Getting the Vibe to change

Change can be one of the more frightening events in the life of company IT staff. Many are still afraid of a move to cloud-based services rather than on-premise technology, and more are concerned with the potential for change, for example a change in service provider or addition of a new service, that the cloud can make possible.

Takebig data analytics as an example. Its potential benefits to business are obvious, but it is just one area where users might want to move their applications as new, more appropriate services become available. Yet moving them can be a real problem, as it often means re-architecting them to fit a new environment.

One solution is to restrict the choice to a fairly standard, commoditised platform – and that is not difficult to do these days. But even here there can be differences in detailed architecture can lead to redeployment problems.

On the other side of that coin the ability to integrate different applications and services provided by the cloud offers some interesting new possibilities as the range of integration tools and number of applications that can be integrated continues to grow. This is particularly the case with applications and service developments, as it allows new ways for users to create and deploy services. It means, for example, that new services can be created at a much higher level of abstraction than traditional code-cutting.

One such is Vibe, from integration tools specialist, Informatica. This approaches the creation of applications and services from the logic underpinning the code and using it as the map for applications that can then be redeployed as and where required. In essence, the approach is to provide tools that allow users to build a logic map of the application, which can then be embedded as a Virtual Data Machine in a growing range of next generation applications that are now being designed with integration in mind.  

This allows users to take advantage of ever-evolving data integration technologies and innovations without having to recode. Instead, they are able to harness data in applications, business processes and connected devices.                     

Informatica’s way of looking at this is as a “Map Once. Deploy Anywhere” approach, which provides the ability to access, aggregate and manage data regardless of type, source, volume, compute platform or user – without recoding – and the aim is to make this regardless of how quickly and unpredictably the technological environment evolves.

“Today organizations are looking to unleash their potential by quickly turning raw data into intellectual property they can use for business advantage,” said Marge Breya, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Informatica. “Vibe transforms our customers from simply managing data as an asset into organizations which use information integration as a strategic competitive advantage to build and expand their business.”

The VDM concepts underpinning Vibe have been an integral component of the Informatica Platform since its inception. It works by separating the data integration instructions, which map out the business logic for handling data, from the underlying execution technology.

Put simply, users need to map the logic just once and then deploy it, either on-premise or in the cloud, on Hadoop, in batch or real-time, all without having to make code changes.

The “Map Once. Deploy Anywhere.” capabilities can allow users to take advantage of new data and technologies without knowing details of the underlying platform, or hire specialised and costly programming resources. By definition, this gives users insulation from change.

Informatica sees Vibe being used in a number of ways, such as being an automatic bridge for data movement between virtual an physical environments, developing Hadoop integration jobs without knowing Hadoop, and enabling hybrid infrastructures with cloud and on-premise integration.