IBM completes Cognos buy-out

By Candice Jones for IBM

Johannesburg, 07 Feb 2008

IBM has acquired business intelligence (BI) provider Cognos for $4.9 billion and will leverage the solutions and customer base the buy-out brings. Agreement for the acquisition was announced in November last year and full shareholder approval clinched the deal at the end of January.

"The Cognos acquisition demonstrates that we're hitting the ground running with a number of industry-specific IBM-Cognos solutions on day one," says software group executive at IBM south and central Africa Zoaib Hoosen.

The acquisition of Cognos will accelerate IBM's information on-demand strategy, a cross-company initiative that combines information integration, content and data management services, says IBM.

"Cognos expands IBM's information on-demand initiative and will further IBM's ability to achieve its aggressive business and revenue goals for the coming years," adds Hoosen.

According to him, IBM will use the acquisition to capitalise on the transformation of traditional BI and information management software markets that is being driven by a convergence of forces, which includes consolidation and acquisitions.

"We will be bringing to the market new software and solutions that will help customers in all industries improve the way they manage information and use it for competitive advantage," he states.

According to the IBM Web site, Cognos brings roughly 25 000 customers and 3 000 partners to IBM's stable.

New releases

Yesterday, the company released an expanded business strategy and roadmap detailing the business strategy after Cognos' inclusion.

Some focus areas that will include IBM-Cognos technologies include: banking, retail, healthcare, government, life sciences and manufacturing. Enterprise data management, services and content management will be included as business units under the acquisitive title.

The company announced several products that will now integrate with the Cognos solutions. "The joint IBM-Cognos products, solutions and services we released provide an integrated approach to using information for competitive advantage," states Hoosen.

"The Cognos acquisition supports both IBM's acquisition strategy and capital allocation model, and will contribute to the achievement of the company's objective for earnings-per-share growth through 2010," says Hoosen. To date, IBM has acquired 25 companies in support of its global information on-demand effort.