Transform your information infrastructure

IBM InfoSphere Foundation Tools

Deliver trusted information to drive breakthrough business results

Today’s IT executives are using informa- information, organizations can confi-

Highlights tion-centric projects to transform busi- dently address key questions to drive
ness and deliver cost savings. For their businesses forward, such as:
■ Discover, design and
example, data warehousing and master
govern trusted information
data management (MDM) initiatives pro- ● Which calling plan options do my
infrastructures
vide greater insight into the client base, mobile subscribers choose most
enabling more effective cross-selling frequently?
■ Align enterprise information
and driving new revenue. Application ● Which medical specialists are most
management to support busi-
consolidation projects cut cost and popular with my insurance plan
ness goals
complexity, freeing valuable resources participants?
for more productive use. ● Which of my suppliers have the best
■ Facilitate information-centric
on-time delivery rates?
initiatives including data ware-
Trusted information provides the ● What is my total credit risk exposure
housing, master data manage-
essential foundation for all of these for this customer segment?
ment and application
projects. Armed with reliable, accurate
consolidation
But with enterprise information assets
dispersed across a complex tangle of
■ Provide a repeatable process
applications and databases, finding and
for ensuring trusted information
presenting the appropriate information
to business decision makers is not an
easy task. And even when information
is delivered, line-of-business (LOB)
executives may challenge its meaning
and accuracy, resulting in extended
debate and delayed action. How can IT
deliver trusted information that stake-
holders can utilize with confidence?
Providing trusted information with
IBM InfoSphere Foundation Tools
IBM® InfoSphere™ Foundation Tools
enable organizations to discover related
data that is spread across heteroge-
neous systems, and to design trusted
information structures for business opti-
mization and govern them over time.
InfoSphere Foundation Tools offer capa-
bilities for data discovery, common
business vocabulary creation, data
quality compliance, data modeling and
mapping, transformation rule specifica-
tions creation and information lineage
determination. Those capabilities are
tied together through a shared meta-
data repository (see Figure 1).
InfoSphere Foundation Tools are
designed for data management practi-
tioners, business analysts, architects
and governance stewards. The solution
works in conjunction with the compre-
hensive set of IBM server software for
complete, end-to-end data integration,
as well as with a wide range of data
integration, business intelligence and
data warehousing tools.
InfoSphere Foundation Tools
IBM provides
the breadth of
capabilities to discover,
design and govern
trusted information
infrastructures
• Business vocabulary
• Data relationships
• Data quality compliance
Figure 1: InfoSphere Foundation Tools, built on a common metadata architecture, help organizations align
enterprise information with business goals.
InfoSphere Foundation Tools consist of
integrated, modular components that
deliver these critical capabilities:
1. Create a shared vocabulary:
Create a shared, enterprise-wide
vocabulary to help ensure that busi-
ness and IT leaders achieve a com-
mon understanding of key
terminology to support project
requirements.
2. Discover related data: Discover
the hidden relationships that link dis-
parate data elements into logical
groupings of related data or “busi-
ness objects.” Once identified, busi-
ness objects can be used as a
starting point for information-centric
projects.
2
Discover
Common
metadata
G ov
ign
es
er
D
n
• Data models and mapping
• Transformation rules
• Information lineage
3. Assess, monitor and manage
data quality: Perform a thorough
source analysis to uncover data
quality problems, such as duplica-
tion, incompleteness, invalid values
and rule violations, and identify
anomalies that violate defined busi-
ness rules.
4. Design and optimize data
models: Create or optimize the tar-
get data model for specific require-
ments of a project, such as a
datamart or enterprise warehouse.
Define and document security and
privacy requirements as part of
enterprise modeling standards.
5. Define source-to-target transfor-
mation rules: Create mapping
specifications to transform data from
various sources into a consumable
format for the target application
based on business requirements.

6. Govern, audit and trace

information: Gain insight into infor-
mation lineage and use it to support
auditing requirements; visualize and
trace information flows and model
the impact of additional changes on 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Document KPIs and Identify related Create the data model Create business Verify and report on
the information environment. other important sources of KPI data for the new warehouse, transformation rules data lineage and
terms associated and assess data using the identified to map data from quality metrics and
with the warehousing quality. sources as input. existing sources into model the impact of
project. Alternatively, use the warehouse. additional changes.
A repeatable process for ensuring trusted industry best-practice
models to jump-start
information the project.

InfoSphere Foundation Tools provide a
repeatable process for ensuring infor-
mation can be trusted across the enter-
prise. Figure 2 illustrates a sample
project flow: in this example, a telecom-
munications company plans to create a
new data warehouse to find ways to
improve sales to new and existing
mobile plan subscribers.
To begin, business owners determine
the metrics and key performance indi-
cators (KPIs) they wish to monitor, such
as wireless voice usage, wireless data
usage or revenue per user. These KPIs
Figure 2: InfoSphere Foundation Tools can be used to plan a data warehousing project.
are then documented in a common
repository that both business and IT
users can leverage throughout the proj-
ect. Second, data analysts will identify
where the KPI data is located, how it is
related across systems and assess the
data’s quality. Third, the target struc-
tures for the data warehouse are
defined (or standard industry models
may be applied).
Once the project team understands the
source systems and the target struc-
ture, they document the business
transformation rules that will be applied
to source system data to populate the
new warehouse. Examples of business
transformation rules to be used on
source data include:
● Customer loan date is a required field
and violations should be captured for
re-processing
● Date format should be CCYYMMDD
● Account balance equals savings plus
checking

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Finally, the team can report and trace
the entire, end-to-end information flow
via the InfoSphere Foundation Tools
shared metadata repository. Collecting
and storing metadata information and
data characteristics—such as how
many reports were impacted and which
tables were analyzed—is essential to
historical analysis. Reporting on the
end-to-end design and information flow
process is critical to auditing and infor-
mation governance.
Delivering value in the real world
IBM clients in many industries and
geographies leverage InfoSphere
Foundation Tools to help achieve meas-
urable business results. Here are a few
examples:
● A leading grocery retailer saw data
analysis productivity gains of up to
10 times compared to traditional man-
ual efforts. The customer was up and
running in half a day and had ana-
lyzed several data sources by the end of
the first week. The organization
achieved those benefits as a result of
using the InfoSphere Foundation Tools
automated relationship discovery func-
tionality for data analysis within and
across sources.
● A growing global mobile telecommuni- Manage your information infrastructure
cations provider realized extensive ben- with InfoSphere Foundation Tools
efits from InfoSphere Foundation Tools. Organizations need information man-
Reported results included timely access agement solutions that offer consoli-
to trusted information, being better able dated, consistent and repeatable
to adapt product offerings to evolving methods for the discovery and man-
market conditions and an expected agement of information. InfoSphere
75 percent reduction in the number of Foundation Tools can help satisfy those
databases and servers. Additionally, the requirements and reduce the overall
InfoSphere Foundation Tools business costs of managing your IT assets.
requirements mapping and manage- InfoSphere Foundation Tools help
ment capabilities were critical in elimi- organizations bring about significant
nating up to 50 percent of the manual ROI and greater collaboration between
effort required in design and develop- LOB and IT stakeholders to yield accu-
ment of extract, transform and rate, reliable business insight.
load (ETL) jobs. Prepackaged industry
models for telecommunications and About IBM InfoSphere solutions
retail helped significantly expedite the Business optimization requires informa-
design and modeling of the organiza- tion that is accurate, complete, in con-
tion’s information infrastructure. text and actionable. Achieving this level
● A global chemical and petroleum of trusted business information requires
company shared their InfoSphere transforming, reconciling and maintain-
Foundation Tools success story with ing information, then delivering it in
Forrester Research, who documented real time to the people, processes
a three-year return on investment and applications that need it. The
(ROI) of 132 percent and a payback IBM InfoSphere family of products
period of less than 15 months. To down- offers a breadth of capabilities to
load this IBM-sponsored report, visit support end-to-end management
ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/ and delivery of trusted business infor-
foundation-tools/index.html mation and help ensure competitive
success.
“ We have had great success in using InfoSphere
Foundation Tools in our data quality initiatives. The
information visibility and lineage capabilities of these
tools allow us to trace operational data back to its source
systems. This improves our confidence and decision
making in our daily operations. The ease of use of the
business interfaces of these tools makes their exposure to
business users very simple. As a result, we expect to see a
global adoption of these tools across all our regions.”
— Damian Peloghitis, Information Architecture Manager, Chevron
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Notes

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For more information
For more information about InfoSphere
Foundation Tools and how they can
help your organization transform its
business by harnessing the power of
your information assets, please visit
ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/
foundation-tools/index.html
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
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Produced in the United States of America
October 2009
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