Executive Summary:
In this episode of The Enterprise Edge podcast,
Informatica's EVP and Chief Product Officer Krish
Vitaldevara delivers insider perspectives on the
Salesforce acquisition - valued at $8 billion - and why it
represents a perfect strategic alignment between two
companies that share DNA around vendor neutrality
and partner-first ecosystems. Fresh from joining
Informatica in March after leadership roles at Microsoft, Google, and NetApp, Vitaldevara makes a compelling case that AI isn't just disruptive - it's a triple convergence of the PC revolution's productivity gains, mobile's modality shift, and cloud's infrastructure buildout, all happening simultaneously. From discussing why most companies' data still isn't ready for AI to revealing how consumption-based pricing will become essential in the agentic era, this conversation offers critical strategic insights for anyone navigating the intersection of enterprise data management, AI transformation, and the future of enterprise software. Stream it now and be sure to LIKE, SHARE and COMMENT!
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Transcript:​
Mark Vigoroso (00:02.816)
Greetings all. This is Mark Vigoroso, founder and CEO at the Enterprise Edge. This is the Enterprise Edge podcast. Thank you again for joining and for streaming on various platforms. We are pleased today to have a very distinguished guest. We have the executive vice president and chief product officer from Informatica, Krish Vital Devara, who has some tremendous things to share with us at a very critical juncture for Informatica.
Krish has spent time, with net app and Google and Microsoft, actually joining Informatica back in March or so, Informatica for those of you that don't know, fairly well known sort of AI powered data management platform, covering data integration and quality and governance and master data and metadata. you know, a lot to say about where enterprise data management is going in the agentic AI era.
and how analytics and agentic AI will evolve as they are now very rapidly in the, near future. perhaps most interestingly, and most recently in the headlines, Salesforce completed their acquisition of Informatica just on the second part of November. some of you may have seen the announcement back in May, well, they completed that acquisition. I believe it was around $8 billion in sort of the value of that acquisition in equity, I believe.
And so just a tremendous asset and a tremendous combination that we're gonna hear about from Krish, who's gonna be at the center of that entity going forward. And so we are most pleased to have him. Let me stop talking for a moment and let's give Krish a proper welcome. Krish, thank you for joining in your busy schedule.
Krish Vitaldevara (01:52.831)
Thank you for having me, Mark. And I'm very excited to be here and share the insights and have this conversation for your viewers.
Mark Vigoroso (02:00.95)
Great, great. Thank you, Krish Thank you. So let's start. For those viewers who are familiar with our format, we're going to start out, get to know Krish a little bit with some icebreaker questions. We've got a handful of a little bit meatier business questions, strategy and technology questions, and then we're going to end with a speed round of about five questions, and then we'll adjourn for the day. So I mentioned your track record, Krish. You've been...
around Silicon Valley culture for years. You've spent time with NetApp and Google and Microsoft, like I mentioned. And I'm curious as you enter this chapter and now yet another sort of chapter with Salesforce as a critical component of Informatica's go-forward strategy. Is artificial intelligence in fact the most disruptive technology that you've experienced in your career? There's been a lot of superlatives thrown around.
by many that nothing like this has been seen, there is no precedent. I'm curious from your perspective, is this in fact the most disruptive season of change in enterprise tech that you've experienced?
Krish Vitaldevara (03:13.106)
I do wholeheartedly believe this is the most disruptive change that I have witnessed and most of us are going to witness. And I kind of describe this as it's a combination of three things we have seen before, right? Like, you know, we always love our analogies. Is this like cloud? Is this like this? And when you think of it, it's doing three things. I think the first one is it's actually going to be incredible analog to what happened with PCs.
Mark Vigoroso (03:22.326)
Mm-hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (03:43.128)
There's gonna be significant productivity boost, there's gonna be significant digitization, and there's gonna be significant acceleration of research and other activities because of the productivity boost that comes with it. It is also similar to what happened with mobile because the modality is actually changing. You're doing a lot of things that you had to know how to write code, but you no longer are dependent on knowing the...
every part of the semantics of writing the code. You can actually write code incredibly fast. My son was able to build his first AI app in less than two weeks. It's actually crazy. And he's 18 years old, just out of high school. So it's very akin to what happened with mobile when it comes to modality and interfaces that we have to get adjusted to. And the third thing is the infrastructure build out that's happening for AI.
Mark Vigoroso (04:21.868)
you
Mark Vigoroso (04:25.388)
Mm.
Krish Vitaldevara (04:39.22)
is similar to cloud because you got to build this infrastructure out just like we built our networking backbone, our server racks, our modern data centers with cloud. You had to go redo all of that again for AI. So in some ways it's also very hard because this is like three trends in one. And if you want a kicker, I would actually say throw the moon race in because the government's...
Mark Vigoroso (04:39.372)
Mm-hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (05:05.12)
are trying to say, I'm the first to get there. I'm gonna empower my nation to do something different than any other nation. And it has become that, know, superiority thing from a nation's perspective, which is very similar to moon race. So put it all together. I would say this is the biggest and the most transformative of the times that we're living in.
Mark Vigoroso (05:27.414)
Yeah, I would agree. And you mentioned the moon, you know, it's funny. It's hard. think now everybody is suspicious of everything they read because they don't know what's real and what's fake and what's AI generated and what isn't. And I was seeing the headlines as you've probably seen is, you know, going to the moon to mine, to mine helium, to power all of the AI applications that are going to be booming over the next several years.
I don't even know if that's real or not, but it is. You mentioned moon race because... Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (05:56.782)
Now in the last week, we heard two of these crazy things, right? Like Google started talking about data centers that are in space, like fully powered solar. And it's actually like a fantastic idea, the same idea as there's abundance of energy and like, know, our connectivity is better than ever before. It's going to be fascinating. And then all the minerals that you can actually get from these, you know, outside of our sources.
Mark Vigoroso (06:04.448)
Yes.
Mark Vigoroso (06:12.822)
Yes.
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (06:22.976)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (06:26.284)
Exactly. Well, it's fun times. It's fun times to be in this chapter of technology evolution. So I mentioned Silicon Valley. I myself grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts, which many times sort of self-proclaimed Silicon Valley of the East Coast for many years. And there's a lot of places there that have a bit of folklore associated with them with regards to how
famous companies got their start. And there's a place like that in Silicon Valley I've never been to. It's called Bucks of Woodside. it's, the legend is that Bucks of Woodside, which was founded in 1991, kind of the sort of, you can imagine that's where a lot of the VCs are located. And a lot of the early companies like Netscape and PayPal and Hotmail and even Tesla got their start.
with founders and funders having breakfast or lunch at Bucks, but a very unpretentious kind of diner place. So my first question is, have you heard of Bucks and have you been there? And the second question is, are there any of those meetings that you would like to be able to eavesdrop on?
Krish Vitaldevara (07:36.542)
Ha!
Mark Vigoroso (07:44.638)
whether that would be maybe someone like an Elon Musk or the founders of Netscape or PayPal, obviously PayPal is also an Elon Musk. But have you been there? Have you heard of it? And are there any of sort of early formative sort of maybe even dot-com companies that you'd want to be able to eavesdrop on and maybe capture a few insights from?
Krish Vitaldevara (08:06.08)
Yeah, I will say I have been to Bucks and what you said is the right thing. It's the maybe the most unpretentious diner that's out there. Like, you know, the setting is incredible. And I have met my mentors a few times over there. So I know what you're talking about. And you talked about how Silicon Valley is now your home and you're from Boston. I'm from India, but I have been here. lived
Mark Vigoroso (08:10.069)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (08:17.493)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (08:25.291)
Yep.
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (08:33.877)
Mm.
Krish Vitaldevara (08:35.944)
I spent more time in Silicon Valley than in India. So I consider this my primary home for all the practical matters. If I can eavesdrop on something, I think we can look back at the past, but I will say the three attributes that I want on whatever conversation I want to eavesdrop on. I think the first one, it's the next trillion dollar opportunity or it's the next $0 billion opportunity as Jensen would say.
Mark Vigoroso (08:45.45)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (09:05.58)
Right? I think you want that opportunity that you're eavesdropping on to be that earth-shattering one. And you kind of also want to see what the... I found based on my interactions with VCs and private equity, the kind of questions they come up with when they hear your elevator pitch are the most interesting ones because they are the raw reactions to the idea that they heard from you the first time and they're reacting to your pitch without any...
any built context. So to me, I think that's the more valuable part of the conversation. And maybe the third one is actually, what changes that mind, right? Because a lot of these examples you talk about from the pitch to the first check, I think the time is like in minutes. So the fact that you can actually create this trillion dollar opportunity based on one conversation that's happening in minutes is fascinating.
Mark Vigoroso (09:56.459)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (10:05.294)
So I'll give you a bonus in addition to the box one. If I can really eavesdrop on anything, I would love to eavesdrop on OpenAI's boardroom. I think that's going to be a fantastic one because their ambitions are so wide and large and given the amount of criticism that they are facing, this would be a fantastic boardroom conversation to eavesdrop on. So you asked for one, give me two Silicon Valley examples.
Mark Vigoroso (10:16.853)
Mark Vigoroso (10:29.526)
I agree. it's good. I'd be right there with you. Fly on the wall. That would be great. Everything off the record, of course.
Krish Vitaldevara (10:37.568)
Absolutely.
Mark Vigoroso (10:39.506)
Exciting times, exciting times. Well, that's great. I appreciate that candor. I definitely need to stop by Bucks the next time I'm out there. My understanding is that it's, you know, one table you'll have, you know, the next multi-billionaire and the VC and the next table you'll have a young couple and their two toddlers and then the next table, you know, it's a very, very unpretentious place, like I said, so.
Krish Vitaldevara (11:03.905)
Absolutely.
Mark Vigoroso (11:05.472)
Well, Well, good. We got nice and warmed up. I do have some questions for you. We really don't have enough time to ask you everything I'd love to learn about. We'll have to take some of it offline. I'd like to get an understanding since you're, Krish, your tenure at Informatica is still quite new, right? You joined just nine, 10 months ago, if I'm not mistaken, and you were off to the races. And by October of this year, you're shipping.
what's called the Claire Agents into GA, very, very sort of fast, out of the gates sort of transformational type launch. I'd love to hear a little bit about almost like we talk about the presidential first 100 days. Like what, how did you go into those first 100 days? And maybe some learnings coming out of it that says, okay, what?
What was one thing that maybe I just killed? We stopped and maybe here's another bet that we made where we doubled down on something. And then maybe here's just a learning that I got from maybe trying to apply something from NetApp or Google or Microsoft. Just want to get behind the scenes of how you navigated that first hundred day tranche.
Krish Vitaldevara (12:19.052)
Yeah, I think this one is a fantastic question because it's maybe the most important time period for any exec joining a company, right? Especially if you're a product exec. Like, you know, this is the crux of your job. And, you know, I can tell you about how NetApp experience helped, but for me, it's all about what do you pick in terms of ideas and initiatives to accelerate?
Mark Vigoroso (12:24.363)
Yep.
Mark Vigoroso (12:29.014)
Yep.
Krish Vitaldevara (12:48.842)
and
And where would you get that energy and calories to be able to accelerate it? Like it goes hand in hand with, kill is a strong word, but maybe you're slowing down some of the efforts to be able to accelerate the other efforts. And getting that next right is incredibly hard, but when you get it right, I think, you you can see the kind of acceleration that you have seen with our fall launch and, you know, how customers have been adopting the latest AI technology. I think for me, as we reviewed the
Mark Vigoroso (13:12.501)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (13:17.493)
Mm-hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (13:19.438)
plans, some of the things that were incredibly important to accelerate were our efforts around AI. And I'm not even talking about clear agents. Like this is just the acceleration of copilot, like completing the journey that we started with the clear copilots, getting the...
AI governance right so that more of our customers can use us for not just data governance but also for AI governance. Getting those data quality lineage scenarios for AI to be amplified. I think getting the AI story right and that investment portfolio right was an incredibly important one. And the second one is agentic.
Mark Vigoroso (14:02.422)
Mm-mm.
Krish Vitaldevara (14:04.694)
journey, right? I think there are two parts to this agentic journey that I had the team accelerate. The first one is around our purpose-built agents, because a lot of these data agents can deliver the value customers are looking for in terms of acceleration, taking out 70 % of the grant work from the data engineers played. But for that, we had to get our discovery agent, integration agent, quality agent, MDM agent right. So that's a part of the journey that
we had to actually move resources to, to accelerate. And the other part of the journey that we had to invest in is our overall effort around MCP, you know, getting...
Mark Vigoroso (14:37.878)
Hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (14:45.836)
Mm-hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (14:47.018)
these agent engineering rights so that you know customers when they build the agents they're not just using our agents they're using agents from know sales force from snowflake from others how do they put it all together to get to the outcome so so we accelerated these three parts of the business we invested quite a bit of redirection to be able to get to the results that we delivered
And where did it come from? I think some of it is actually, as I said, slowing down our efforts, right? So this is not necessarily acceleration, but we kind of did a very thorough job of looking at our ROI across priorities. And anywhere we had something that, you know, is a lower ROI, we went and put it on the back burner. Like, you know, a few examples you can think of are...
You know, we had to, you know, the discovery agent will solve what the marketplace used to do. So you could, you could argue you actually getting discovery agent right is more meaningful for a marketplace customer than any additional UX features that we can build. Like being able to, you know, not invest in each of the individual interfaces and letting Claire be that, you know, interface for
Mark Vigoroso (15:52.865)
Mmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (16:03.552)
our intelligent data management cloud was a very interesting and conscious choice we had to make so that we actually built that energy into the investments we want. So that's kind of how we navigated it. And the thing that really helped is it could have been a very chaotic process given the acquisition happened within the first 60 days of me joining the company, right? So the thing that really helped us is the fact that
Mark Vigoroso (16:05.932)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (16:09.59)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (16:26.002)
Yeah, exactly.
Krish Vitaldevara (16:31.636)
Our product strategy is so complimentary to where Salesforce was headed with Data360, which meant we could make these investments that I was talking about without the fear of, am I investing in something that's going to get killed in nine months or 12 months? So the fact that the product strategies were so complimentary really helped me do this thing with conviction and not being too worried about wasted resources. So to me,
It's very rare that you run into this kind of scenario and come out of it, you know, looking good. And it only happened because of those synergies.
Mark Vigoroso (17:12.652)
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. You and you mentioned, Krish, the sort of the proliferation of agents and sort of evaluating them almost individually in terms of their importance and criticality. And I wonder, you know, there's a lot of discussion these days about governance and compliance and transparency and explainability in agentic AI. And as
Agents proliferate both yours and partners and others. is in your view, is there, is there sort of like another, another flavor of data management challenge that are, that's facing the enterprise? You're basically talking about almost like a meta agent, like a governance layer across other agents where you're governing and orchestrating a gentic workforce, digital workforce, right? And.
I'm curious if you see it that way and is that a problem that or not a problem, maybe it's an opportunity that Informatica looks at as something that you should, you're uniquely suited to solve or is someone else gonna solve that? How do you see that and do you have a role in that, I guess?
Krish Vitaldevara (18:29.206)
Yeah, I think that's actually like a great observation, right? I think, you know, I talk about how some of our customers already have 100 plus agents deployed. And this is like, you know, within the first couple of months of them starting on their agentic journey, right? So if you think of it, the rate at which some of these agents are getting built is phenomenal. Some of it is, you know...
taking existing business processes and then converting them, take that automation and convert it and make it agentic so that you're not dependent on rule-based processing, but actually get to more reasoning-based workflows and agents. That to me is natural. think customers know how to do it and they have done that effectively before with business process automation and they're doing that with agents successfully.
But the fragmentation is a real problem. The need to be able to know what agents are deployed, right? Like even discovery of agents becomes an interesting problem. And then orchestrating all these agents across the enterprise becomes a very interesting problem because you need to go redo the underlying wiring around access controls and how these agents communicate with each other, how they share context with each other.
Mark Vigoroso (19:34.764)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (19:48.972)
Mm-hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (19:51.001)
Governance of these agents becomes interesting because the consumption modality is actually going to change significantly. Like if you were doing your governance on APIs and other things, now you had to go figure out how to do governance in this world. And you talk about responsible AI, right? Like getting that explainable, right? So that you know which agent made the decision using which model, using which memory and which data set. think from that perspective, we see a huge role for InfoMaker.
Mark Vigoroso (20:04.534)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (20:20.974)
and Salesforce here.
We tend to think of this as an agent fabric or agent engineering, like as more and more enterprises re-engineer themselves into agentic enterprises, they need this agent fabric that spreads across the enterprise to do that. And there are two core pillars on which this gets built. You need that common metadata system of intelligence or that common enterprise catalog, because if you don't have it,
Mark Vigoroso (20:23.18)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (20:26.752)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (20:34.796)
.
Krish Vitaldevara (20:52.05)
Each agent operates in a silo, and the fragmentation you had with data silos translates into fragmentation with agents. So you absolutely need to get that catalog story right and the metadata catalog story right.
And when you get it right, you got to pick a vendor that's actually more ecosystem neutral. Because there are many vendors that have these catalogs, and there are many vendors who give these agent fabrics. But you have to make sure, like, know, there is one thing to pick up an iPhone and be in a wall garden. It's going to be a completely different story as an enterprise if you pick a data wall garden.
you want to avoid the deadly cost, right? So for me, catalog is incredibly central. And the second thing is just getting that overall AI data foundation right. Is it of high quality? Do you understand the right lineage? Does it have the right governance structure? Is it the right data? So I think those two, the metadata and the catalog and getting that.
Mark Vigoroso (21:31.756)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (21:42.625)
Hmm.
Mark Vigoroso (21:50.486)
Hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (21:56.495)
strong AI data foundation, those become the central pillars on which this agent fabric stands.
Mark Vigoroso (22:04.128)
Got it. No, it's fascinating. yeah, I mean, there's, well, let me do this. Let me, maybe it's a good pivot to the next question. As a product executive, intellectual property is a big question that I have. As we move into this and continue to move through this sort of unprecedented era, I'm very curious about how you and your colleagues are thinking about
IP and intellectual property, right? Because I think personally, I've done a little research, you can keep me honest. I think you've got over 30 patents yourself. And so you have a lot of experience in that process, which is not a trivial process, right? To file patents and defend them, etc. And have them as a key part of your sort of your unique selling proposition as a company, certainly. And I think
You know, part of the question, I guess, is more historical and backward facing. It's like, if you think about your history personally, going through all of that product innovation, first part of the question is how many of those patents actually became commercially viable products? That's sort of foundational question. That's number one. then number two, going forward, as you think about
all of the decisions that you're making and many of your peers are making about what needs to be a trade secret, what needs to be open source, completely shared, what needs to be sort of protected intellectual property. What is the decision framework? You know, when you've got open standards, you've got MCP, as we move through this era, in your role guiding product,
for Informatica, how are you thinking about that decision going forward? So two part question, one is looking back, how much of that experience in those patents have become actual product? Looking forward, how are you making those decisions about how to create IP and when do you create IP versus not?
Krish Vitaldevara (24:15.756)
Yeah, I think, you know, this is, I have never been asked this question. So, I had to give you kudos for doing your research and asking the question. It's really great to hear. I think, you know, I'll say the looking back one, I would say a lot of it is I have just been fortunate. I've been fortunate to work on, you know, some of these more innovative products that are out there.
Mark Vigoroso (24:22.175)
Okay.
Mark Vigoroso (24:26.688)
Yeah. Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (24:42.04)
from get go right out of school. I joined Microsoft and you get to join, you know the spam classification team. You're you're writing the first set of you know text classifiers first set of IP reputation systems first. You know of URL reputation systems first child point detection filters right? It's kind of it's just you know I've been blessed to be there and then my journey into maps where you know maps is the funnest product that's around.
to Android and NetApp and now with Informatica, I just have been fortunate. I think it's more of a function of that. And the fun fact is, most of my 35, 40 patents I filed, I filed them when I was an engineer in my early days. So every one of these things are actually productized and they are in production. Some of them still exist today. And if I kept filing patents, I think the number would have been like,
Mark Vigoroso (25:27.669)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (25:39.819)
significantly large three digits. some point, you're not actually get out of the way and let the teams, even if it's your idea, let the teams take ownership of that idea and run with it. And filing the patent is a big part of actually taking that ownership. So for me, I got out of the way of my teams like, you know, maybe 15 years ago. And if I kept on, think, I think the number would have been significantly larger. I kind of really liked your framing around
Mark Vigoroso (25:41.482)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (25:49.75)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (25:59.755)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (26:03.969)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (26:07.362)
Hey, how do you get the right balance between when you embrace patents and when you embrace standards, right? I think for me, patents have mostly for the longest of the periods, even if they're incredibly innovative, they're done for two purposes. One, you're either protecting your mode or two, you're being defensive. I think that's really how patent portfolios are built.
for those two reasons. And that continues to be the case going forward. And my approach here, having worked on the same time I filed these 40 plus patents, I also worked on significant open standards around sender ID, DKIM, the domain key identified mail. So some of these things have went on to become standards we all use, right? Unsubscribe is an open standard that actually like, know, is a patent, early patent of mine. So a lot of...
Mark Vigoroso (26:38.636)
Mm-hmm.
Krish Vitaldevara (27:03.884)
the times you also need to figure out if you're optimizing for accelerated adoption and the industry adopting is the reason why this new innovative technology is going to be successful. You want to open it up as a standard. think that's a very straightforward way to think about it because putting patents is the worst way to get broader adoption across the industry or ecosystem.
If you are really building something that's a trade secret, like lot of our spam work in the early days was a true differentiator because compared to the other mail providers, we had the best filters, best reputation systems around. So when you're doing that, I think that's a trade secret you need to protect and we invested in those likewise. So for me, it's about, you getting that acceleration or are you building a moat and being defensive?
Mark Vigoroso (28:02.718)
Right. Yeah, that's where it serves different purposes. Yeah, it's interesting. mean, I think a lot of different companies have different cultures when it comes to building a patent portfolio. I used to work for Qualcomm Corporation out of San Diego, and it was a very prominent component in the mobile chip space, right? And it was just...
dozens and dozens and dozens of patents coming out every quarter. But I think it has to do with the market space you're in, how competitive it is, how fast it's moving. And to your point, what objective do you have in actually securing the patent in the first place? So I think it's a lot to be considered there. It can be a very strategic wedge if used correctly. But I appreciate your insights. yes.
Krish Vitaldevara (28:44.854)
And you can also use not to enforce on some of these patents, right? I mean, that's the other way to think about it. You might actually file a patent, but you might not want to choose to enforce it because adoption is still actually like a good thing to do. One of our earliest patents around people that you communicate with when I was working on mail is this context of building a very rich, you know, user graph and combining that to create the social graph, right? And once we built it,
Mark Vigoroso (28:55.979)
Right, right.
That's right.
Krish Vitaldevara (29:14.83)
we could actually, this is pre-Facebook. We're talking like 2004, 2005. And once we built it, I think many companies used it for targeting, for segmentation, for a variety of purposes, and that's actually okay.
Mark Vigoroso (29:18.188)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (29:29.996)
That's fascinating. Well, Krish, we are quickly, quickly running out of time as I knew we would, but I'm gonna have to take some of my follow-up questions offline with you, so I'll track you down. Maybe I'll take you to Bucks the next time I'm in town. Yeah, I would love that. So speed round, we'll just complete here with some fast ones, Krish, and think about, don't spend too much time, just off the top of your head.
Krish Vitaldevara (29:45.294)
Oh, happy to. I would love to join.
Mark Vigoroso (29:59.02)
to get some of your insights on these five questions. So let's start with the first one is in one sentence, how will Informatica help Salesforce customers unlock more value?
Krish Vitaldevara (30:15.274)
enterprise wide trusted context of, you know, data. That's really the one sentence.
Mark Vigoroso (30:20.47)
Yep. Yep. Got it. Another sentence question. Complete this sentence. The future of data management is blank.
Krish Vitaldevara (30:32.426)
I would say intelligent and agentic. Like you got to get those two things in there.
Mark Vigoroso (30:35.851)
Yes.
Mark Vigoroso (30:39.776)
That's right. Very much in line with how Informatica has been messaging around the IDP for years now, correct? Yeah. OK, what's the most uncomfortable truth about AI and data that nobody wants to admit?
Krish Vitaldevara (31:01.454)
This is going to be a fun one. think we poke fun at this thing with our commercials a little bit by saying, is your data ready for AI? Everybody is ready except the data. And I think that's the real truth. I would say it's no longer as much of a truth that no one believed in. It's more of a truth that everybody believes in, but that is still work to do to get your data ready for AI.
Mark Vigoroso (31:12.896)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (31:18.315)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (31:31.438)
So it's definitely uncomfortable and it's time consuming.
Mark Vigoroso (31:35.564)
For sure, for sure. The next one is a commercial trend that I've seen seeing more and more just as far as enterprise software is being commercialized and consumed, where there's a lot of mechanics shifting from seat-based or user-based pricing models to more consumption or even outcome-based pricing models or some hybrid.
Right. And it's not, it's not black and white. think there's a lot of gray sort of permutations, right? Like I said, hybrid models. question is, do do you see that as you study the space and you're in the space, generically speaking enterprise software overall is consumption and outcome based pricing sort of an inevitable evolution as agentic AI matures and autonomous agents.
are performing work and driving outcomes without any individual human paying for a user or license or a seat license. Love to hear your thoughts on that one.
Krish Vitaldevara (32:44.718)
Yeah. I think this is another truth we are all coming to terms with, right? Even if you look at the latest results from Salesforce in Q3, we have done exceptionally well across both the business models, right? We have done exceptionally well across the per user licensing model and we have done exceptionally well around the consumption model. And as Informatica, we have moved on to consumption model.
you know, three years back and we have been on that one. And I think, you know, it's less of an either or for me. And as you said, hybrid is the future. Like you are gonna be in this world where you're doing both to be able to get the most out of any enterprise outcome. And I think, you know, agents actually make it even more of a reality.
Because if you take a big monolith of anything and you break it down into multiple agents, you need to capture that value in that tokenized consumption-based way that previously you captured using the per-seat way. So it's just a hard truth, and this is kind of where the industry is going. You need that hybrid business model. I'm actually surprised as to...
how many companies, even a lot of data management companies, have still not adopted consumption-based pricing. Because if you think of it, that's going to be a huge business model challenge. And one thing that made me choose Informatica coming in was the cloud transformation they were able to do and the business model transformation they were able to do, which is incredible. So Amit and team have done fantastic job. And this is...
Mark Vigoroso (34:20.94)
Yeah.
Mark Vigoroso (34:40.257)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (34:41.25)
going to be the reality for many of the enterprises going forward.
Mark Vigoroso (34:46.444)
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Okay, final question, Krish, and then we'll let you go. This one's about partnerships going forward and a little bit of an adjunct to the discussion around intellectual property. But I'm going to just phrase this as a statement. And I'd love to know if you sort of agree with it or disagree with it, or maybe some somewhere in the middle. And the statement is as follows. There will be many winners in the agentic AI race.
and building trust with customers will increasingly be a team sport. So strategic partnerships across ISVs, SIs, ERP, management consultants, data platforms, hyperscalers, cloud service providers will become increasingly critical.
Krish Vitaldevara (35:36.195)
Yeah, I think the one word answer is 100 % agree. It's not even a wishy-washy mixed answer. I think this is the reality. If you look at Informatica, we have always embraced this vendor neutrality and being the Switzerland of data. And it comes grounded from the fact that you alone will never be able to solve the entire.
Mark Vigoroso (35:46.251)
Yeah.
Krish Vitaldevara (36:03.7)
universe of problems that an enterprise needs. And if you are customer first, then you're enabling customers to get to the outcomes, which means working with other vendors that are part of that customer's ecosystem. So, a hundred percent aligned with your statement. It's a fantastic one. And this is another place of synergy for us with Salesforce because Salesforce has a very, very strong ISV, SIN partner channel approach to solving enterprise wide problems.
Mark Vigoroso (36:28.448)
Yes.
Yes.
Krish Vitaldevara (36:33.584)
And this is another place where our DNA kind of lines up really well with the Salesforce DNA.
Mark Vigoroso (36:41.77)
Now that's a good big takeaway for me and hopefully for our listeners as well is that there seems to have been a lot of alignment between Informatica and Salesforce from a strategy, a channel, product, overall culture and approach that I'm sure was uncovered during due diligence. And it's not always the case that acquisitions go smoothly, right? As everybody knows, and it sounds like that you all are set up very well not to lose a step.
and to keep moving and to accelerate now going forward as one entity. And so that's exciting to hear and I wanted to make sure I learned that. So it's very good to hear that from you, And with that, number one, pleasure speaking with you, Krish. Thank you for your time and your honesty and your candor. I will track you down and we'll have some pancakes at Bucks at some point. I'd love, I'd Oh, I love it.
Krish Vitaldevara (37:35.852)
Yeah, it's going to be on me, Mark. You just need to find me.
Mark Vigoroso (37:40.276)
I love it. I know there's so many more stories you have to share, but I do appreciate you sharing what you had time to share with our community. So I know I speak for Krish. Thank you all for making this part of your day or evening, wherever you are. We will catch you next time on the Enterprise Edge podcast. Until then, have a great rest of your week. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.
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