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Enterprise Data Integration Reference Architecture Technical FAQs

Why did Sun create this Reference Architecture? Who will use it?
Is this a complete data warehouse/business intelligence solution? What else do customers need to implement data warehousing/business intelligence in their environment?
What additional information is available about Informatica and its products?

1.	Q.	Why did Sun create this Reference Architecture? Who will use it?

Sun created the Enterprise Data Integration Reference Architecture to help enterprises that want to implement a data warehouse to organize and utilize business data more effectively, institute cross-functional systems, and align IT and corporate goals. This Reference Architecture is designed to allow customers to create an environment for making informed decisions to compete successfully in a rapidly changing business environment.

This Reference Architecture addresses infrastructure technology requirements that are common to analytic solutions in many vertical markets such as financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, energy, and health care. Sun is working with systems integrators and consultants to use this Reference Architecture as the underlying technology framework for these vertical market solutions.

2.	Q.	Is this a complete data warehouse/business intelligence solution? What else do customers need to implement data warehousing/business intelligence in their environment?

No, this is not a complete data warehouse/business intelligence solution. The Enterprise Data Integration Reference Architecture addresses two main tiers of a complete data warehousing/business intelligence solution:

Operational Data Store (ODS) to integrate (extract/transform/cleanse/load) business data from a variety of sources, including legacy mainframes, ERP, SCM, OLTP, clickstream applications.
Data Warehouse (DW) to store and manage consolidated data, to run queries on it, and to make it available to various data marts. Customers can pick and choose from these tiers based on their needs.

Future Reference Architectures plan to address data marts for OLAP, business reporting and portal, and data mining to create a complete end-to-end data integration solution. Customers can implement this Reference Architecture as is, or change it depending on their business requirements, with service and support from Sun Professional Services and others.

3.	Q.	What additional information is available about Informatica and its products?

Informatica was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. More than 1,100 global customers, including more than half of the Fortune 100, use Informatica software products to integrate, analyze, and personalize critical business information to improve business performance and responsiveness. Informatica provides sales, support and professional services on a global basis. It has been a publicly traded company since Q2 1999 (Nasdaq: INFA). For more information, go to http://www.informatica.com/suninformatica/.

Informatica Corporation is a market-leading provider of e-business analytic software that enables companies to leverage business insight for competitive advantage. Informatica provides a suite of products that combine to create an Insight Network. An Insight Network offers an end-to-end solution for enterprise data management and analytics. It complements and leverages companies' existing transactional systems--such as ERP, CRM, supply chain management, procurement and eCommerce--enabling operational efficiencies and generating a wealth of data containing potential untapped business insight.

The Insight Network brings together an enterprise-class, industry-standard, data integration platform with the industry's only suite of cross-value chain analytic applications. A variety of vendors currently offer analytic applications that track and measure sales efficiency, customer service, advertising campaigns, supply chain logistics, and e-mail marketing, among others. Unlike these solutions, which provide "stovepipe" views of single business functions, Informatica solutions integrate and analyze customer, supplier, and business operations data to deliver comprehensive enterprise intelligence to anyone, anywhere, at any time. With the Insight Network, Informatica delivers unprecedented visibility across the extended value chains of today's complex enterprises.