At its inaugural Information On-Demand Global Conference, IBM unveiled new data management tools designed to help firms make sense of the disparate data residing in disconnected systems, so that they can undertake compliance, business intelligence and other initiatives.

The announcements are part of the firm's Information On Demand strategy designed to help organisations gain fresh business insights from their information and manage risk more effectively, according to IBM.

The IBM Information Server is based on technology acquired from several companies bought by IBM recently, including Ascential and Venetica, and allows firms to make sense of "disparate data sources; cleanse data to ensure consistent quality; transform and restructure information for the intended use; and deliver data in the form needed", the firm said in a statement.

Business intelligence specialist Hyperion is one of the first vendors to announce its support for the new product. Through its open integration strategy, the firm's business performance management product Hyperion System 9 will utilise Information Server's data integration capabilities, according to Hyperion.

IBM also announced the latest version of its WebSphere Customer Centre data management product, which is designed to give businesses a more accurate, reconciled view of their customer data so they can forge closer relationships with their customers, improve service levels and monitor for fraudulent actions.

Teresa Jones of analyst Butler Group said the announcements are likely to benefit firms although she cautioned that a single version of the truth and business agility are things IBM has been promising for a long time with its products.

"Firms need an infrastructure capable of pulling together all the information needed and which will let them see it through portals and dashboards," she explained. "By using [these new products] it will take less effort to implement but you still need to understand where the data is and what it means, which will require significant human effort."

Also at the conference last week IBM announced a new Threat and Fraud Intelligence strategy featuring a range of identity management software and services bundles for government agencies and private businesses, and previewed a new relational data server – the Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) – with enhanced OLTP performance.