IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog vs Quest Data Intelligence comparison

Why PeerSpot?

IBM and Quest Software are both solutions in the Metadata Management category. IBM is ranked #10, while Quest Software is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 2.7% mindshare in MM, compared to Quest Software’s 7.5% mindshare. Additionally, 72% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

IBM InfoSphere Information ...

Read 9 IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog reviews

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1,225 Comparison Views

72% willing to recommend

Quest Data Intelligence

Read 22 Quest Data Intelligence reviews

6,485 Views
2,789 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM InfoSphere Information ...

Quest Data Intelligence

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 16, 2026

In the realm of data intelligence and information governance, erwin Data Intelligence and IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog compete fiercely. While erwin is favored for automation and flexibility, IBM is preferred for handling complex data scenarios through superior integration.

Features: Erwin Data Intelligence includes smart data connectors, business glossaries, and data mapping capabilities. Automated reverse engineering and strong metadata management make it valuable for simplifying collaboration and standardizing data. IBM InfoSphere offers lineage and data analytics, interfacing with diverse sources, making it ideal for complex data management.

Room for Improvement: Erwin faces issues with its user interface, customization, and integration complexities. Its automation scripts need enhancement. IBM has a complex interface with limited connectors and scalability concerns. Simplifying user experience and expanding connector support would benefit IBM.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Erwin offers hybrid cloud deployment and generally responsive support, though some report slow responses. IBM is primarily on-premises, experiencing deployment and integration difficulties. Erwin is noted for outstanding support, whereas IBM is seen as adept but occasionally inflexible.

Pricing and ROI: Erwin is more cost-effective with reasonable feature-based pricing, offering strong ROI through process efficiency. However, it incurs costs for additional connectors and licenses. IBM is regarded as costly, with pricing based on record numbers leading to high expenses. Erwin is perceived to provide better value for money.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog vs. Quest Data Intelligence Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog vs. Quest Data Intelligence

September 2026

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Quest Data Intelligence

Ranking in Metadata Management

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Governance (17th), AI Governance (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest Data Intelligence is 7.5%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Metadata Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Quest Data Intelligence	7.5%
IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog	2.7%
Other	89.8%

Metadata Management

Featured Reviews

Giuseppe Innamorato

Senior Client Director at Alkemy digital_enabler

Reasonably priced, easy to install, and reliable

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.

Read full review

Jog Raj

Senior Consultant at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Automated lineage and business glossaries have improved data understanding and collaboration

I am open to answering a few questions about erwin Data Intelligence and sharing my opinion about the product. Regarding the analytic part of the product, I find it very interesting that erwin Data Intelligence has its own inbuilt reporting toolset, with a new version coming out in January that will be AI-powered. This means you will be able to write analytical reports and questions based on the metadata and data lineage, making it more powerful than the current version, as AI will assist in creating those reports and performing analysis on the metadata. I find that the time taken to realize value from erwin Data Intelligence can be quite long. Creating a data catalog and developing data lineage takes significant time, and I expect that AI will help accelerate the process of creating data products by streamlining the steps involved. I can recommend erwin Data Intelligence to other users. I would rate this review as an eight out of ten overall.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The valuable feature is that you can connect with multiple types of sources."

"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."

"It is easy to use."

"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 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."

"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."

"It helped us streamline and organize our data."

"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."

More IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog pros

"It is a central place for everybody to start any ETL data pipeline builds. This tool is being heavily used, plus it's heavily integrated with all the ETL data pipeline design and build processes. Nobody can bypass these processes and do something without going through this tool."

"The biggest benefit with erwin DI is that I have a single source of truth that I can send anybody to. If anybody doesn't know the answer we can go back to it. Just having a central location of business rules is good."

"Mind map... is a really good feature because it is very helpful in seeing which column's tables are related. Also, you can flag them with "sensitive data" and other indicators. You can also customize your own features for the mind map. That was another very robust feature."

"The interface is easy to use. I also like Erwin's automatic data classification and data quality checks."

"Overall, DI's data cataloging, data literacy, and automation have helped our decision-makers because when a source wants to change something, we immediately know what the impact is going to be downstream."

"Erwin DI checked all the boxes for us."

"The data management is, obviously, key in understanding where the data is and what the data is. And the governance can be done at multiple levels. You have the governance of the code sets versus the governance of the business terms and the definitions of those business terms. You have the governance of the business data models and how those business data models are driving the physical implementation of the actual databases. And, of course, you have the governance of the mapping to make sure that source-to-target mapping is done and is being shared across the company."

"The client is thrilled with higher quality, lower-cost products, and the services."

More Quest Data Intelligence pros

Cons

"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."

"The scalability has room for improvement."

"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."

"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."

"Sometimes, if the product is new, getting support is difficult and the team was facing some challenges."

"They need to improve asset management."

"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."

"There were two failed installations and IBM could never actually get the product to work."

More IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog cons

"It's a little bit clunky. I think a lot of these features were bolted on, and they don't necessarily transition smoothly in the interface. I would like to see a little more cohesion."

"The SDK behind this entire product needs improvement. The company really should focus more on this because we were finding some inconsistencies on the LDK level. Everything worked fine from the UI perspective, but when we started doing some deep automation scripts going through multiple API calls inside the tool, then only some pieces of it work or it would not return the exact data it was supposed to do."

"I find that the time taken to realize value from erwin Data Intelligence can be quite long."

"One big improvement we would like to see would be the workflow integration of codeset mapping with the erwin source to target mapping. That's a bit clunky for us. The two often seem to be in conflict with one another. Codeset mappings that are used within the source to target mappings are difficult to manage because they get locked."

"We still need another layer of data quality assessments on the source to see if it is sending us the wrong data or if there are some issues with the source data. For those things, we need a rule-based data quality assessment or scoring where we can assess tools or other technology stacks. We need to be able to leverage where the business comes in, defining some business rules and have the ability to execute those rules, then score the data quality of all those attributes. Data quality is definitely not what we are leveraging from this tool, as of today."

"There is room for improvement with the data cataloging capability. Right now, there is a list of a lot of sources that they can catalog, or they can create metadata upon, but if they can add more then that would be a good plus for this tool."

"The fact that I sometimes have to go in and out of different applications, even though it's all part of the whole erwin suite, perhaps means it could be architected a little bit better. I think they do have some ideas for improvements there."

"There is room for improvement with respect to the connector and how to connect to the structured and unstructured database."

More Quest Data Intelligence cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is expensive."

"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."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"Licensing for IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is per user."

"The price is too high."

"There is an additional fee for the server maintenance."

"Erwin Data Catalog is very expensive."

"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."

"The price is reasonable, and a subscription is required."

"erwin is cheaper than other solutions and this should appeal to other buyers. It has a good price tag."

"Smart Data Connectors have some costs, and then there are user-based licenses. We spend roughly $150,000 per year on the solution. It is a yearly subscription license that basically includes the cost for Smart Data Connectors and user-based licenses. We have around 30 data stewards who maintain definitions, and then we have five IT users who basically maintain the overall solution. It is not a SaaS kind of operation, and there is an infrastructure cost to host this solution, which is our regular AWS hosting cost."

"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."

More Quest Data Intelligence pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Government

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What needs improvement with erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?

In my opinion, the analytics part of erwin Data Intelligence is not satisfactory. The name 'Intelligence' is not related specifically to analytics; it is focused on data governance with no advanced...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?

My main use case for erwin Data Intelligence is applying it and the DQ Labs in a financial institution.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?

The integration of business glossaries has significantly helped improve collaboration in our organization. We define the business glossaries first during meetings with the business, and then we bul...

See all answers

Comparisons

erwin Data Literacy vs IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

Compared 19% of the time

Alation Data Catalog vs IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

Compared 18% of the time

IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog vs IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

Compared 17% of the time

Collibra Platform vs IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

Compared 16% of the time

IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

Compared 10% of the time

More IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog Competitors

Collibra Platform vs Quest Data Intelligence

Compared 17% of the time

Alation Data Catalog vs Quest Data Intelligence

Compared 9% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Quest Data Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Global Data Excellence DEMS vs Quest Data Intelligence

Compared 5% of the time

Ataccama ONE Platform vs Quest Data Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

More Quest Data Intelligence Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

October 2026

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog report

Download IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog product report

Buyer's Guide

Quest Data Intelligence

September 2026

Download Quest Data Intelligence product report

Also Known As

IBM Information Governance Catalog

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance, erwin Data Catalog

Overview

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog delivers a user-friendly, automated, and scalable data governance solution that enhances data management through features like role management, metadata asset management, and data lineage capabilities.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog revolutionizes data management by offering comprehensive features designed to simplify and enhance data governance. While it integrates seamlessly with modern data sources and supports data lineage, the platform faces challenges with legacy systems and licensing flexibility. Its user-friendly interface and automation features make it a valuable tool in data analytics and governance, enabling organizations to streamline operations and improve decision-making.

What are the key features of IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies navigation and access to data management tools.
Automation: Streamlines workflows and reduces manual effort in data governance.
Scalability: Adapts to growing data needs and expands with organizational growth.
Role management: Efficiently manages user roles and permissions.
Metadata asset manager: Organizes and categorizes data for easy access and management.
Data lineage: Tracks data flow across systems for enhanced analytics and compliance.
Multiple data source connectors: Integrates with various data inputs for seamless data management.

What benefits and ROI should be considered when evaluating IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog?

Enhanced decision-making: Provides structured data insights to drive strategic decisions.
Improved data consistency: Ensures uniformity in data naming conventions and source monitoring.
Business term association: Links business jargon with data assets for better understanding.
End-to-end data workflows: Facilitates comprehensive data management from source to analytics.

In industries such as automotive, insurance, and healthcare, IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog aids by addressing data inconsistencies and supporting the creation of business glossaries. It supports end-to-end data workflows, significantly impacting these sectors by enhancing metadata management and glossary maintenance. Through integration with existing tools, it helps enhance data-driven decision-making by defining and enriching critical information.

IBM

erwin Data Intelligence is a comprehensive platform for metadata management, data cataloging, and governance. It enables organizations to gain insights, improve traceability, and streamline compliance through its advanced features.

Focusing on data lineage, metadata repositories, and seamless integrations, erwin Data Intelligence provides a unified perspective of enterprise data. Its robust capabilities include Smart Data Connectors for automation, efficient data visualization with mind maps, and adaptable metadata properties. While the platform integrates well into existing systems, areas for improvement include automation, SDK inconsistencies, and the need for better data quality assessments. Use cases highlight its importance in enhancing business data models and regulatory compliance.

What are the key features of erwin Data Intelligence?

Single Source of Truth: Centralizes data for consistent information across the organization.
Smart Data Connectors: Automate connections to data sources, enhancing efficiency.
Data Lineage: Tracks data pathways for better traceability and understanding.
Business Glossaries: Enables clear definitions and shared vocabulary for all users.
Metadata Management: Streamlines metadata organization and retrieval.
Impact Analysis: Assesses implications of data changes rapidly and accurately.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automation scripts reduce manual processes and increase productivity.
Improved Data Visualization: Mind maps facilitate an intuitive understanding of complex data.
Customizable Properties: Adapt metadata attributes to fit specific organizational requirements.
Unified View: Offers a comprehensive perspective of data governance practices.

Industries implementing erwin Data Intelligence often focus on mapping data sources and integrating governance with ETL tools. This supports comprehensive data management strategies, enabling business teams to better locate, understand, and utilize data effectively. Its application in metadata management and automated reporting is particularly valuable in sectors requiring stringent regulatory compliance.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

Rabobank, QuadReal Property Group, Jakarta Smart City

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC

Buyer's Guide

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog vs. Quest Data Intelligence

September 2026

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