The industrial developments in the fusion industry will have to overcome numerous technical challenges and will have a strong need for modern information technology (IT) systems.

The fusion industry has manifested itself with an unprecedented international collaboration, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Data accumulated in ITER will be the major output of the project and will create the knowledge base for a future fusion power plant. A modern and effective information infrastructure will be critical to the success of the ITER project.

To accumulate and maintain the knowledge base at all stages of the project, we propose to build an integrated information system for ITER: ITER Information Plant (IIP). IIP will minimize lost experiment time and accelerate the understanding, interpretation, and planning of fusion experiments. IIP will allow to reap maximum benefits from the project's scientific and technological achievements, make the ITER results accessible to hundreds of researchers worldwide. This will facilitate collaboration, dramatically increasing the pace of scientific and technological discovery and the rate at which practical use is made of these discoveries.

As the first of its kind, the ITER Information Plant could be used in the future as a prototype IT system for national and international fusion projects, in which multicountry collaboration, distributed work sites and operations are catalysts for success.