Getting value out of data integration

One of the standard metrics used to support buying decisions for enterprise software is total cost of ownership. Typically, the other major metric is functionality. However functionality is ephemeral. Not only does it evolve with every new release but while particular features may be relevant to today’s project there is no guarantee that those same features will be applicable to tomorrow’s needs. A broader metric than functionality is capability: how suitable is this product for a range of different project scenarios and will it support both simple and complex environments?

Earlier this year Bloor Research published some research into the data integration market, which exactly investigated these issues: how often were tools reused, how many targets and sources were involved, for what sort of projects were products deemed suitable? And then we compared these with total cost of ownership figures that we also captured in our survey. I will be discussing the results of our research live with Kristin Kokie, who is the interim CIO of Informatica, on Guy Fawkes’ day (November 5th). I don’t promise anything explosive but it should be interesting and I hope you can join us. The discussions will be vendor neutral (mostly: I expect that Kristin has a degree of bias). For registration see http://now.informatica.com/14Q4-Wbr-NA-BTalk-DI-BloorResearchNov5_basic-landing-page.html.