Successful integration relies on communication. A survey of 2,000 IT professionals and more than 1,500 IT leaders found one of the largest challenges for an organization is the use of new applications, processes, and techniques. For efficient operations, organizations need to incorporate new technologies with their legacy systems. The stronger the ability one has to share information and reactivity between these disparate systems the more powerful the results and, in turn, the larger savings of time and money.
Step One: Integration with PowerCenter
Informatica PowerCenter is a highly scalable and high-performance extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tool. However, a common source of problems in ETL is a big number of dependencies among ETL jobs. For example, job "B" cannot start while job "A" is running. In early 2013, Automate Schedule integrated this ETL tool, giving users the ability to incorporate PowerCenter workflows into event-driven schedules across the enterprise. The interface was awarded the Informatica Seal of Approval after passing rigorous lifecycle testing and validation procedures. Now Informatica users can quickly deploy and automate cross-system jobs with minimal effort.
Step Two: Then Came the Cloud
Cloud-based applications pack a lot of power, but even as they become more prevalent, they still aren’t designed to integrate fully with your legacy systems. To enhance the experience of Informatica users, Automate Schedule 3.5 added integration with Informatica Cloud at the end of 2013. Now Informatica users can quickly deploy and automate necessary tasks with minimal effort. Automate Schedule's advanced enterprise job scheduling functions (including reactivity to prerequisites) embeds Informatica Cloud tasks into complex job streams, and incorporates business processes occurring outside of Informatica Cloud. Automate Schedule can use Informatica Cloud web services to kick off workflows, and integrate disparate applications and platforms.
Automate Schedule can integrate data between the Cloud and on-premises applications including production ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle EBS, and other sources. Intensive hand coding and round-the-clock monitoring are eliminated, taking the pressure off in-house staff and saving on consulting fees. Automate Schedule allows you to monitor the status of all the jobs your users are running and take instant action when something fails.
With the new 3.5 integration, customers now have a choice. They can use Informatica Cloud and/or PowerCenter: Automate Schedule supports them both. The customer gets flexibility in choosing their ETL system as well as the added functionality of an enterprise scheduler.
Ryan O'Rourke of Fortra discusses the value of using Automate Schedule to schedule Informatica workflows at the Informatica Marketplace conference. Automate Schedule now compatible with Informatica Cloud, which makes it the ideal scheduling solution for hybrid environments that may include both Informatica Power Center and Informatica Cloud, as well as other applications.
Additional Enhancements
Autoamte Schedule's versatility continues to expand. The 3.5 release includes:
- Web Service Agent: Users can easily execute Web services as commands in a Automate job.
- Load Balancing: Distribute jobs across a group, allowing users to optimize resource use and maximize throughput—avoiding overload of any one of the agents.
- Dashboard Drilldown: Get an enhanced view of the dashboard, complete with drill-down capability on all data. Customize the size and order of graphs to meet your unique needs.
Improve ETL Efficiencies with Automate Schedule
Automate Schedule's Informatica scheduler makes integrated ETL scheduling easier, faster, and broader reaching. Staff intervention can be virtually eliminated, plus the automation, visibility, and control over crossed systems saves time and reduces the risk of error. Automate Schedule allows users to:
- See exactly how Informatica jobs fit into the entire data center picture
- Improve time management by managing cross platform, cross-application dependencies
- Gain real-time interaction and centralized control over jobs
- Simplify reactive workflows with dependency scheduling and visual job flow diagrams
- Gain efficiencies with advanced enterprise scheduling, notification, reporting, and security options over the built-in Workflow Manager
- Decrease operational costs, reduce lag time, and eliminate errors
Automate Schedule
Automate Schedule offers a web-based intuitive interface, affordable pricing, and lightning-fast implementation. You’ll be able to schedule and monitor your ETL and data integration processes as part of a centralized enterprise schedule within minutes.
