To support the rapidly growing outsourcing and Software as a Service (SaaS) markets, Informatica Corp. announced a new partner program to help outsourcing service providers more effectively leverage data integration software as a core component of their offerings. The new Informatica Service Provider Partner Program offers subscription- and royalty-based licensing options that closely align with these companies' service-based business models and positions them to offer more competitive services to their enterprise clientele.

"Our new partner program represents a more flexible means of providing Informatica data integration functionality to outsourcing service providers, including SaaS vendors," said Ron Papas, senior vice president of business development at Informatica. "In working closely with charter members, we have created an on-demand licensing model that increases the flexibility of leveraging Informatica for companies doing business on a fee-for-service basis. This is the first step toward the longer-term goal of providing these companies with a cost-effective on-demand data integration platform that leverages the Internet to deliver a zero-footprint data integration service."

In addition to subscription- and royalty-based licensing options, Informatica Service Provider Partner Program members will receive elevated levels of technical support, access to the Informatica Partner Portal and technical account management. They are also able to engage in joint sales and co-marketing programs with Informatica.

Charter members of Informatica's new Service Provider Partner Program include leading Software-as-a-Service providers such as salesforce.com and NetSuite; top hardware vendors such as Sun Microsystems; and global systems integrators such as Wipro and TCS.

"The ultimate beneficiary of Informatica's new partner program is our end customer," said Bobby Napiltonia, senior vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at salesforce.com. "In modifying its licensing model for service provider partners, Informatica is enabling its partners to use its world-class data integration products in ways and for projects that in the past would not have been financially viable. Informatica's partner program will help partners accelerate service delivery, decrease cycle times and cut costs, which are all benefits that can be passed on to customers."

"We are proud to be a member of Informatica's new Service Provider Partner Program. Sun and Informatica have a long history of technical collaboration in improving our joint customers' value propositions and lowering their total cost of ownership," said Stuart Wells, executive vice president of utility computing at Sun Microsystems. "Informatica's PowerCenter 8 now runs on both the SPARC and x64 Opteron platforms -- with the Solaris 10 operating system -- giving our customers massive scalability and high availability. In addition, Informatica's On-Demand initiative maps well to our Sun Grid Compute Utility. Both Sun's and Informatica's end user customers and partners will be the ultimate beneficiaries."