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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 (17th), AI Governance (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of IBM InfoSphere Information Server is 2.7%, up from 1.7% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
Quest Data Intelligence7.5%
IBM InfoSphere Information Server2.7%
Other89.8%
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."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable."
"Data connections, data partitioning, flexibility, and performance are the most valuable features."
"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."
"Deploying the solution is straightforward for me."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This solution has reduced the time it takes for ETL. We took an existing Teradata ETL application from three days to eight minutes."
"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."
"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."
"When you combine it with data lineage, every time you need to make a change, it allows you to do impact analysis on any changes and then connect to the end-users or data stewards so that they can be aware that a change is coming. That's one of the main benefits we use it for."
"This type of solution was key to moving our entire company in the right direction by getting everyone to think about data governance."
"The interface is easy to use. I also like Erwin's automatic data classification and data quality checks."
"The possibility to write automation scripts is the biggest benefit for us. We have several products with metadata and metadata mapping capabilities. The big difference when we were choosing this product was the ability to run automation scripts against metadata and metadata mappings. Right now, we have a very high level of automation based on these automation scripts, so it's really the core feature for us."
"The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature."
"erwin has tremendous capabilities to map right from the business technologies to the endpoint, such as physical entities and physical attributes, from a lineage standpoint."
 

Cons

"We have decided to decrease the usage of metadata management because we did not see any significant advantages."
"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."
"Customer Service: It's poor."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"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."
"Heavy use of scratch disk which sometimes leads to failure."
"The solution's Arabic language processing is limited. The results are limited when you use the interface in Arabic."
"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."
"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."
"There are a lot of little things like moving between read screens and edit screens. Those little human interface type of programming pieces will need to mature a bit to make it easier to get to where you want to go to put the stuff in."
"The integration with various metadata sources, including erwin Data Modeler, isn't smooth in the current version. It took some experimentation to get things working. We hope this is improved in the newer version. The initial version we used felt awkward because Erwin implemented features from other companies into their offering."
"The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license."
"The technical support could be improved."
"There were some issues when drawing the data models. If you have more than 500 or 600 tables, it takes a long time to display those in the right position on the screen."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost of IBM InfoSphere Information Server depends on how many users there are."
"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."
"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."
"I am not very familiar with its pricing. I know it is not cheap, but it is also not super expensive. It depends on the company size. For a company making $1 million, it is very expensive. For a company making 10 million and above, it might be okay."
"The price is too high."
"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
"We operate on a yearly subscription and because it is an enterprise license we only have one. It is not dependent on the number of users."
"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Government
8%
Construction 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: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.