BI consolidation continues

Consolidation continues in the business intelligence (BI) marketplace, as Hyperion agrees to acquire Brio for roughly $140 million, reports Line56. The news comes just days after Business Objects acquired Crystal Decisions in an $800 million deal, creating the largest vendor in the BI space.

Like Crystal Decisions, Brio specialises in enterprise reporting features, lending a rationale to the acquisition. "With Crystal now under the wing of Hyperion competitor Business Objects, Hyperion needed to find a product of its own," explained an AMR research alert.

But Rich Clayton, VP of product marketing for Hyperion, has another competitor in mind. "This is intended to strengthen our position against Cognos," he says. "We don`t compete with Business Objects."

IBM has signed a four-year multimillion-dollar deal with digital animation firm Threshold Digital Research Labs, to build a digital studio for lease to special effects firms, reports IDG.

"We were looking for a more efficient, more flexible, less technology-dependent way to animate feature films," said George Johnsen, Threshold`s chief animation and technical officer. "The only way to make these kind of movies, up to this point, has been to spend a large truckload of money and set up an infrastructure."

Under the terms of the deal, which IBM said is the first of its kind, Threshold will work with IBM to develop a standard set of hardware components. Animators will be able to lease or buy Intellistation Z Pro workstations with enhanced graphics cards from either Nvidia or ATI Technologies, while the image rendering and data management will be done at a new facility that IBM is building at Threshold`s office in Santa Monica.

Napster may be long dead, but the name and the "kitty" logo of the pioneer online music-swapping program could return to cyberspace before the year is out.

Roxio, which owns the rights to the Napster name, plans to shelve its current online music service, pressplay, and roll-out Napster 2.0 by Christmas, Chris Gorog, Roxio`s chairman and chief executive, told The Associated Press.