Informatica CEO Walia Sees Consumer AI, Enterprise AI On Separate Journeys
‘We tend to oversimplify things at times,’ Informatica CEO Amit Walia says.
Informatica CEO Amit Walia cautioned watchers of the artificial intelligence revolution against equating the consumer AI adoption cycle with the enterprise AI cycle.
“The consumerization of IT happens, but that’s to make enterprise IT simpler,” the CEO told CRN in an interview. “But that doesn’t mean that’s how a large bank works or how a large pharmaceutical company works. … We tend to oversimplify things at times.”
Adoption by enterprises has come slower than everyday consumers, but that isn’t bad news for solution providers partnered with the Redwood City, Calif.-based data management products vendor, the CEO told CRN in an interview. Informatica and its ecosystem continue to see investment in data infrastructure not just for AI, but for digital transformation and data governance projects not necessarily using AI as well.
“If I’m a pharmaceutical company, I want to make sure in my drug discovery process–if I’m using Informatica–the right R&D (research and development) people, have the right access to that data, as a very specific example,” Walia said. “We also have a lot of customers who have been sitting on prem, and they’re accelerating the journey to the cloud, because obviously the value of AI only comes in the cloud.”
[RELATED: With Salesforce Acquisition Pending, Informatica Reports Q3 Cloud Sales Growth]
Informatica Q3
The company reported its latest quarterly earnings performance Wednesday, opting for just a press release instead of an earnings call as it nears the close of its acquisition by Salesforce.
Informatica solution providers should still see plenty of opportunity working with customers on proofs of concept, moving AI projects into production and shaping a budget for AI projects, Walia said. He sees economic upside from the AI wave playing out at least another five to 10 years.
The CEO declined to speak too much of life for the 32-year-old vendor as a part of Salesforce before the deal closes. Salesforce expects to close on the Informatica deal in the fourth quarter of the company’s 2026 fiscal year or early in the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal year. The 2027 fiscal year starts Feb. 1.
But Walia said that partners should still expect “tremendous innovation” from Informatica products plus the ability to leverage Salesforce’s larger distribution scale. In AI, he said to look to multimodal and AI products leveraging voice interaction as an exciting new area in the field.
“For the partner community, which works with Salesforce in a much broader way, this will be something that they can build bigger businesses on,” he said. “Or for some of them who are not Informatica partners, (they) can actually build Informatica practices and get to have new sources of revenue. I’m pretty excited about that.”
Read on for more of what the CEO had to say.
How is Informatica doing in the AI era?
We end up being a very broad data management platform.
We have multiple big product categories on our platform, whether it’s data integration, application integration … on and on and on.
To glue them all together, we have our AI called Claire, which obviously customers can get the benefit of whether it’s a copilot in the product or a GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) interface. Our agents are operational and in the hands of our customers as we speak.
The beauty of the platform we have is–that same platform can be used to do the digital transformation initiatives as much as the AI initiatives, whether it’s agentic AI or any AI initiative.
One (trend with customers), most of them still have a lot of non-AI related transformation to do.
If I’m doing governance, it’s nothing to do with AI today. I just want to make sure I have the right governance. If I’m a pharmaceutical company, I want to make sure in my drug discovery process–if I’m using Informatica–the right R&D (research and development) people, have the right access to that data, as a very specific example.
We also have a lot of customers who have been sitting on prem, and they’re accelerating the journey to the cloud, because obviously the value of AI only comes in the cloud.
The same platform can be used to do AI projects.
Whether it is the agentic architecture customers are now trying to put (in), or … whether I’m using it for customer centricity or many other things, customers are using our Claire or our IDMC (Intelligent Data Management Cloud).
They can use, end to end, the same platform. And that’s a tremendous benefit to our customers and to our partners because they learn the same product, they learn the same architecture, and now they can basically (use) it for different projects. If I’m a customer, my ROI (return on investment) is very high. I can basically use the same thing for multiple projects.
If I’m a system integrator–if I train people in the Informatica practice on our IDMC, they can be cross-purposed across many, many projects. And that’s a tremendous ROI and a cost benefit for them. That’s the kind of stuff that I see (that) leads to the usage and adoption of our offerings.
I’ve always used the analogy that, until last year … we were pretty much in the top of the first (inning of the AI era), maybe. We’ve now crossed into the top of the second, maybe.
And if this ends up being like the games that the (Los Angeles) Dodgers and the (Toronto) Blue Jays played (in the World Series), we have a very, very long game to go. But we are very much in the early innings for sure.
So that’s a statistical average for you, but we see, we see both ends of the spectrum. Some very forward-leaning customers who’ve done who may be in the bottom of the fourth, and some who don’t even know where to begin, and they are trying to figure it out.
What’s holding the AI laggard customers back?
On the data side, it’s very clear every customer has realized now that to do anything with AI, they have to get the data infrastructure right. That’s what our partners hear and we hear. So that’s a blessing for all of us.
The marketing hype on AI is this through the roof. It’s as if the world is completely turned over to AI (if you work in the technology industry).
The consumer adoption of AI has been very fast. So we tend to take that and equate it to the enterprise world.
If you walk into a regional bank (for example), the skillset of people … today is not there yet. So for them to grasp this takes a long time to figure out–where do I begin?
You just can’t throw money at a problem. (This), by the way, is a great opportunity for our partners … to help them educate as to what are the first few things they could do.
Partners can say, ‘We can help you put that into production. We can give you those PoCs (proofs of concept). We can get you some of the early benefits so that you can start building the broader budget around it. I see that happening a lot.
As you get away from Silicon Valley and you get away from some of the large metropolitan cities, skillsets and understanding what to do and where to begin, that tends to be the impediment more often than not.
Are you seeing customers form a dedicated AI budget–and does that take away from the IT budget?
AI budget is a part of the IT budget. It’s not like they’re separate.
Every enterprise is looking, introspecting and saying, ‘Which part of my IT budget do I actually reduce to fund my AI projects?’
When you have to experiment, you know you will not get value out of it right away. But you have to learn your way through it. We are seeing that for sure.
The total growth in the IT budget–it is not like it has just become double digit. … It goes up and down slightly, but it’s pretty much, I call it, steady.
AI infrastructure, data infrastructure and cybersecurity are the three areas where I see budgets going. …We sit on the cusp of two of those three.
What should solution providers look forward to from Informatica?
Tremendous innovation. In the agentic world, we all have to collectively lean aggressively to help educate our customers, to remove some of the what I call FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around where to begin, how to begin and how expensive or cheap it is.
The innovation from us is so strong. We just launched (a variety of AI) agents.
The deep partnerships that we continue to expand. … Whether it’s (Microsoft) Azure, GCP (Google Cloud Platform), OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure), AWS (Amazon Web Services), Nvidia.
And of course, our deep partnerships with even the large system integrators like Deloitte or Accenture.
For partners, it’s a tremendous opportunity to basically double down on their Informatica capabilities, to drive more AI adoption for their customers and drive value for them.
Value will create the next project and the bigger projects and the transformation projects. And that’s what partners can expect. Our innovation is on steroids and will not slow down.
What can solution providers look forward to once Informatica is part of Salesforce?
I’m not there yet to see what life would be within Salesforce (before the acquisition closes). … It’s a great meeting of two companies.
They know that they don’t have all the assets of data management they need in the world of AI for their customers to be successful. So we’re very excited that we have that innovation. And then we get the scale and the breadth of Salesforce to be able to put it in the hands of many more customers.
We have a very rich ecosystem of partners. But look, their partnership is at a bigger scale. So together, the broader set of partners can benefit from Informatica.
For the partner community, which works with Salesforce in a much broader way, this will be something that they can build bigger businesses on. Or for some of them who are not Informatica partners, (they) can actually build Informatica practices and get to have new sources of revenue. I’m pretty excited about that.
What are other AI vendors missing about what customers need?
At the end of the day, we are all in service to what value we can create for our customers.
Doesn’t matter how much we innovate, how much we say what we do. If you’re not creating value for our customers, we can all just pack our bags and go home.
What I hear from customers is … ‘Help me figure out how to create value, where to begin. Help me build a roadmap for my AI projects that allow me to crawl, walk, run, not boil the ocean, but also be able to understand the ROI and be able to deliver some value, and help my technology base with other people that are driving my tech also learn these things.
They basically look to us to help them build a roadmap for them.
That’s the opportunity for all of us in the AI landscape–all other vendors, including all the partners–to help our customers build that roadmap and then help them deliver against that roadmap. The ones who do that better will have long-standing success.
What are the biggest opportunities ahead for current Informatica solution providers and any future ones?
Over the next 10 years, we’re going to basically play out the AI wave.
If you step back and take a look at it, the majority of the work that was being done was actually building out the infrastructure–the data centers, the semiconductors, the servers, the chips and the LLMs (large language models).
A handful of companies have put in a tremendous amount of CapEx (capital expenditures), but most of the enterprise customers who we served have sat on the sidelines to figure out, what do I do with it?
The biggest place where a lot of action will be is the data layer. All of our partners and us together, that’s going to be the next five years of tremendous tailwind, or a huge wave of opportunity to go lean in.
‘I want to bring all of this data into my model. That data has to be good quality so it doesn’t hallucinate. Oh my gosh, I have got to make sure there’s some governance and controls around it’ – that’s the opportunity we have together.
For our partners and us, and with Salesforce’s reach, that’s going to be huge economic upside that I see for the next five to 10 years.
What do you make of the debates over how AI will change software-as-a-service?
We have confused the conversation. I find this conversation a little bit self-serving, that SaaS is dead.
All of AI is being consumed through the lens of SaaS. ChatGPT is a SaaS model. I find that a little bit misleading–how come SaaS is dead? ChatGPT, you go online and you access it as a software-as-a-service.
Interfaces will change, for sure. We have leaned in.
I don’t think there will be one interface, too. There’s a bifurcation of interfaces–the enterprise world, the consumer world, (they are) different.
In our world, we believe that there will be an interface which will be a GPT interactive, chat-oriented work interface where people can talk to the product and get answers.
Whereas, there will be a simplified, power-user interface where people can do work but not everything happens through a chat.
You and I use the chat interface of ChatGPT to consume answers, but the ChatGPT (and its parent company) OpenAI engineers don’t (necessarily) code using a chat interface.
That’s the bifurcation that’s happening. The consumers of SaaS apps want a much more different UI (user interface). Whereas the builders of SaaS apps, the next-gen SaaS apps, will use a mix of different UIs.
On our platform, we have a GPT interface and we have a non-GPT interface. We have both.
Voice is going to become a much more integral part. But again, people confuse voice in the consumer world and voice in the enterprise world.
You’re not going to sit in your office with everybody just talking to the laptop or onto their phone device and basically creating noise pollution or giving away confidential (information). The finance team cannot talk sitting next to the marketing team.
We take things so easily and mush them up–the enterprise world will have segmented, multimodal … multimodal will be where the world will go in the next generation.
You see the commercial AI cycle not necessarily seeing the effect of a consumer AI bubble pop, hypothetically speaking?
The internet came. Consumer apps had their own journey, and enterprise apps had their own journey.
The consumerization of IT happens, but that’s to make enterprise IT simpler. But that doesn’t mean that’s how a large bank works or how a large pharmaceutical company works. … We tend to oversimplify things at times.
How do you see demand for cloud even outside of an AI context–are you seeing enterprises get interested in on-premises repatriation?
Cloud is not slowing down. Cloud adoption is still growing.
For most of the world, adoption of AI will happen in the public cloud.
There are certain large companies–very large–who have the ability to create a data center within a large hyperscaler data center.
They have the ability to create what I call a private cloud on a hyperscaler cloud, versus a private cloud running in a known data center.
Those are, in my mind, 1 percent of overall enterprise workloads, not more than that.
The reality is that public cloud is going to still be the primary mode of AI being consumed by enterprises.
The other thing that’s happening … I don’t think everybody is looking to move all of their data into one LLM in the cloud. That’s not going to happen. I hear an overwhelming ‘no’ to that.
Customers want the ability to have either multiple purpose-built LLMs, and they want LLMs being pre-built into the apps.
For example, we take many LLMs and we train them into different products, depending upon which LLM does good within every product. And we run that LLM within our four walls and (protect) every customer’s data or metadata so that it does not go to the LLM.
Customers want that so it’s still cloud, but their data is not going to one big bang LLM, it’s being protected by us.
That’s the nuance that I see in the world of cloud adoption.
Anything else you want partners to know?
The unique value proposition we have is that we have the best products on a platform, which our partners, especially the integrator partners, have created practices around.
Every integrator that has a data and AI practice has a practice on the three hyperscalers, Databricks, Snowflake and Informatica because the scale and scope and the breadth of the work we can give them is tremendous. And our projects end up being transformative in the world of enterprise software.
Our ability to span, being the Switzerland of data and AI, gives the ability for our integrator partners to be able to do multiple transformation projects from the core IDMC platform so their people can be repurposed into multiple projects from the same capability set that we have, whether it’s AI or non-AI.
Training an employee is a massive, massive investment that partners make. And they can repurpose that many times over. That’s huge value for them, and that’s huge value for our customers.
Once they have taken the product and implemented it for one project, they can use it across the board for many project–man, the cost for them goes down dramatically. That’s a massive thing. High ROI, low TCO (total cost of ownership) and a faster time to market, both for our customers as well as for partners. And that’s the secret sauce that has allowed us to be successful and grow.
How about the way enterprises consume AI–so many pricing options and tiering structures, are customers showing a preference yet?
It’s very early days. … It will end up being very fragmented because you need purpose built.
If I am a customer and I want to use AI in the context of, let’s say, CRM (customer relationship management software), I’ll use it differently. Or if I want to use it in the world of back-end ERP (enterprise resource planning), it will be different. Or in the world of data, it’s very different.
Even in the world of data, for example, we have the IPU (Informatica Processing Unit, the pricing model where consumption is calculated per scaler based on usage). … But underlying trackers could be for data quality, where it’s different, and integration, where it’s different.
That’s the right thing to do for customers, to have the choice. They would ultimately want to link their economics to the raw usage pattern of whatever AI they use so that they can get visibility and transparency.
It’s all over the place right now, and I expect it to remain like that. … It may simplify to fewer (pricing options) in the future, but there will still be many different things out there for customers to have that choice.