The Switzerland of Data and AI – a weather-check

Gaurav Pathak, Vice President, Product Management, Metadata and CLAIRE, Informatica takes us through the white landscape of data in various new contours – and especially why the next set of Snow-men are being put together right here in India.

Tell us something about the scale and role of iLabs, so far?

iLabs is Informatica’s largest research and development centre globally, with nearly half of the company’s 5,000+ employees located across Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai. iLabs has been instrumental in developing flagship products like the Enterprise Data Catalog (EDC) and its successor, the Informatica Cloud Data Governance and Catalog (CDGC), along with the CLAIRE AI engine.

What’s your vision for iLabs - is it on the same path that OpenAI and the Big3 in tech are taking in AI?

Informatica views iLabs is not just an offshore development centre but as a ‘second headquarters’ driving core innovation and AI development. The vision for iLabs’ is to be a global hub for innovation, talent development, and customer success in the field of AI-powered data management. iLabs plays a crucial role in advancing Informatica’s cloud-native, AI-powered data management platform, the Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC). Informatica emphasizes talent development in India through initiatives like the National Apprenticeship Program, campus hiring, and collaborations with over a hundred local institutions.

How far has it come in strengthening Informatica’s AI Story?

iLabs is the development hub for CLAIRE GPT, the next-generation generative AI-powered data management solution that aims to transform how enterprises interact with data. Also, it is involved in fine-tuning Informatica’s own small language models (SLMs) - based on open-source base models, ensuring a focus on enterprise-specific data management needs and addressing data privacy concerns.

Can you share about the AI engine CLAIRE and CoPilot products that were made here? How much of this work is ‘from scratch’ and ready for global competition/consumption?

CLAIRE is Informatica’s AI engine that uses machine learning to automate and scale routine data management tasks. It acts as a “co-pilot” for a broad spectrum of users by leveraging metadata to improve their productivity in multiple data management domains. CLAIRE GPT is the latest offering under the CLAIRE portfolio, which uses generative AI to serve as a natural language interface for data management. It allows users to interact with and manage their data using a natural language interface. It was launched in May 2024 and is already changing how enterprises manage data.

Informatica views iLabs not just as an offshore development centre but as a ‘second headquarters’ driving core innovation and AI development.

iLabs is responsible for the development of CLAIRE AI Engine and associated services. As an example, CLAIRE GPT, the generative AI component of CLAIRE, was co-invented in India.

How do you balance new areas with existing areas like data integration?

Informatica’s investment strategy is guided by market demands and customer needs. Our strategy of combining ‘best of breed’ data management services, with the industry’s only AI-powered data management platform and being the ‘Switzerland of Data and AI’ guides our innovation across the entire portfolio.

Can you tell us more about integrations with MS and Snowflake - from an R&D angle?

Informatica prides itself on being platform-agnostic, supporting various data formats, clouds, databases, and applications. This approach allows us to serve customers in a multi-cloud, hybrid world providing our customers flexibility to choose any data vendor or technology. Informatica partners with all key ecosystem players including Microsoft and Snowflake, but also Google, AWS, and Databricks.

Informatica and Microsoft have formed a strategic partnership to integrate Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) with Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft’s next-generation data and analytics platform. This collaboration aims to provide enhanced data management capabilities to Azure customers.

Our strategy of combining ‘best of breed’ data management services, with the industry’s only AI-powered data management platform and being the ‘Switzerland of Data and AI’ guides our innovation across the entire portfolio.

Similarly, Informatica recently announced several new offerings and enhancements to our integration with Snowflake. We also launched Cloud Data Access Management (CDAM) for Snowflake, which delivers policy-based access management and provides a centralized control plane for both data governance and access.

Gaurav Pathak

Vice President, Product Management, Metadata and CLAIRE, Informatica

By Pratima H

pratimah@cybermedia.co.in