Recently, I had the opportunity to attend Informatica World 2022 (IW22) in Las Vegas. Returning to the in-person conference scene caused some apprehension; however, reflecting on takeaways and engaging in discussions around data integration made this trip a worthwhile experience. I want to thank IW22 for a thought-provoking week of discussions centered on data management, data integration, interoperability, artificial intelligence, and navigating a complex, hybrid, multi-cloud digital environment with Informatica experts, sponsors, and customers.
Landscape of data integration is changing
A key theme during the week was driving digital transformation in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment in an ever-changing world. Every business is embarking on digital transformation. However, many companies struggle with where to begin the journey or even how to define digital transformation for their organization. A critical foundation to any digital transformation initiative is a data management strategy for integration to support and drive application modernization efforts.
How AI is changing data integration
Another key theme that directly ties into digital transformation is the importance of artificial intelligence to drive intelligent automation of data integration. IW22 showcased CLAIRE, with the AI in the name to represent the use of machine learning models to automate data integration models, saving data scientists valuable time and resources and reducing implementation times to days, which would historically take months. Data management now becomes a powerful tool to drive business insights, increase business agility, and deliver on business outcomes.
How AI can drive intelligent automation by industry
One of the more engaging discussions I had throughout the week was with Richard Cramer, Informatica’s Chief Healthcare Strategist. We both experienced the pain, as many have, of living through healthcare reform and seeing the challenges of healthcare organizations moving from archaic systems to electronic health records. Reflecting on the challenges healthcare organizations faced given the technology landscape of ten years ago was monumental. In today’s landscape, technology is built on a hybrid, multi-cloud environment and a nearly seamless ability for data integration. This enables interoperability across platforms and applications, which can be accomplished in a fraction of the time at significantly reduced cost, resources, and infrastructure. Previously, accomplishing the same tasks took largescale health organizations years to accomplish with unfathomable budgets.
There was in interesting discussion amongst attendees at IW22 about data integration and interoperability, and whether vendors have specific industry offerings. Informatica’s IDMC for industry does serve as a valuable offering, as reflected on in my discussion with Richard Cramer. There’s no question that every industry needs to rely on data integration and interoperability. However, there are specific industry nuances that can drive AI models in integration to achieve automated results. Richard and I reflected on how machine learning models and intelligent automation could have been incredibly impactful to the healthcare industry even just ten years ago.
The rapid pace of change in the digital world and the transformation of technology to meet these demands never cease to amaze me. What would take many data scientists working for months to accomplish can now be done with little to no code in minutes with advances like Informatica’s Cloud Mass Ingestion Services to automate data integration built for a multi-could environment.
Final thoughts
As we venture back to the in-person conference scene, there’s an internal struggle between the anxiety of being in a sea of thousands of people and the opportunity to see and learn from a wide variety of experts and practitioners in the field. IW22 was certainly a blend of anxiety and excitement. However, as the conference kicked off, the anxiety quickly faded and the wealth of information that came from being in person quicky became apparent and welcoming.
