SAP, Business Objects release products

SAP and Business Objects have announced the first joint products from their merger, although the planned tight integration of the companies' software will take longer to achieve, says Infoworld.

SAP agreed to pay $6.8 billion for the business intelligence (BI) vendor in October and has now secured more than 87% of Business Objects' shares.

The companies have nine software packages that will go on sale this month, including financial performance management, governance, risk and compliance, and visualisation and reporting.

Cognos unveiled a major upgrade to its BI and performance management platform, Cognos 8 Version 3, says CRN.

This upgrade came one day after Cognos shareholders gave their approval to IBM's pending $5 billion acquisition of the BI software vendor.

While Cognos declined to say much more about the pending acquisition, Cognos president and CEO Rob Ashe did say that IBM and Cognos have been allied for more than 15 years and there is already a significant amount of integration between their products.

AsiaInfo, telecom software solutions and IT security provider in China, has signed a contract with Beijing Mobile to expand its BI system, says Fox News.

Under the terms of the contract, AsiaInfo will upgrade Beijing Mobile's existing BI system to comply with China Mobile's BI 2.0 specifications.

The optimised system will feature strengthened performance, analytical capabilities and better support marketing initiatives for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.