Informatica recently announced the Informatica Marketplace - “the destination for buyers looking for data integration solutions.”  Informatica developers will be able to sell Informatica-related assets on this marketplace. Looks like a community to you? 

For Informatica, it means leveraging the work of their users to expand their footprint. That’s a good opportunity - for them.

But will there be interactions and collaboration between users?  Or is it going to be like the Apple App Store?  Would you call the App Store a community?  Beyond ranking an application, there is not much interaction between users, and Apple rules everything.

A few nuggets I picked along the way:

• “You determine the price for your goods.*” – but the footnote says “*All terms and conditions subject to change at Informatica’s discretion.” So maybe Informatica will end up deciding the price of your goods. Which percentage will they keep? 30%, like Apple?
• “Retain the IP rights” – great, Informatica is not going to strip you down from your IP. In a true community that would not happen anyway.

Now, an hypothetical scenario. An Informatica partner comes up with a new connector to - say - SAP.  And wants to sell it for $5k. Knowing that Informatica sells their own SAP connector for $100k or more, do you think they are going to allow this one to be sold on their marketplace? Ever wondered why you can’t find an alternate MP3 or AVI player on the Apple AppStore (even a free one, like VLC)?

At the end of the day, it’s not a community. It’s an additional way for Informatica to make money. It will not benefit their users. It will only benefit Informatica.

And the cherry on the cake?
“If you don’t have access to the Informatica Platform for development - you can rent it by the hour on Amazon.”
Another source of revenue for Informatica: people building stuff for the marketplace.

So why did Informatica use the term community all over the place in their announcement? This is not a community.  This is a new revenue vector for Informatica.  Maybe Wall Street will like it.  But what about their users, who are already nickeled and dimed?

If you are looking for a real community, where you can exchange, interact, and truly benefit, Informatica Marketplace is not the place to go.  Try open source instead.

Yves