now view their data as a key strategic asset. The problem is that when asked how they will use the data to drive results, most executives tend to default to the three most common use cases mentioned above. While these use cases are important they do not represent the majority of uses for Big Data and analytics.
So, as the market evolves and Big Data and analytics move from the IT department to the business unit, most vendors, Informatica included, are trying to expand their messaging to stress business value. Compared to last year’s conference, Neuralytix noticed a dramatically increased focus on solutions over product features. We believe that this is the direction that Informatica needs to follow, and encouragingly, Informatica is demonstrating they understand this as well. While we are encouraged by the progress, it is important to note that the transformation from a highly technical focused marketing message, to a more balanced message that augments the technical marketing with a business focus is a long process that Informatica has just begun.
To continue the transformation, we believe that Informatica needs to highlight the breadth of the capabilities of their data solutions. So while all companies need a better view of their customers, the marketing cannot focus exclusively on this one use case. Customers data needs are unique to them and highly vertically dependent. To appeal to these customers, Informatica will need to highlight the vast variety of applications for their products. The goal of this type of marketing is not to demonstrate to customers that they have solved their unique problems but to show the breadth of applications they have addressed to convince them whatever their unique needs are, Informatica has products and solutions that can address them.