Informatica LLC today introduced the Cloud Data Marketplace, a tool through which a company’s employees can share datasets and artificial intelligence models with one another.

The Cloud Data Marketplace marks Informatica’s first major product update since going public last month. 

In a large enterprise, it’s not always obvious where a business analyst or data scientist should search to find the dataset they need for an analytics project. If the dataset is in a system belonging to another team or division, retrieving it can involve a lot of work. Even more work is necessary when the information is stored in not one but multiple systems, partly because it’s not uncommon for different systems to have different versions of the same records.

The Cloud Data Marketplace is a kind of centralized data library through which a company’s employees can find and download records without having to manually search for them. Informatica says that the tool offers an “e-commerce-like user experience” to make accessing data convenient. Users can also share artificial intelligence models alongside their datasets. 

For business analysts and data scientists, the Cloud Data Marketplace promises to enable increased productivity. Time previously spent on finding information can instead be used for other tasks such as finding new ways to turn the information into business insights.

For data governance teams, Informatica is promising to make it easier to ensure that company data is used in accordance with internal policies. For each dataset published through the Cloud Data Marketplace, an organization can define terms and conditions establishing how the information should be used. Auditability features built into the tool make it possible to track whether analytics projects that use a dataset comply with its specific set of rules.

In mission-critical analytics initiatives, enterprises must take extra steps to ensure that the information they’re processing is accurate. The Cloud Data Marketplace can potentially help with this task as well. When employees share datasets and AI models through a single, centralized catalog, organizations can more easily track data assets to ensure they meet internal requirements. 

“Data scientists and other data consumers are still spending the bulk of their time searching, sorting and cleaning data. It’s clear that the practices of the past won’t scale to the needs of the future,” said David Corrigan, general manager of data governance, quality and privacy at Informatica. “Informatica’s Cloud Data Marketplace addresses this business need with a cloud-native solution, enabling organizations to meet their internal data consumers where they are, with a self-service model tailored to their needs and technical skill level to drive data-led decisions and continued innovation.”

The Cloud Data Marketplace is part of Informatica’s flagship Intelligent Data Management Cloud platform. The platform provides features that help companies synchronize information between internal systems of records. It also helps with a range of related use cases, such as ensuring that a company’s business records don’t contain any errors and are used in accordance with regulations.

Informatica listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange last month, six years after going private in a $5.3 billion acquisition. The company spent the years leading up to its stock market debut shifting to a cloud-centric business model. The effort helped boost Informatica’s valuation from $5.3 billion when it went private to $9 billion today and contributed to a 26% increase in its subscription revenues last year. 

Photo: Informatica