BI on-demand: IBM to acquire Cognos
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 11/12/2007 2:50:00 PM
IBM is in motion to buy business intelligence (BI) solutions supplier Cognos in a deal valued at approximately $5 billion.
The deal supports IBM's Information On-Demand strategy, a cross-company initiative that takes optimum advantage of IBM's strength in information integration, content and data management, and business consulting services to unlock the business value of information.
Integrating Cognos marks the 23rd IBM acquisition in support of its on-demand strategy—this time, to go beyond the traditional uses of business intelligence.
“Customers are demanding complete solutions—not piece parts—to enable real-time decision-making," says Steve Mills, senior VP and group executive, IBM Software Group. "We chose Cognos [for its] industry-leading technology based on open standards, which complements IBM's service-oriented architecture [SOA] strategy.” Cognos, with its complete BI and performance management platform fully integrated on an open-standards-based SOA, has a strong history of supporting heterogeneous application environments, consistent with IBM’s approach. Cognos also will extend IBM’s reach further into the CFO office with financial planning and consolidation capabilities.
Post-acquisition, IBM will integrate Cognos as a group within IBM's Information Management Software division, focused on business intelligence and performance management. Cognos President and CEO Rob Ashe will lead the group.
Cognos has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide and serves more than 25,000 customers. Other strategic acquisitions in support of IBM’s on-demand information initiative include Princeton Softech (data archiving and compliance); FileNet (enterprise content management); Ascential Software (information integration); DataMirror (changed data capture); SRD (entity analytics); Trigo (product information management); DWL (customer information management); and Alphablox (analytics).
