IBM yesterday announced that it is to acquire business intelligence software specialist Cognos for $5 billion, and is likely to close the deal in the first quarter of 2008.
IBM is parading this as its23rd acquisition aimed at improving its ‘Information on Demand’ strategy, launched on February 16, 2006 and designed to bring together information integration, content, data management and business consulting services.
Adding Cognos, it says, will enable business insights to be delivered to a broader set of people across a manufacturing organisation, beyond the traditional power users of business intelligence.
“Customers are demanding complete solutions, not piece parts, to enable real-time decision making,” says Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group. “IBM has been providing business intelligence solutions for decades.
“Our broad set of capabilities – from data warehousing to information integration and analytics – together with Cognos, position us well for the changing BI and performance management industry. We chose Cognos because of its industry-leading technology that is based on open standards, which complements IBM’s Service Oriented Architecture strategy.”
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