While a lot has been said about data-readiness and AI, the acquisition of Informatica by Salesforce is a jumping point for those concerns to be examined and addressed.
In this article, we cover:
- A bit on Informatica and why MDM
- Difference between MDM and Data Cloud (CDPs included)
- Informatica and Mulesoft
- How to think of Informatica in Data Cloud and Agentforce Architecture
Informatica and MDM background
Traditionally, Informatica was a pure-play ETL tool and still is one of the leaders in transforming data. Think of Mulesoft and Boomi largely in the same bucket. Take some data, transform it, read from and write data to a DW. However, an area that Informatica does very well is in managing Metadata and data lineage and that was a significant gap in the Salesforce ecosystem prior this acquisition. Fast forward and not many years ago, I encountered Informatica Cloud - essentially Informatica desktop now in the Cloud.
While Informatica could transform data - it was very much very custom work and every customer transformed data in their own way. To get to governed and trusted data, Informatica introduced MDM in 2010, to provide a single view of foundational business entities, commonly referred to as master data such as customers, employees, vendors, locations, products etc.. So combined with ETL functionalities and now MDM, an Informatica customer really did not have to look elsewhere to get governed data.
Differences between Data Cloud and MDM
Informatica and Mulesoft
In simple terms
- MuleSoft for API-led connectivity.
- Informatica for advanced data management capabilities. Excels in data integration, data governance, and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes.
Informatica’s role in Data Cloud and Agentforce Architecture
If we read through (above), on what Informatica does well, it’s going to come down to data-readiness and data quality. These are areas that Data Cloud is not focused on.
Therefore, I envision that Informatica MDM workflows shall get embedded in Salesforce, for how we clean, transform and govern data, ideally before or during data gets to Data Cloud and Agentforce.
Thus leading to the point you see in the news that Informatica MDM shall lead to better data for AI.
Another swim lane
If we get the data correct, transformed to the point where we can bring our ML models, these models can now run in Salesforce versus a customer running these in Snowflake or GCP to run these models.
Summary
While perceived as a strategic advantage for Agentforce and it’s very much applicable, in my opinion Informatica has a major play in transforming and governing data to create a “data foundation” in Data Cloud that may change the POV from a System of Reference to a Source of Truth (not to be interpreted as source of data).
What remains to be seen is who will own Informatica within the Salesforce ecosystem - IT or business, and how agile can the business be to transform the data and still maintain data governance.
