IBM has assembled a dozen of its top customers from a variety of vertical industry arenas to form the IBM Information Integration Leadership Board, a group that will work closely in tandem with IBM to define and solve emerging data integration issues plaguing customer IT environments.
The new board will meet regularly throughout the year to preview new business technology originating in IBM’s Labs, as well as offer feedback and personal insight upon product investment, designs and prioritization best suited to automate the flow of information involving heterogeneous database and OS platforms, said Nelson Mattos, director of Information Integration, for Armonk, NY-based IBM.
Members of the Information Integration Leadership Board include Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Kawasaki Motors Corporation USA, Ingram Micro Inc., and Taikang Life Insurance Co. Ltd, to name a few. Mattos said the board is expected to grow over time.
Underscoring IBM’s commitment to push out its DB2 Information Integrator product in conjunction with the board that bears its name, key marketing and partnering companies of the initiative will receive an IBM developer as a direct contact and available resource.
Introduced last year, DB2 Information Integrator allows customers to access and manipulate a common data model across multiple XML, Web or content areas as if it were a single source. Components of the product include a Replication Server for Mixed relational Databases, a Federated Data Server and a Local Database Server.