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IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog vs IBM InfoSphere Information Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM InfoSphere Information ...
Ranking in Metadata Management
10th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM InfoSphere Information ...
Ranking in Metadata Management
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (34th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is 2.9%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM InfoSphere Information Server is 2.6%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM InfoSphere Information Server2.6%
IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog2.9%
Other94.5%
Metadata Management
 

Featured Reviews

MF
Data Architect at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Provides good catalog integration but requires too much coding
This is a complex solution and quite expensive. The technology has changed and I think IBM needs to be more flexible with their licensing model. We've been with them for over 10 years and they were unable to provide decent options for us. As the consumer, they weren't offering much flexibility and certainly not the support we were looking for given our long-standing relationship with them. There is also too much coding required compared with other solutions where you can do a lot directly in the environment and see how the policies apply.
MI
Senior Data Engineer at Mohammed Mansour Alrumiah
Faced challenges with customer support and documentation but have benefited from reliable data integration over the years
As for utilizing the platform's metadata management feature, I have not worked on that feature yet, but personally, I have done that. To evaluate the effectiveness of IBM InfoSphere Information Server's data integration capabilities, if IBM is providing all the solutions we are using, then it is definitely a helpful thing. Mostly, the other thing is that it is a big area including data governance, data lineage, data management, and metadata, but every customer is not putting that much effort and money on that. They mostly migrate the data, use it, and forget it, but slowly things are changing. I am working in Saudi Arabia, so here also data governance, data management, and those kinds of things are getting attention. Regarding how scalable IBM InfoSphere Information Server is, I need to learn how to tune performance and scalability on the cloud. I am familiar with localized hardware, but on the cloud, I still have to do the work around it. In the beginning, we estimate the load and based on that, we put the hardware, but if there is continuous increase, I believe IBM also faces problems. Scalability needs to be improved because once the demand comes, you should be able to improve it, but for that, documentation on how to add hardware or resources to the software needs to be proper. I do not have much hands-on experience with that.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I liked about IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is that it seemed to have most of the options that you would want from a government catalog and the features of the product are very rich and comprehensive."
"The valuable feature is that you can connect with multiple types of sources."
"It helped us streamline and organize our data."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is a stable product."
"The best feature of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog for me is that it's easy to use and only requires a little bit of manual intervention. Once you discover the data sources, everything flows into the tool automatically, so you do not have to map it manually. There's been a lot of automation in the solution which I like best."
"Anyone looking into using IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog should go for it because it's a leading governance provider, and IBM is known across the globe."
"It is easy to use."
"The solution allows us to leverage a concept called Open IGC to create custom assets and data lineages that are not technologies typically supported by IBM via connectors."
"The initial IBM InfoSphere Information Server is straightforward and you can choose what type of installation you want, such as a customized installation, with clear-cut documentation that, if followed, works fine and the installation has not given us issues."
"Over the years of working with IBM InfoSphere Information Server, I see basically the strength of the tool, capability, and load balancing, which I see is really good."
"The integration with different technologies is the most valuable feature."
"This solution is extremely flexible and scalable."
"Deploying the solution is straightforward for me."
"Reduces the loading and development time for Datawarehouse ETL."
"Data connections, data partitioning, flexibility, and performance are the most valuable features."
"This solution has reduced the time it takes for ETL. We took an existing Teradata ETL application from three days to eight minutes."
 

Cons

"What could be improved in IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is its query tool, including its terms, labels, and reports because the query tool isn't user-friendly. This would also be an additional feature or enhancement in the solution that would make it more attractive to users and would make IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog a really good solution."
"The solution has performance issues when scaling up small sets of information such as assets and data lineage to the ITC."
"A complex solution that requires a lot of coding."
"The simplicity of usage could improve. Perhaps the simplicity of use for end users, not for system integrators, but for the user, the end users."
"What I would tell IBM in terms of what needs to change or improve is that the product is too complicated. IBM purchased various components from different vendors over time and certainly in the UK, IBM did not have anybody that had the expertise to be able to get IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog to run properly."
"We are currently evaluating other products because we want to move more quickly than we can with InfoSphere and we're held back because of all the coding."
"An area for improvement in IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is that it's missing a lot of connectors. Clients complain about not being able to connect some data sources because there's no available connector, so my company raised that issue with IBM. In some cases, third-party connectors are available, but not for all data sources. Another area that needs improvement in the solution is stability because it also has some stability issues. This is the same issue with the other IBM products bundled with IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog. The solution is connected with IBM Infosphere Information Analyzer and IBM InfoSphere DataStage in my company, so if one has issues with stability, the rest of the products are affected as well."
"Stability is a concern, actually. As a heavy tool, it always has some performance-related issues, and there are some cases that have a constraint on the stability."
"There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required."
"Unlike other tools, IBM tools do not provide much help from the internet, so additional support should be available."
"Heavy use of scratch disk which sometimes leads to failure."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server should be more scalable. It should have the option to change the configuration to run on a single, non-multiple node, or multi-threading processing."
"Customer Service: It's poor."
"We have decided to decrease the usage of metadata management because we did not see any significant advantages."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Licensing for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is per user."
"In terms of pricing, I find IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog excessive. It's at the top end of the price range in terms of what you get for your money. It's an expensive product, and contractually, IBM is difficult to deal with. I can't remember the exact cost of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, but it could be in the region of three hundred thousand pounds."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is expensive."
"The licensing cost of IBM InfoSphere Information Server depends on how many users there are."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
We are using the on-premises version of IBM InfoSphere Information Server, but we feel that all new development is mainly for the cloud. We receive corrections of errors, but we do not see new func...
What is your primary use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
My usual use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server is ETL, where we take data from one source to another data warehouse solution.
What advice do you have for others considering IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
We are about to change our platform from IBM AIX to SUSE Linux, as our whole platform is changing, so everyone should change from IBM to SUSE Linux. It would be very difficult for us to have a diff...
 

Also Known As

IBM Information Governance Catalog
InfoSphere Information Server, IBM Information Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rabobank, QuadReal Property Group, Jakarta Smart City
Canadian National Railway Company, Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce, Swedish Armed Forces, BG RCI, Janata Sahakari Bank Ltd., University of Arizona, Biogrid Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog vs. IBM InfoSphere Information Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.