Abbasi was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1956 and moved to various cities with his father, an air force official, before reaching the United States in 1974 to attend college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Under his leadership, Informatica streamlined its operations by cutting its analytic application software development and focusing on the data warehousing component of its business.

[24] The decision was controversial at the time with resistance among employees and on the board,[25] but Abbasi refocused the company on a narrower set of products.

[28] In April 2015, Informatica announced that shareholders had approved the acquisition by Permira funds and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for $5.3 billion or roughly $48 a share.

[30][32][33][34][27] In 2003, Abbasi and his wife, Sara, created a $2.5 million endowment for a program in Islamic studies at Stanford University.

Stanford matched both gifts with a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, bringing the total endowment for the program and professorship to US$9 million.

They also founded the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Computer Science Fellowship to allow students, preferably from Pakistan, to attend the institution.

[37][38] Abbasi also played a key role in establishing the Oracle Academic Initiative in Pakistan, which has trained hundreds of professionals.