Informatica expands Asian footprint
SINGAPORE--U.S.-based data integration software provider Informatica has set up shop in the island-state to provide better support to its increasing base of customers in South Asia.
Sohaib Abbasi, Informatica's president and CEO, said the opening of the Singapore office brings the total staff headcount in the Asia-Pacific region to 30. There are eight employees in Singapore, which is the headquarters for South Asia.
The Singapore office will provide direct sales and sales support services to Informatica's customers in ASEAN and India, said Joel Momberger, the company's Singapore-based regional manager. Informatica's customers here include DBS Bank, Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation, SingHealth, and the regional offices of Pepsico, and ING Bank.
Informatica first set foot in the Asia-Pacific region in early 2005 when it opened representative offices in Beijing, Korea, and Taiwan--staffed by four employees in total.
According to Abbasi, the impetus to open representative offices in the Asia-Pacific region began in July 2004, about the time when he joined as CEO.
The company plans to open an office in Sydney, Australia, this month as well, he added.
Informatica began focusing more heavily on data integration, and expanded globally "six quarters ago", said Abassi, who spent 20 years at Oracle before joining Informatica. And it is a strategy that appears to have paid off, he added.
For the year ended Dec. 31, 2005, Informatica's revenues were US$267.4 million, up 22 percent from US$219.7 million in 2004.
The company has been on a worldwide hiring spree. In the past year, Informatica has increased headcount by 25 percent, hiring mainly "customer-facing" staff, said Abbasi. The company has more than 1,000 employees globally.
Abbasi sees the global outsourcing trend as a boon to business. He said: "The more they outsource, the more they fragment their data. I expect the next wave of data fragmentation to be a huge opportunity for us."
The company showcased its PowerCenter 8 data integration platform, with general availability on April 2006, during the launch of its Singapore office last week.
"Our customers have data stored on difference [database] sources. Our neutrality assures customers that they can integrate everything they have got to any place," said Abbasi.