Technology integration and interoperability play big roles in the advancement of cloud platforms. Several cloud-computing providers are exploring new opportunities through industry partnerships and associations.

Informatica Corporation, an independent provider of data integration software, announced that Libra OnDemand, a Software-as-a-Service or “SaaS (News - Alert)” subscription-based application designed for hospitality industry, has signed an agreement to OEM Informatica Cloud Services for its comprehensive suite of hospitality specific applications.

Libra OnDemand is designed to drive sales and increase revenues for the world's premier hotel organizations.

Informatica Cloud Services will function as the cloud data integration solution for applications including Customer Relationship Management or “CRM,” loyalty management, group sales and event management, analytics, email marketing as well as an online consumer-facing customer portal application, company officials said.

Ron Papas, general manager, Informatica Cloud, said, “Informatica Cloud delivers enterprise-class SaaS integration applications and a powerful platform for developing and deploying advanced, easy to use integration services over the Web,” said Ron Papas, general manager, Informatica Cloud.

“Libra OnDemand combines years of hospitality industry experience with Informatica's Cloud data integration heritage to provide hospitality customers with the most robust Cloud application on the market,” Papas added.

Hospitality industry is looking for innovative ways to maintain customer relationships and recruit new guests, which are integral for their survival in harsh economic conditions.

An application that requires no capital costs and delivers ease of use and lower total cost of ownership is a great advantage for the industry. However, current alternatives to hospitality CRM are incongruent and expensive, the company said. Simple interfaces can cost upwards of $15,000 each followed by additional deployment costs. As a result, a hotel's sales department, front desk and back-office may use different systems for guest profiles with little to no information sharing.

The purpose of data integration to Libra OnDemand was to deal with the issues associated with fragmented customer data that exists within and across most hotels and a myriad of disparate legacy systems on- and off-premise.

The need for a single guest profile is invaluable for customer satisfaction, loyalty programs and cross- and up-sell opportunities.

Libra OnDemand application keeps track of guest preferences, amenities, flags and specials; manages pre-arrival and during-stay guest services; and tracks guest comment card responses.

With the "next generation integration" from Informatica Cloud, Libra OnDemand hospitality providers can make direct connections to all of these databases, easily log in to their systems, and immediately get results.

“Libra OnDemand was born out of the need to provide Cloud-based applications to the hospitality industry in 2008 when we saw that Cloud was becoming a mainstream option to service customers,” Gregg Hopkins, CEO, Libra OnDemand, said.

“We looked at a number of Cloud players and it was clear that only Informatica had the heritage, credibility and proven track record that we could rely on to be the integration tool of our hospitality CRM system,” Hopkins added. “Informatica gives us the gravitas to approach hotels considering building their own bespoke applications and offer the best solution for their needs.”

Libra OnDemand, according to company officials, is the only hospitality application running 100 percent natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com. Libra OnDemand was named one of the top new products, as well as one of the top "Force 40" applications in 2009.

Informatica recently announced it has been positioned by Gartner (News - Alert) in the leaders quadrant in the 2010 Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools report, published June 25, 2010.