IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog Reviews

We are customers of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

The valuable feature is that you can connect with multiple types of sources. We use Informatica as our other BPM and they have pretty good catalog integration when you figure out how to manage it. When you understand the logic, you can unlock it and it's great. 

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.

Our company has been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The licensing fee is according to the number of records you have. It's an expensive solution. 

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. In other solutions work can be done virtually, with minimal coding. We're carrying out a POC on two products because of the limitations we have with InfoSphere. 

InfoSphere requires a lot of direct coding. It's important to invest in the tools, in the environment, as well as in the time to do the coding. There are various versions, but the channels are basically the same. The cloud version has a lot of restrictions because they have matrix code. And when you are looking to do something outside the logic require a lot time and effort from Engineering team, I rate this solution six out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for data cataloging and data governance. 

There were different objects being used with different names in different applications. We had different CIO divisions in our organization, and, if a customer number was being used somewhere, it was customer underscore N B R, somewhere it was customer underscore N U M B E R, somewhere it was MCN, just Master Customer Number or MCN. It was creating confusion while creating reports or dashboards. We had to make that we used similar kinds of names across the organization. The data governance team started using this product and they streamlined it very well.

It helped us streamline and organize our data.

Earlier we were on-premises, and now we moved to the cloud, Microsoft Azure Cloud. When this project started, we decided to streamline our data catalog. We started from day one designing the phase of the ERP cloud migration, and since then, it has streamlined our reporting and dashboarding. Everything is so easy now.

It is easy to use. It's very user-friendly and its UI experience is very good. Everyone, even if someone is new to the team, just needs to practice for one or two days and after that, they will be able to use it fluently.

The initial setup was easy and we did it through a third party.

The solution was stable.

We found the product to be very scalable. 

Sometimes, if the product is new, getting support is difficult and the team was facing some challenges. Though it was managed, later on, I would say if there is some easy support mechanism is there, it would be very good.

We'd like the option to have more integration. We have different databases. We have moved our ERP Oracle system and data warehousing system to the cloud, however, we have too many legacy systems. We were not able to integrate with all those legacy systems. However, it's not a critical factor as no product, no new product provides all support for the legacy products. It's not a deal-breaker, let's say.

We started using the solution one year ago.

At the time we implemented the solution, they were still improving in terms of stability. They are very good now. They've gotten better and better. 

The solution is very scalable. It can scale up to meet our needs. It's not a problem. 

We have around 23 people on the solution currently. It's a combined team, which is responsible for quality assurance, cataloging, and data governance.

We'd like support to be more responsive, especially early on. However, after we gained access to their contacts, they worked very well with us. they were very helpful and responsive in the end. 

Positive

We did previously use a different solution. I cannot recall the name. This solution is much better and provides a nicer UI experience. 

We found the initial setup to be simple. A third party set up it easily. Initially, they might have faced some challenges I'm not aware of, however, as far as I know, it was set up easily. It was not an issue. I'd rate the overall ease of setup at 4.5 out of five. The deployment was very simple.

We had a third party set up the solution for us.

We're a customer and end-user.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog. If the customer uses the IBM InfoSphere, we may support them in implementing it.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is used for the information governance arena. The Governance Management of the information.

We use IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog to define and collect information inside an organization within an organization. And, for example, to enrich the data with meta information that describes the type of data, the type of information that is used in the domain of sources.

The graphic flows and the lineage are the most valuable features of this solution.

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.

I have been working with IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog for two years.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is a stable product.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is scalable.

We have four clients using this solution.

I have to ask my technical team about this, but I don't feel that there are some problems with that.

We recently suggested FlexiCapture and the ABBYY platform to a customer in Italy, but we are now waiting for their response. Unfortunately, we have no direct experience with the platform.

We are a consulting service and a consulting company that also works on system integration. We use a variety of platforms ranging from IBM to Microsoft.

We are specifically focused on data management and artificial intelligence solution. We use many different solutions, such as InfoSphere, and Db2 for databases for example.

We have many projects also on Information Governance where we use not only IBM products but also Informatica products, for example, in the MDM arena.

We work with both IBM InfoSphere Information Server and Governance Catalog.

The initial setup is straightforward. it is not complex.

It can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to four months to deploy. It depends on the complexity of the customer's use case. 

We had assistance from a consultant.

We also support customers using these types of products.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

The license is something that is managed directly by the customer. In my opinion, it is not expensive.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog an eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to build a business glossary that includes categories based on lines of businesses, business terms, and maintenance of stewardship management in the Information Governance Catalog. 

We also integrate the solution with an external BPM tool where we propose new terms or other activities and show end-to-end data lineage to leverage it in the IGC. 

We currently have 30-50 members who use the solution. 

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. This feature is a standout but is complex to derive. 

The solution has performance issues when scaling up small sets of information such as assets and data lineage to the ITC. It is an Open IGC issue and does not allow a large volume of records to upload in one pass. We have experienced this issue with multiple versions of the solution including 11.3, 11.5 and 11.7 and have escalated the concern to IBM who is trying to resolve it.

It would be a benefit to allow more customizations on the UI. Internally, we have identified a number of solutions to the look and feel of the product that we would like to be able to customize. 

I have been using the solution for more than three years. 

Two years ago I would have ranked the solution as very stable but there are now a number of competitors offering better solutions. There is room for improvement with IGC so that IBM again becomes a leader in the data space. 

The solution's scalability is good with no issues. It takes three easy steps to add users and bring the new set to the IGC. 

I have reached out to support for challenges with use cases and rate the experiences a six out of ten. 

Neutral

The initial setup was not very difficult and went smoothly. We experienced a challenge when we canceled the first attempt to push a second attempt because the initial insertion files remained and we had to manually insert replacement files.  

Our setup was small and took four to five hours. 

We completed the implementation using our in-house team. 

One of our customers feels that the user interface and customization options in the IGC are not very good. For example, it is not very easy to move a technical asset into the glossary when creating a hierarchy structure.

I have compared the solution to the Azure tool Collibra which offers many customizable features that are lacking in IGC. 

Our company is part of the IBM stack and uses multiple products. When we started our data governance program, IBM offered platinum support because of our relationship with them. Since we already had the stack and the UTL tool running there, it made sense to keep everything under one umbrella. 

I recommend in-house training for the solution before onboarding new users to the IGC. It is important to first understand the organization's glossary structure, assets, data lineage, and terms for proposing a new rule. Explore what is already contained in IGC to determine structure and starting points.  

A few years ago, I would have rated the solution an eight or nine. With competition in the market and other products available, IBM needs to focus on fixing existing issues and adding more customizable features that provide the end user with a better product. 

We use IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog mostly for data governance, particularly for associating the business terms with the actual technical assets, monitoring the various data sources, and publishing a report made available for the data stakeholders, to carry on the various data sources.

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.

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.

My experience with IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is around two years.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog has some issues in terms of stability.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is a scalable solution.

The technical support for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog was good. My team complained to the support team about the missing connectors and received the reply that the issue's being worked on. The team rolled out the connectors gradually, rather than all at once.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is easy to set up. Its deployment usually takes around two to three hours.

In my company, ten to fifteen people use IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, but in the companies of clients, more people use the product.

My advice to others planning to start using IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is that it's a very good product, but the primary concern is the missing connectors. IBM is working hard on that area and trying to come up with new connectors with every release, so it's a good product to use for the purpose of data governance, though you can find better solutions for the same purpose.

My rating for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is eight out of ten.

My company is a partner of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

In terms of the use cases for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, mostly what we do here would be more about the assets, particularly what the assets are, the organization they belong to, which business domain they will be useful for to get data insights, create the lineage between the business terms, the glossary, and the technical design. In other words, the focus is on the data, the location of the data, flow of data, data usage, etc. There are multiple assets, for example, if we're currently working for the automotive industry, we'll multiple assets that could belong to finance, marketing, insurance, etc., so we're creating the lineage between the business glossary and the technical design. People from the management team can easily view those and can make business decisions based on the data. These are how we use IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog within the company.

The feature I found most valuable in IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is the lineage as it's very powerful and it provides data analytics in terms of where the data lives and where it goes. The interface is also clear, though it could still be sorted out, but the lineage is the most powerful thing in the solution.

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.

I've been using IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog for around five to six years.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is a stable solution.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is a scalable solution, and you can add more users to it without any issues.

I've contacted technical support for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog whenever there was downtime or a limitation in the solution. I've raised PMR requests with the support team, and luckily everything went well and answers were provided on time.

On a scale of one to five, with one being bad and five being excellent, I would rate support a three out of five. It's a  bit lower because the attrition rate is quite high and the people keep changing. I also felt there were times when the support team needed to have more rigorous training. Support should be trained a little bit more and the response time could be quicker.

We chose IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog because we have a tie-up with IBM. We're working on IBM DataStage ETL 11.7. We have IBM Cognos. IBM provided us with a complete package for reporting, extraction, transformation, load, and governance, and that also helped us money-wise, so we're using IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

The initial setup for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is not that complicated. It's okay and it's manageable. I won't say that it's super easy, but it's not complicated as well.

If you have clear requirements and everything's done, for example, the glossary's set up including the catalog, in one week, it's possible to complete the setup. If you have the right skillset, I don't see a big challenge with setting up IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

There's ROI from IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog in the sense that per user, the solution's worth it, at least for the moment.

Licensing for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is per user.

In my company, there's a team of ten users of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, particularly four users from my team that handle the technical setup and are in charge of taking care of the solution, and six managers or department heads my team reports to, in charge of getting data insights.

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's a big brand. I've seen big banks such as J.P. Morgan, ING, even Cardinal, that have been using the IBM InfoSphere package. The solution has features that other competitors don't have and those competitors aren't up to the level of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog. I would also advice others to have a package deal, if possible, to make it a win-win situation. If IBM gives you complimentary services or products, then it'll be a good deal.

I'm rating IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog eight out of ten because it is a good addition to any organization. You can use it to set up the lineage between your business needs, its design, and assets, and the solution allows individual asset owners, for example, I'm handling just a couple of assets, and not taking care of all the assets. I have other team members who take care of the remaining assets. IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog also provides data analytics so you can get an insight into the data, particularly where it lives, where it goes, and how useful that data is. The solution also gives you insight on whether you need a particular asset and if you don't, you can just decommission or archive it.

The reason I didn't give a ten out of ten rating for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is because of some room for improvement, for example, its reporting needs improvement.  The query tool can be improved as well. The response time of the IBM support team in terms of bigger issues and PMR requests should be quicker. The support team also needs more training and needs to be more skillful. The IBM management team should also connect with employees deployed on the client site to have regular follow-ups.

My company has been using IBM products since 2005, so it's a customer and a partner. The relationship is in-between because it's a long-term relationship, so I'd say my company is a partner, rather than just a customer.

I've actually worked for European clients as a developer. I cover different industries, including automotive, insurance, and healthcare. It's actually based on the different internal stakeholders as well as the external stakeholders. I interact with and work on solutions based on the requirements.

Information Governance Catalog is the data integration that we did from a different data catalog tool which was a SharePoint Data Catalog tool.

We actually did a migration to this IBM tool that's live MITC. We're using the integration RESTt APA function section, which comes built-in with the IGC tool.

Working on the roles, actually, is the most valuable aspect. Working on the roles, different analyses, and also the data source tool, the metadata asset manager tool, helps in considering the different data sources. You can deal with multiple data sources, both the native data source connectors and as well as the ODBC-JDBC connectors.

We can find reliable relevant connectors and IBM keeps on updating those connectors. It supports almost all the current trending data sources, actually, which could be used in the organization as per the requirements. It helps as being just the dedicated tool, IMAM, an IMM metadata manager, and we can integrate very easily between the IMM and the IGC, and also for the business process management, BPM. We can also integrate with IGC.

They need to improve asset management. Sometimes it depends on the stakeholders or the organization. Employees actually have their own unique requirements in terms of creating the assets and mapping to the terms. That area maybe needs to be simplified. We have a scenario that actually created some problems with the product itself. When we approached IBM they actually didn't have any solution for that. It's not a major thing, however, creating the assets, and indexing the assets, needs some improvement. They could come up with some patching which would definitely help. Sometimes, we have to initiate the requirement with IBM and they have to come up with the development scheme.

The solution could offer more native connectors. For example, you can also connect an Oracle database using the ODBC-JDBC connector and there will be a native connector called the Oracle connector itself, so two different connectors will be there. You can connect Oracle databases using ODBC also, and also through the Oracle connector itself. They probably need to improve or increase the number of connectors. Currently, a lot of trending data sources are coming up. One example I would say is Kafka, which has big data-related connectors. Those kinds of things they have to improve and bring inside the metadata asset management tool.

I've been using the solution for the last five years. 

Stability is a concern, actually. There are a lot of competitive data governance tools coming up and already in the market, however, when compared to the other lighter tools, like Collibra, Alation, or Informatica (which are considered to be light data governance tools), IGC is a heavy tool. As a heavy tool, it always has some performance-related issues, and there are some cases that have a constraint on the stability. Obviously, IBM is there to help out. We have to follow the default measures or default configuration parameters. Those need to be enabled.

I don't have much experience with scalability. It is a microservices tool, which runs on Kubernetes. I've not worked on multiple nodes for the horizontal scalability setup. That said, it is my understanding that IBM provides such a feature, and allows for reliable scalability.

I'm working for a US-based eCommerce and offshore development center from India. It's a small team. We are growing and expanding. I don't have much scope in IGC in the current company that I'm working with, however, I'm working on some of the POCs to present to the company stakeholders. I would say the number of uses would be a total of 300 members when we actually begin to use this InfoSphere Information server and IGC.

IGC is something we are now working on it to bring into my current company. In my previous company I worked with a while ago, we extensively worked on is IGC tool and it was a larger team.

All the IBM tools or IBM technologies always follow the same template or format of support. The hierarchy of support is always quite on the slower side. Eventually, we'll get the solution, however, it won't be immediate. It's based on the severity, however, we have to we to hang on and wait to get to the solution. We need to be patient and go through the templated process. 

Positive

IBM tools always get inherent trust from companies. You can always trust the support. It is not transferring when we talk about the other tools. You cannot completely rely on them for technical support. Nothing compares to IBM. Even my previous company chose IBM's IGC in terms of data production and data security features as well. It is more on the higher side of capabilities, actually, compared to other tools.

The initial setup is a bit complex when you use the microservices tool which actually helps for the enterprise search. In order to search the assets, you have to configure or install the microservices tool as well. Actually, even without the microservices tool, it is complex. We are able to use and install the IGC tool just fine, however, information can be managed from the enterprise search option, which is very complex in setting up. It is not a straightforward area. We needed some assistance to set up the complete tool. 

Therefore, if you just wanted to use the layer of IGC, you can easily set it up, however, when it comes to the microservices tool, it is complex.

Without any hiccups, a deployment can take between four and five hours. However, it also depends on the hardware resources. That might take three to four hours. 

I'm not really sure of the exact licensing cost. The calculation will be done based on the number of PVs. We have to get the complete tool. It is not broken into separate components, and IDP is not a separate component. It comes with the InfoSphere Information Server. We have to get the complete tool. It is not like we have to purchase a separate license for IGC.

While we are on-premises right now, we are working towards moving to the cloud. 

I'd recommend new users to go for it. You'll get a great brand value. It's popular. Everyone knows IBM tools and the features they provide. I would definitely advise companies to try it. On the pricing side, it is slightly higher, however, it could be pretty reasonable with the features you get.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. There's a lot of up-and-coming competition on the horizon. There's Informatica, Collibra, and Alation, for example. AWS also has some data governance too. I'd rate this product highly due to the brand value and the popularity and the kind of support they provide for the tool, for the product, they own. However, there are lots of solutions to choose from now. 

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is used to integrate and govern our information.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog has helped us ensure our data quality.

The ability to create special rules inside the solution using Portuguese is the most valuable feature.

The scalability has room for improvement.

I would like the ability to run the solution from different servers.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog for four years.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is stable.

We encounter scaling issues when there are multiple CPUs in a machine as they get restricted by the license.

The technical support is good. We receive support in Portuguese.

The initial setup is complex.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is expensive.

I give IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog a seven out of ten.

We have three people using the solution and we don't have plans to increase the usage.

I recommend IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

We used IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog for cataloging metadata, so data about data. We used the product for building a business glossary, searching for information within databases, and helping the business understand where the data sits.

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. The features of the product are very rich and comprehensive.

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.

I attempted to use IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog for nearly one year. There were two failed installations and IBM could never actually get the product to work.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is not a stable product.

My company never got to the point of scaling up IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog. I don't think that it's a product that's easy to scale.

The technical support for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog was inconsistent. I would rate the support team somewhere in the middle because some issues were fixed straight away, and some were never, ever, ever fixed.

For an end-user, setting up IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is fairly easy. The deployment of the product took a year and a half.

We used consultants for implementing IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

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.

We evaluated Informatica and we found that it was significantly better than IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

My company aimed to have about two hundred users of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, but only about five people tried to use it.

If you're looking into using the product, my advice is to ensure that your infrastructure and security requirements are in line with IBM's recommendations. This is a product that houses sensitive information, yet on Linux, there's this requirement of certain security features needing to be disabled, which doesn't make much sense.

I'm rating IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog three out of ten.