IBM has made a number of announcements today around its information management solutions.

The firm has announced new software releases from its data management Optim portfolio, which it said would let firms better manage their application data. During the next quarter, IBM will make 10 software releases in this area, all of which will let firms plan each phase of the application lifecycle.

Included in the forthcoming releases are privacy solutions, test management tools and a DB2 performance manager.

"Organisations today rely on complex, heterogeneous IT infrastructures to execute their business processes, from shipping a sales order to posting a payment,” said Arvind Krishna, vice president at IBM Data Management.

“IBM Optim expands on our Information on Demand strategy, providing an open, integrated environment for customers to manage the data across related applications, databases and platforms, from design through sunset. Our clients can reduce cost and complexity through automation, collaboration and improved productivity," he added.

IBM also announced a number of enhancements to its InfoSphere software portfolio, which offers reporting tools.

The firm has added new features to its InfoSphere Master Data Management (MDM) Server, a product that analyses sales, customer, employee, products and other business data. From now this will include data integration and cleansing tools, which can pull information from a number of heterogeneous systems to provide a clear view of the business.

InfoSphere has also been better integrated with the Cognos 8 platform. IBM said that this would help firms synchronise data across the enterprise.

Also announced was IBM's solidDB, which offers relational, in-memory database technology that can be used to accelerate IBM's DB2 and Informix Dynamic Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle and Sybase servers by up to 10 times.

The firm described it as an industry first. "With solidDB Universal Cache, both existing and new applications can now generate data workloads of more than 120,000 transactions per second and safely rely on predictable response times measured in microseconds to support growing numbers of users and data volumes, allowing companies to quickly unlock the business value of their data which is what Information on Demand is all about," IBM said.

SolidDB will be released in December this year.

New enterprise content management solutions are also slated for release by the firm.

“Organisations need information to innovate and optimise their businesses, but many struggle with how to manage all the information that they have,” said Ken Bisconti, vice president, products and strategy, IBM Enterprise Content Management. “IBM’s focus on agility with ECM software helps clients address many important challenges, such as how to globally integrate solutions with immense volumes of information and optimise their processes while managing regulatory requirements.”

To aid firms in this area, IBM will release a new FileNet business process management tool, Process Manager 4.5, and new versions of its content management tools, including one that is offered on-demand, as well as a number of compliance and discovery solutions.

IBM also announced that it has extended its Lotus Quickr collaboration software line to include IBM ECM Services for Lotus Quickr, which will be the first software of its kind to integrate with documents, spreadsheets and other files that reside in IBM enterprise content management systems.