Redwood City, CA — March 31, 2003 — Business analytics specialist Informatica today announced support for the Linux operating system for its data integration, warehouse analytics and business intelligence solutions.
The support built into the PowerCenter, Warehouse and PowerAnalyzer applications makes Informatica the first supplier to offer an end-to-end Linux solution for the entire business analytics stack, the provider claimed.
Linux is gaining ground in enterprise computing for its ability to add flexibility to information technology architectures and to reduce the costs of those architectures. Many Global 2000 companies are adopting the open-source Linux as a platform for enterprise applications.
"We are excited to take advantage of the momentum in the industry toward Linux," said Girish Pancha, senior vice president of products at Informatica.
Pancha said the move would allow companies to implement Informatica while leveraging the cost and flexibility advantages of the Linux operating system. "Customers can now host their entire analytic solution stack — from data integration to business intelligence — on a broad range of Linux-based servers, ensuring a lower total cost of ownership," Pancha said.
For example, Informatica said that while its "cluster-aware" PowerCenter and PowerAnalyzer applications provide for scalability throughout an enterprise, Linux provides cost-effective support for that scalability by making it easy to add low-cost computing power to Informatica implementations.
David O'Neill, vice president information technology at ING DIRECT Canada, a subsidiary of ING Groep N.V., one of the world's largest financial services companies, said his company has been awaiting a Linux version of PowerAnalyzer to support its critical call center analytics operations.
"Everyday, Linux attracts stronger enterprise support for its ability to reduce IT infrastructure costs, which is particularly beneficial in areas such as analytics, where you're looking to achieve broad deployment and need to crunch through ever larger volumes of data," O'Neill explained.
PowerCenter with support for Linux is available now. Linux-certified support for PowerAnalyzer will be available by end of the second quarter, with the release of PowerAnalyzer 4. Pricing will be consistent with the Windows NT versions of both products.
