IBM continued its drive into the information management and business intelligence (BI) space today, extending its Information Server product with the addition of a new metadata management software module.

IBM said its new Metadata Workbench software would provide firms with visualisation and management functionality for handling metadata, or data embedded within data that describes its important attributes, such as where it originated and where it has been.

The company added that providing IT chiefs with a visual depiction of " relationships among data sources and data users", and "proof of data lineage" would aid deployment of BI, service oriented architecture (SOA), master data management and compliance projects.

IBM argued that previously such projects had been hampered because the metadata required to underpin the new applications or infrastructures had been typically stored in a number of different applications.

"With web-based visualisation and navigation of metadata, IBM Metadata Workbench is the first software to provide this level of design and operational metadata visibility and management across all aspects of the data integration process, including data modelling, profiling, quality, ETL and information delivery," said Michael Curry, director of product strategy and management for IBM's information platform and solutions division.