Key roes for a common BCCM IT platform are to support both the daily internal operations at the individual collections and the central management facility that make up the consortium, and to establish optimal external visibility of its recources (both the biological material the collections keep in their holdings, and the downstream information produced or collected on this biological material) in a national and international xontext. It is highly important to underscore that the better an internal IT platform is organised, the more straightforward it becomes to establish a flexible external interface that meets the demands of a rapidly changing microbial landscape. To accomplish the common tasks of catalogue production, supply chain management, quality control, customer relationship management, data warehousing and online information provision, it is therefore crucial to further support and improve the ongoing efforts in creating a common information system for all collections involved in the BCCM consortium, to bring it into production within a reasonable timeframe and to make it flexible to adapt to new requirements and initiatives.