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IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs Quest Data Intelligence comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 16, 2026

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
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (34th)
Quest Data Intelligence
Ranking in Metadata Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (18th), AI Governance (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of IBM InfoSphere Information Server is 2.6%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest Data Intelligence is 6.7%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Quest Data Intelligence6.7%
IBM InfoSphere Information Server2.6%
Other90.7%
Metadata Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Jog Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Reduces the loading and development time for Datawarehouse ETL."
"The integration with different technologies is the most valuable feature."
"This solution has reduced the time it takes for ETL. We took an existing Teradata ETL application from three days to eight minutes."
"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."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable."
"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."
"This solution is extremely flexible and scalable."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature."
"We always know where our data is, and anybody can look that up, whether they're a business person who doesn't know anything about Informatica, or a developer who knows everything about creating data movement jobs in Informatica, but who does not understand the business terminology or the data that is being used in the tool."
"The biggest impact for us is that erwin generates DDL extremely quickly. We're able to pull in metadata, map it to a target, generate DDL to create the tables, and generate SSIS packages. Previously, especially going back 10 to 15 years ago, hundreds of hours had to be spent to manually perform these tasks. This solution completely automates it and gets it 90% done. We can then pass it off to a developer to create the items in SSIS."
"The automated data lineage and impact analysis being driven from the mapping documents are astounding in reducing the time to research impact analysis from six to 16 weeks down to minutes, because it's a couple of clicks with a mouse."
"This type of solution was key to moving our entire company in the right direction by getting everyone to think about data governance."
"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."
"We use the codeset mapping quite a bit to match value pairs to use within the conversion as well. Those value pair mappings come in quite handy and are utilized quite extensively. They then feed into the automation of the source data extraction, like the source data mapping of the source data extraction, the code development, forward engineering using the ODI connector for the forward automation."
"The main benefits end users receive from erwin Data Intelligence include saving time and money while streamlining processes."
 

Cons

"Their technical support needs improvement."
"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."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
"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."
"We have decided to decrease the usage of metadata management because we did not see any significant advantages."
"Heavy use of scratch disk which sometimes leads to failure."
"Customer Service: It's poor."
"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."
"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 data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license."
"There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive. They have made some good progress. Originally, when we started, we were on version 9 or 10. Over the last couple of releases, I've seen some improvements that they have made, but there might be a few other additional areas in UI where they can make some enhancements."
"There is room for improvement in automation, no question."
"In my opinion, the analytics part of erwin Data Intelligence is not satisfactory."
"Really huge datasets, where the logical names or the lexicons weren't groomed or maintained well, were the only area where it really had room for improvement. A huge data set would cause erwin to crash. If there were half a million or 1 million tables, erwin would hang."
"We chose to implement on an Oracle Database because we also had the erwin Data Modeler and Web Portal products in-house, which have been set up on Oracle Databases for many years. Sometimes the Oracle Database installation has caused some hiccups that wouldn't necessarily have been caused if we had used SQL Server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost of IBM InfoSphere Information Server depends on how many users there are."
"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
"The licensing cost was very affordable at the time of purchase. It has since been taken over by erwin, then Quest. The tool has gotten a bit more costly, but they are adding more features very quickly."
"There is an additional fee for the server maintenance."
"The price is too high."
"You buy a seat license for your portal. We have 100 seats for the portal, then you buy just the development licenses for the people who are going to put the data in."
"The price is reasonable and competitive. When you get into forward and reverse-engineering, the cost could go up. However, if you are a large organization, you would probably be able to access different packages. If, however, you don't need forward and reverse-engineering, then the price is relatively cheap."
"The price is reasonable, and a subscription is required."
"The solution is aggressively priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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.
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...
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Information Server, IBM Information Server
erwin DG, erwin Data Governance, erwin Data Catalog
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Canadian National Railway Company, Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce, Swedish Armed Forces, BG RCI, Janata Sahakari Bank Ltd., University of Arizona, Biogrid Australia
Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs. Quest Data Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
911,493 professionals have used our research since 2012.