IBM makes
BI push
By Renee Boucher Ferguson ing the division. Prior to To ibm, it’s all about Days after Cognos deal closes, company the formal launch of IOD, the math. rolls out first fruits of the agreement IBM had already acquired With its $5 billion a number of companies,
acquisition of business design and deploy an enter- much more valuable as a including Ascential Soft-i n t e l l i g e n c e s o f t w a r e prisewide data, storage and tool to be used by many ware, Trigo Technologies
maker Cognos completed, content management sys- more people,” IBM Fellow and iPhrase Technologies.
IBM officials are saying tem, officials said. Brenda Dietrich said. “If we After the launch, IBM con-the com pany will differ- IBM will involve the Cog- are able to capture the math- tinued acquiring companies
entiate itself in the fast- nos team in the ongoing ematics that are well-posed, to add to the mix, such as
consolidating BI market research within IBM’s then it opens the world of Unicorn Solutions, FileNet,
through its decades-long mathematics to everyone, DataMirror and Princeton
development of sophisti- not just the geeks among Softech.
catedanalytics derivedfrom ‘[IBM] deals us, and people can make With similar BI acqui-its mathematical expertise. better decisions.” sitions under their collec-
“IBM is a treasure trove with deep On a broader scale, IBM tive belts—Oracle acquired
of technology,” Steve Mills, analytics and plans to couple its technol- Hyperion in March 2007
IBM senior vice president sophisticated ogy with that of Cognos and SAP bought Business and group executive of the to offer an architectural Objects in January—IBM,
IBM Software Group, said mathematics approach to Information on Oracle and SAP will battle
during a press conference to conquer Demand and its corollary, for supremacy in the fast- in New York Feb. 6. performance management. emerging performance
Mills said that while IBM things like “ I n f o r m a t i o n o n management market.
has not been known as a scheduling.’ Demand is about unlock- Since IBMhashadalong-
BI vendor in the past, “we ingthebusiness valuefrom standing partnership with
are the only company that —STEVE MILLS information,” said Ambuj Cognos, a relationship that
deals with deep analytics and Goyal, general manager of has spanned 15 years, both
sophisticated mathematics IBM information manage- groups have been able to
toconquer thingslikesched- ment software. “It’s about at least start to bring their
uling and bio research.” making things better. It product portfolios together
To show that it’s hitting might be about doing relatively quickly.
the ground running with human resources automa- For example, the 10 new
its latest acquisition, IBM tion or work force automa- industry solutions include
announced 10 new and tion, but they fit hand in an expansion of the IBM
enhanced software pack- glove with an architecture Retail Integration Frame-
ages for the banking, retail, that starts from the top.” work to incorporate Cognos’
health care, government, IBM announced its Store Operations Planning
life sciences and manufac- IOD strategy—a compila- Blueprint, which has been
turing vertical industries. mathematics department, tion of software, hardware, preintegrated with IBM’s
In addition, six pre- anareahistoricallyfocused research and services retail data models. At the
integrated packages bring on improving supercom- designedtohelpcompanies same time, the Cognos 8
together IBM and Cognos’ puting but now examining manage data and content to BI “starter pack” for IBM
softwareandhardwareanda aspects of data and infor- gain insight and optimize InfoSphere Warehouseand
new Informationon Demand mation on demand. business—in February distribution of InfoSphere
Infrastructure Services offer- “What I see happening 2006 and has since invested Warehouse with Cognos 8
ing to help companies plan, is computing is becoming about $1 billion in build- BI have been combined. ´
