Finding the value in business information
IBM added to its arsenal of tools to help its clients find and extract greater value from their business information with its recently announced $5 billion (USD) acquisition of Cognos Incorporated, a publicly held business intelligence and performance management company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Cognos software helps clients plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance data. These clever analytical tools can mine all of the data scattered througout an organization and provide customized intelligence to gain faster insight and return on investment from this data.
This acquisition is the latest step in IBM's cross-company Information on Demand initiative, aimed at capturing the growing market opportunity for enabling clients to use information as a competitive and strategic business asset.
High-growth initiative
IBM already invested a $1 billion over three years to expand its Information on Demand capabilities, and has dedicated 15,000 field personnel to the opportunity.
In addition to market-leading products and solutions from IBM labs, the company's strategic acquisitions help build high-value, innovation segments and open new channels. The addition of Cognos will be a key driver in extending IBM's information management growth.
A winning combination
In considering acquisitions, IBM looks at companies with comlementary solutions. This not only enables faster time-to-market, but also strengthens the IBM team with the skills, innovation and talents of the acquired company's employees.
This acquisition brings strategic value to IBM for the following reasons:
- Cognos provides the only complete BI and performance management platform, fully integrated on an open-standards-based service-oriented architecture (SOA). The platform has a strong history of supporting heterogeneous application environments, consistent with IBM’s approach to the market,
- Cognos will extend IBM's reach further in the CFO office with powerful financial planning and consolidation capabilities,
- Together, IBM and Cognos will become the leading provider of business intelligence and performance management technology and services, with the broadest range of expertise to help our clients expand the value of their information, optimize their business processes and maximize performance across the enterprise,
- IBM has been a long-standing provider of BI solutions, dating back to the early days of data warehousing, query and report writing, and analysis. Cognos is a logical extension of our work in this area and will add to the solid base of BI capabilities that we already possess, and
- Combining IBM's middleware, hardware and services with Cognos' leading BI technology and extensive partner network will continue to provide customers value through a more complete, end-to-end solution for their business intelligence and performance management needs.
Cognos has been an IBM Business Partner for more than 15 years, with deep relationships across IBM hardware, software and services divisions. As a result, many IBM offerings are already integrated. Joint customers include NYPD, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Tennessee, Bayer UK, and MetLife.
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