Stories about: Cognos

Oracle's seemingly endless buying spree may have alienated some customers, but its recent $US8.5 billion bid for BEA Systems is seen as a step in the right direction.

Shortly after covering the integration of Cognos products into IBM's software division, I got a call from Microsoft, which wanted to discuss PerformancePoint Server, which it launched last year. I'm used to the fact that writing about one vendor's product will lead to interest from its competitors, but I decided to hear them out. Despite its claims to the contrary, Microsoft is still relatively new to BI, and it's interesting to see them go after a market in which they are not already dominant.

Just a few years ago, the world of open source packages for generating database reports was a quiet secret shared by programmers on a deadline. Anyone could spend a few minutes linking in a library to start generating relatively clean tables filled with data pulled from an SQL database. I've personally made a few clients happy by adding JasperReports to some projects with just a bit of XML and a JAR file.

Pizza delivery seems simple. You call and someone takes your order and tells you, say, "20 minutes" -- which is what you tell your stomach and anyone else you may be sharing the pizza with.

One week after completing its acquisition of Cognos, IBM Wednesday said it was ready with new product offerings that integrate some of its technologies with the business intelligence vendor's Cognos 8 software.

IBM announced the first results of its recently closed acquisition of business intelligence vendor Cognos, unveiling an array of product offerings and services that tie into its information-on-demand strategy.

Even by the bloated standards of high-tech mergers and acquisitions, Microsoft's proposed purchase of Yahoo appears to be the largest ever among technology firms. It is certainly Microsoft's largest. The company mostly buys smaller firms for less than a billion dollars to fill in gaps in its product lineup. But that may be changing. Last year, for instance, Microsoft bought Seattle online advertising firm aQuantive for US$6 billion, its largest ever until the long-rumored Yahoo deal was unveiled on Friday.

A new report from Forrester Research declares that the wave of mega-acquisitions in the software industry is over for now, though big vendors will continue to snap up smaller firms as they round out their portfolios.

While business intelligence remains a mission-critical tool for businesses, the days of double-digit BI market growth are almost over, according to Gartner Inc.

With BEA and Cognos gone, the question shifts from who's going to get bought next to which sector if ripe for consolidation? The answer is enterprise content management. Maybe.

Cognos' release on Tuesday of Version 3 of its Cognos 8 BI suite includes functionality geared towards easing deployment and management of business intelligence (BI) for the IT department, said one analyst.