Most of today's critical business initiatives cannot succeed without effective integration of information. Initiatives such as single view of the customer, business intelligence, supply chain management, and Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance require consistent, complete, and trustworthy information. IBM® Information Server is the industry’s first comprehensive, unified foundation for enterprise information architectures, capable of scaling to meet any information volume requirement so that companies can deliver business results within these initiatives faster and with higher quality results.

Business intelligence IBM Information Server makes it easier develop a unified view of the business for better decisions. It helps you understand existing data sources, cleanse, correct, and standardize information, and load analytical views that can be reused throughout the enterprise.

Master data management IBM Information Server simplifies the development of authoritative master data by showing where and how information is stored across source systems. It also consolidates disparate data into a single, reliable record, cleanses and standardizes information, removes duplicates, and links records together across systems. This master record can be loaded into operational data stores, data warehouses, or master data applications such as WebSphere Customer Center. The record can also be assembled, completely or partially, on demand.

Infrastructure rationalization IBM Information Server aids in reducing operating costs by showing relationships between systems and by defining migration rules to consolidate instances or move data from obsolete systems. Data cleansing and matching ensure high-quality data in the new system. Business transformation IBM Information Server can speed development and increase business agility by providing reusable information services that can be plugged into applications, business processes, and portals. These standards-based information services are maintained centrally by information specialists but are widely accessible throughout the enterprise.

Risk and compliance IBM Information Server helps improve visibility and data governance by enabling complete, authoritative views of information with proof of lineage and quality. These views can be made widely available and reusable as shared services, while the rules inherent in them are maintained centrally.

Understand your data IBM Information Server can help you automatically discover, define, and model information content and structure and understand and analyze the meaning, relationships, and lineage of information. By automating data profiling and data-quality auditing within systems, organizations can achieve these goals: Understand data sources and relationships Eliminate the risk of using or proliferating bad data Improve productivity through automation Leverage existing IT investments

Deliver your information IBM Information Server provides the ability to virtualize, synchronize, or move information to the people, processes, or applications that need it. Information can be delivered by using federation or time-based or event-based processing, moved in large bulk volumes from location to location, or accessed in place when it cannot be consolidated. IBM Information Server provides direct, native access to a wide variety of information sources, both mainframe and distributed. It provides access to databases, files, services and packaged applications, and to content repositories and collaboration systems. Companion products allow high-speed replication, synchronization and distribution across databases, change data capture, and event-based publishing of information.