IBM gets Cognos to fill the gaps

IBM has been on quite an acquisition spree of late, but the latest is perhaps the most predictable and potentially powerful. IBM is buying Cognos, the business intelligence and performance management vendor, for $5B.

This has been on the cards for some time, and increased in likelihood when SAP acquired Business Objects recently - Cognos and Business Objects were acknowledged as the two leading players in the BI space.

This looks to be a great deal for both companies, and users should be pleased. With 25,000 customers spread across some of the largest companies in the world, Cognos is a well established BI player, and shares many customers with IBM.

On top of this, with the SAP acquisition of Business Objects, Cognos was the last big pure-play BI vendor and a major target for acquisition, so its users must have had concerns over potential new masters - however they are likely to be very comfortable with IBM since it does not really have competing products and will therefore keep the technology alive and moving forward.

From an IBM point of view, it will be particularly keen to get its hands on the 1000+ BI-experienced R&D team in Cognos. as well as the 2000 or so customer-facing field force.

The key here is that the two companies mesh really well together. IBM's Information on Demand initiatives have made every effort to ensure that data is accessible wherever and whenever it is needed, while Cognos concentrates on interpreting the data and generating business value from it.

Combining the two promises to deliver even more accurate, timely and understandable information to support executive decision-making and business-driven data mining initiatives.