Informatica, Google Cloud Extend Strategic Relationship Through Tighter Data Integration Links

Two vendors leverage the Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services to make it possible to bring data from SAP applications into Google’s BigQuery analytics.

Google Cloud and data integration technology vendor Informatica are expanding their strategic partnership, the companies said Thursday, launching a go-to-market initiative to connect SAP applications with Google Cloud’s BigQuery analytics and making the Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS) available through the Google Cloud Marketplace.

The companies have also integrated Informatica’s Change Data Capture (CDC) software with Google Big Query.

“We want to make sure we’re providing best-in-class data transformation capabilities for our customers,” said Rik Tamm-Daniels, Informatica vice president of strategic ecosystems and technology, in an interview with CRN. “Our platform is optimized for hybrid environments.”

[Related: Alphabet Earnings: Google Cloud Revenue Run Rate Tops $12B]

Informatica and Google Cloud have had a strategic partnership for four years while Informatica and SAP have a technology relationship that goes back 22 years, Tamm-Daniels said. Informatica has also been working with a number of solution providers in the Google Cloud Acceleration Program, he added.

Informatica’s IICS is made up of a number of cloud-based data integration and data management products combined in a microservices-based Platform-as-a-Service. The system is used to ingest and integrate data between multiple systems – such as operational applications and data warehouse systems – and perform data governance and data quality management tasks.

Customers can now use IICS to develop and manage data integration links into Google BigQuery from on-premises and cloud-based SAP sources. That allows businesses and organizations to utilize data for data analysis and digital transformation tasks “and help customers get more value out of that data,” Tamm-Daniels said.

“The core of our focus is enabling the connection points between SAP and GCP,” he said. IICS connects a range of SAP software to BigQuery including the SAP S/4HANA suite of ERP applications and the legacy SAP ECC (Enterprise Central Component), the SAP HANA database and SAP Business Warehouse, and SAP cloud applications such as Concur.

“Businesses are increasingly looking to the cloud not only to run their existing SAP applications, but to begin to derive greater value out of their SAP data,” said Snehanshu Shah, managing director for SAP at Google Cloud, in a statement.

By making IICS available through the Google Cloud Marketplace, deployment and billing for the system is now fully integrated for Google Cloud customers and they can use Google Cloud credits to acquire IICS, according to the companies.

The new integration between Informatica Change Data Capture (CDC) and BigQuery means that CDC now supports BigQuery as a target system, making it easier for businesses and organizations to modernize their data warehouse systems by implementing CDC on Google Cloud.

The companies said that integration makes it easy to change default mapping running mode from batch to CDC, ensures accuracy and data recovery in case of job failure, and makes a wide range of data transformations and expressions available for users to implement their business logic and leverage the new integration capabilities within CDC workloads.

Informatica, Google and SAP partners all stand to benefit from the new data links, Tamm-Daniels said. Using the new capabilities to implement, configure and deploy Google and Informatica systems for data analytics systems and services “is a tremendous opportunity for our partners.”

“At the end of the day, the reason for doing this is to bring data to where it can be analyzed, turned into analytical insights and have a transformational impact on business,” he said.