IBM's master plan for data - Big Blue takes its time stitching together three acquisitions to create a master-data offering.(IBM Master Data Management)(Trigo Technologies Inc., Ascential Software Corp. and DWL )

What's the ugliest problem in IT? Many would say it's the contradictory or incomplete data strewn around the enterprise in various databases and formats. Reconciling and normalizing all that data is hard, tedious work.

There's no magic bullet, but "master data" solutions of the type IBM formally introduced last week can go a long way toward enabling enterprises to create a single version of the truth without driving IT insane.

Three years in the making, WebSphere Product Center, Customer Center Version 6, and Integration Center together offer a complete "information service" solution, said Dan Druker, IBM's director of enterprise master data solutions. The …