IBM buys Cognos

IBM has bought Cognos for $4.9 billion, in a move that will strengthen Big Blue`s position in the business intelligence (BI) software industry, according to The Money Times.

IBM`s latest move marks its 23rd acquisition since February 2006. Cognos would complement IBM`s software portfolio of data warehousing and information management, and would help the company compete with Oracle and SAP in providing software that tracks corporate performance.

"IBM has been providing BI solutions for decades," said IBM senior VP Steve Mills. "Our broad set of capabilities - from data warehousing to information integration and analytics - together with Cognos, positions us well for the changing BI and performance management industry."

IDC has released a report that puts business decision-making throughout the world at a critical crossroads, with BI technology now an important component in differentiating between leading and average companies, according to Business Wire.

"This is a wake-up call to companies that are not using BI for their operations, as well as for strategic business decision-making," says John Gantz, chief research officer of IDC.

Seventy-five percent of respondents cite information overload, led by government and healthcare respondents at 81%, and many claim up to half of all information available to them is useless for their decision-making.

Business Objects is going after the small and medium enterprises in the Philippines, says Inquirer.net.

With market researchers seeing faster growth in the SME space, the business software company is now refitting its local strategy to start selling to this market.

"Before, the fight was in the database industry. Then it moved to enterprise resource planning. Recently, we`ve seen it move to business intelligence," said Rod Perez, president of Sybase in the Philippines, one of the local partners of Business Objects.