As of April 1, 2025, IBM will deprecate, and will no longer issue new licenses for, the metadata integration brokers and bridges currently available in IBM InfoSphere® Information Server (IIS) to import metadata from tools, files, and databases through InfoSphere Metadata Asset Manager (IMAM) and OpenIGC.
IBM will continue to provide support and access to the metabrokers for existing clients, but will not accept enhancements requests.
What’s changing?
For existing clients -- From April 1, 2025 onwards, only existing clients can continue to use metabrokers and bridges through IMAM or OpenIGC to exchange metadata into the metadata repository of InfoSphere® Information Server. However, since new versions of IIS in Passport Advantage will no longer include the components that enable the metabrokers, when upgrading to new versions of IIS, existing clients will need to open a support ticket in order to obtain the additional software component that enables metabrokers and bridges. IBM will continue to support the metabrokers for existing clients for a minimum of 5 years after April 1, 2025. After that, existing clients can access their previously downloaded metabroker software components, but the metabrokers will be available as-is.
For new clients -- New clients as of April 1, 2025 will not be able to purchase or install any version of IBM InfoSphere Information Server that include these metabrokers and bridges. This also applies to other IBM products where these metabrokers are included as base components of their software, such as Cloud Pak for Data version 4.6.x or earlier. They can only purchase or install versions of IIS, other IBM products and bundles, or Cloud Pak for Data that do not include the metabrokers and bridges. They will not be able to import metadata using these metabrokers and bridges through IMAM or OpenIGC. The impacted features are:
Note that these changes are not applicable to the InfoSphere Information Server connectors, which will continue to be available for importing database metadata from databases such as Amazon S3, Greenplum, Teradata, Oracle, Netezza, and Db2®, and by using ODBC and JDBC connections.
Why are we making this change?
On October 24, 2023, IBM announced the strategic acquisition of Manta Software Inc. — a world-class data lineage platform — to complement its capabilities across IBM’s AI and data portfolio and help businesses deliver products that are built on principles of trust and transparency. Manta is unmatched in providing a wide range of scanners, with 50+ native scanners for databases, ETL tools, reporting and analytics software, modeling tools, and programming languages. The full list of supported scanners is available here, and will continue to expand. Its rich set of capabilities include automated code analysis, and visualization of technical, historical and indirect lineage graphs.
Today, clients have three options to deploy Manta:
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as a standalone Manta application
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through integration with IGC using Manta Flow connector for IBM Information Governance Catalog [demo link]
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through Manta Automated Data Lineage for IBM Cloud Pak for Data
Clients can reach out to their IBM account team to learn more about the lineage capabilities provided by Manta, and discuss how Manta can augment their data governance and metadata management initiatives in IIS. Implementation of Manta will require additional licensing costs and integration effort.
In addition, we encourage existing IIS clients to consider migrating to IBM Knowledge Catalog in Cloud Pak for Data for the most advanced features in metadata management, data governance, discover, quality, lineage and privacy.
When will the change take effect?
April 1, 2025
Assistance and questions
Please open a support ticket if you have any questions.
To learn more about Manta, visit https://manta.io
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