26 June 2025
To tackle long-standing challenges that existing solutions have failed to solve—like tool sprawl, unstructured data integration, constant pipeline rework and a widening skills gap—IBM launched watsonx.data integration. It provides a unified control plane that delivers value aligned to core pillars—each strengthened by new announcements that expand benefits for customers.
watsonx.data integration empowers users to build reusable pipelines across all integration styles—batch, real-time streaming, replication—and all data types, including unstructured data like PDFs, underpinned with built-in data observability. Ultimately, helping teams align integration style to use case need and reduce reliance on specialized tooling. Ultimately, helping teams align integration style to use case need and streamline management.
What’s new? watsonx.data integration is now available on IBM Cloud, giving users access to the full spectrum of integration capabilities—paired with the scalability and flexibility of cloud-native deployment.
With support for no-code, low-code, and pro-code experiences, users can build pipelines using the tools and interfaces that match their expertise—helping address a growing skills gap.
What’s new? A new AI-powered pipeline assistant lets users create pipelines using natural language, speeding up development and expanding self-service access to integration for less experienced users.
Build pipelines with hybrid deployment that adapt to shifting storage and execution environments—reducing the need for constant rewrites and increasing long-term reuse and maintainability.
What’s new? ETL/ELT capabilities on AWS with serverless or remote engine execution allow customers to design once and deploy anywhere their data resides.
The launch of watsonx.data integration and the new enhancements emphasizes IBM's continued investment to provide world-class and market leading integration capabilities that help meet the evolving needs of modern enterprises.
Let’s take a deeper dive into how these new announcements enhance the power of the new offering.
Today, the team is excited to empower users to access a full spectrum of integration capabilities with the general availability of watsonx.data integration as a Service on IBM Cloud—unlocking the full benefits of both the new offering and cloud-native deployment. With this launch, users gain cloud-native access to IBM’s most complete data integration solution, unifying DataStage, StreamSets, Databand, Data Replication, and unstructured data integration within a single control plane.
87% of organizations rely on three or more integration tools, creating complexity and inefficiency. watsonx.data integration simplifies this by supporting all integration styles and data types—including unstructured data—in one platform. Teams can now automate ingestion, transformation, and processing of both structured and unstructured data with any integration style, offering the flexibility to match styles to fit the use case as opposed to manually stitching piecemeal point solutions.
With the GA of IBM’s data integration assistant—now available in DataStage—users of all skill levels can leverage a genAI-powered assistant to build pipelines faster and easier than ever before all through natural language. Powered by watsonx Assistant and Granite 3.1, simply describe your intent, and the assistant will generate pipelines, recommend executable functions, and surface relevant documentation. Users can get started today leveraging the assistant to build ETL/ELT pipelines for batch integration use cases on DataStage, and as their needs grow, watsonx.data integration will evolve with them—expanding support across additional integration styles over time.
As data volumes and complexity surge, today’s data teams are under pressure to deliver faster with fewer resources. Over 51% of organizations already report negative impacts from IT skills shortages, and many lack the technical expertise needed to manage traditional tooling. The data integration assistant bridges that gap—empowering users across skill levels, including line-of-business and business technology teams, to self-serve and contribute value immediately. It’s a major step toward democratizing data integration and eliminating the need for multiple, specialized tools.
Today marks the availability of DataStage as a Service (aaS) on AWS—laying the foundation for watsonx.data integration. With this launch, users can begin building batch, ETL, and ELT pipelines on a fully managed DataStage environment within AWS—taking advantage of modern integration tooling while maximizing existing cloud investments. As additional watsonx.data integration capabilities roll out on AWS, teams can seamlessly expand.
As data storage has evolved—from on-prem data warehouses to cloud-native data lakehouses—engineering teams have been forced to constantly adapt. Today, most data engineers spend over 50% of their time just maintaining existing pipelines. IBM addresses this with flexible, cloud-first deployment options and hybrid execution. With the support for remote engine execution, users can design pipelines in AWS but run them wherever data resides—on-premises, across geographies, or in any data center.
This hybrid model reduces data movement, cuts latency and costs, and enhances security—all while eliminating dependency on a single storage architecture. It’s the best of both worlds: cloud-native pipeline development with execution tailored to your environment, reiterating IBM’s commitment to meeting customers wherever they operate.
These launches mark milestones for customers implementing modern data integration technology and a key opportunity to jumpstart their journeys. Together, the availability of watsonx.data integration SaaS on IBM Cloud, and a new AI-pipeline assistant for data integration, and the launch of DataStage aaS on AWS, reflect IBM’s continued investment in advancing data integration and meeting the evolving needs of today’s enterprises.