Informatica, Microsoft And Print Market Invincibility

Informatica is talking up a new version of PowerCenter -- it's up to version 8 now -- and you should read up on some of the new-fangled data integration goodies they're including on this release.Particularly fancy in my book is PowerCenter 8's "pushdown optimization," which lets companies push data processing literally down into the database itself. This is about scalability, folks. This is different than PowerCenter 7, which exclusively drew data out of the database and processed it.

"I've been here with the company and seen five different releases, and this one is by far the most important," I was told by Informatica VP of product marketing Ivan Chong, who seems like a reliable enough fellow. Though I can't imagine any software VP of marketing saying, "To tell you the truth, this new release isn't nearly as awesome as the last one. Dude, that was the one that really rocked."

One quick note: An exec at a prominent research firm put in a quick retort to my friend's statement that Microsoft never loses. Not so, the analyst says: "...when I was at Adobe, that company successfully fended off Microsoft’s assault on the printing and DTP market. Although not without some changes to the market. But Adobe is still around and thriving. So, Microsoft, while powerful," he says, "is not invincible."

I suppose there are a few folks at Google who'd agree with you whole-heartedly on that particular point.