InfoSphere product family

Data preparation in IBM style

The IBM InfoSphere product family is the core component of IBM’s enterprise computing solutions. The InfoSphere platform helps users better understand and exploit the potential of their enterprise data assets.

To achieve this, InfoSphere provides components that support different aspects of working with data assets:

• Data load
• Data cleansing
• Measurement/Monitoring
• Transformation

Using the platform, users have the ability to scale their system using MPP (massively parallel processing) threads, optimizing its size and performance depending on the size of the data assets they manage.

The product family is available in four different versions:

• InfoSphere Information Server Enterprise Edition
• InfoSphere Information Server for Data Integration
• InfoSphere Information Server for Data Quality
• InfoSphere Information Server on Cloud

The differences between each version are the software and functional capabilities optimized for the outcome products available in that product, as well as the differences between on-prem and cloud. Each version can be integrated with the data storage, analytics and MDM (master data management) solutions offered by IBM.

The on-prem versions can operate in Linux, Windows and AIX environments, but their hardware requirements are significantly affected by the purpose and expected scalability of the processing threads once deployed.

The product is able to connect with most relational and mainframe databases, ERP and CRM solutions, as well as data analytics solutions. In addition, it has ability to connect to products from external providers such as AWS, Cognos, Greenplum, Hive, DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Sybase, Teradata, etc.

Components list:

DataStage – DataStage is a powerful ETL (extract-transform-load) tool optimized for parallel operation, allowing users to move and transform data between source and target systems, helping to offload process level from live systems and make data available in the right places, in the right format.

FastTrack – FastTrack is an integration workflow tool that helps users automate integration tasks, aiming to accelerate the delivery of business needs.

Information Analyzer – Information Analyzer is a tool for data discovery, data quality and source data structure management. It can be used to cluster and analyze available source data and ultimately eliminate identified data errors.

Information Governance Catalog – The product is an enterprise-wide collaboration tool that allows users to work together to develop a data catalog and data asset inventory, helping users to achieve a common language and business understanding.

Information Governance Dashboard – The product helps measure the effectiveness of the data governance and data quality policies in place by analyzing and vizualising the level of centralized metadata shared by all components of the product family.

Information Services Director – With Information Services Director, users have access to a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) environment to implement previously defined and built integration rules in any business process.

QualityStage – QualityStage allows the user to monitor business data based on pre-defined rules, filtering out inconsistencies before they enter the processing flow.