Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at Salt Lake City-based Burton Group Inc., said the product appears to be the first of its kind in the market. He said that's key for Informatica, which is one of the few pure-play data integration vendors left. Database vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, Sybase and IBM are tightly tying strong data integration products into their database offerings.

Data Replicator, which costs US$1,500 a month, is being offered as a 30-day free trial. The system "will be the first of many services in our on-demand strategy," Hegstrom said. Those are likely to include connecting more different SaaS applications to additional on-premise applications, and could involve, for instance, a data quality service, said Hegstrom.

Hegstrom, a former Salesforce.com executive recruited to Informatica last summer, said comparing the Data Replicator with PowerCenter involves "apples to oranges" because the latter offers so many more features. He said while cannibalization of PowerCenter sales is "certainly possible," he also felt the two solutions targeted different needs and buyers within companies.