IBM's data integration initiative focuses on real-time delivery

IBM upgrades data warehousing, master data management software

IBM’s software products for managing business data are being upgraded across the board, the vendor announced Monday, describing new offerings that enable real-time information delivery through data warehousing, data integration and master-data management.

IBM is focusing on making data seem local even when it is distributed across multiple systems, mapping information to get consistent views of data, and quickly processing many types of data and content, said Steve Mills, senior vice president of the company's software group.

“We can deal with any customer’s data in virtually any format,” Mills said during a press conference at the IBM Information on Demand Global Conference in Las Vegas. “We have focused on very-high-scale high performance. How do you make that remote information seem local?”

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IBM’s software products for managing business data are being upgraded across the board, the vendor announced Monday, describing new offerings that enable real-time information delivery through data warehousing, data integration and master-data management.

IBM is focusing on making data seem local even when it is distributed across multiple systems, mapping information to get consistent views of data, and quickly processing many types of data and content, said Steve Mills, senior vice president of the company's software group.

“We can deal with any customer’s data in virtually any format,” Mills said during a press conference at the IBM Information on Demand Global Conference in Las Vegas. “We have focused on very-high-scale high performance. How do you make that remote information seem local?”

One key announcement has IBM releasing Master Data Management Server, software for managing information about customers, products and accounts within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The product, which is entering beta testing and will become available in early 2008, treats master data as a strategic asset supported by capabilities for defining, accessing and using it, according to IBM. This will help financial services providers, retailers, governments and other large organizations design and implement processes that depend on an accurate, comprehensive and consistent view of master data, IBM says.

“IBM is addressing this need with multiform master-data management, a new approach to handling business information that makes a single version of master data accessible in a form appropriate for usage by multiple applications and users,” IBM stated in a press release. “This approach supports the various ways in which an organization defines, creates, uses and analyses its master data.”

Here’s a summary of IBM’s other data announcements:

* The company introduced the DB2 9.5 “Viper 2” data server, with data-automation and -performance enhancements to improve the way customers store, manage and access business information. The system's new data management capabilities could double data-transaction performance and provide significant storage savings, IBM said. Viper 2 will be available Oct. 31 with prices starting at $50 per processor value unit or $170 per user. Another version will be available as a free download with optional yearly support at $2,995 per server.

* IBM announced DB2 Warehouse 9.5, which is built on the new Viper 2 data server and aims to improve real-time business intelligence. New capabilities include “extreme workload management, embedded online analytic processing  and embedded analytics for unstructured information, enabling customers to address the increasing demand for real-time analysis of strategic business information,” IBM states.

* IBM introduced Information Server for System z, a software platform that profiles, cleanses, transforms and delivers information from the mainframe and distributed data sources. This provides a foundation for key business initiatives, such as real-time reporting, business intelligence, data migration, data warehousing, data governance, CRM and SOA, according to IBM. The product will be available worldwide in November at prices starting at about $80,000, officials said.