Here is the announcement, and surprising there is nothing about System i.
ARMONK, NY and OTTAWA, November 12, 2007 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) and CognosR
(NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN) today announced that the two companies have
entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Cognos, a
publicly-held company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in an all-cash
transaction at a price of approximately $5 billion USD or $58 USD per share,
with a net transaction value of $4.9 billion USD. The acquisition is subject
to Cognos shareholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary
closing conditions. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.
More Information
IBM Investor Site
IBM's Information on Demand strategy
IBM's and Cognos additional details
Read the FAQ
The acquisition of Cognos supports IBM's Information on Demand strategy, a
cross-company initiative announced on February 16, 2006 that combines IBM's
strength in information integration, content and data management and
business consulting services to unlock the business value of information.
Integrating Cognos, the 23rd IBM acquisition in support of its Information
on Demand strategy, will enable new business insights to be delivered to a
broader set of people across an organization, beyond the traditional users
of business intelligence.
IBM said the acquisition fits squarely within both its acquisition strategy
and capital allocation model, and that it will contribute to the achievement
of the company's objective for earnings-per-share growth through 2010.
"Customers are demanding complete solutions, not piece parts, to enable
real-time decision making," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and
group executive, IBM Software Group. "IBM has been providing Business
Intelligence solutions for decades. Our broad set of capabilities - from
data warehousing to information integration and analytics - together with
Cognos, position us well for the changing Business Intelligence and
Performance Management industry. We chose Cognos because of its
industry-leading technology that is based on open standards, which
complements IBM's Service Oriented Architecture strategy."
Together, IBM and Cognos will become the leading provider of technology and
services for Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management,
delivering the industry's most complete, open standards-based platform with
the broadest range of expertise to help companies expand the value of their
information, optimize their business processes and maximize performance
across their enterprises.
The acquisition of Cognos accelerates IBM's global Information on Demand
initiative to unlock the business value of information for our customers.
IBM will provide broader reach for Cognos solutions across multiple
industries and geographies with a more complete set of offerings, including
consulting services, hardware, and other middleware software.
Cognos provides the only complete BI and performance management platform,
fully integrated on an open-standards-based service oriented architecture
(SOA), and has a strong history of supporting heterogeneous application
environments, consistent with IBM's approach. With Cognos, customers can
turn data into actionable insight for coordinated, information-driven
decision-making to improve overall performance. Cognos will also extend
IBM's reach further into the CFO office with powerful financial planning and
consolidation capabilities.
"This is an exciting combination for our customers, partners, and employees.
It provides us with the ability to expand our vision as the leading BI and
Performance Management provider," said Rob Ashe, president and chief
executive officer, Cognos. "IBM is a perfect complement to our strategy,
with minimal overlap in products, a broad range of technology synergies, and
the resources, reach, and world-class services to accelerate this vision.
Furthermore, this combination allows Cognos customers to leverage a broader
set of solutions from IBM to advance their information management driven
initiatives."
Together, IBM and Cognos will expand IBM's ability to provide customers with
the right information they need when they need it, to optimize operational
performance, and to quickly respond to changing market demands. The
combination of IBM's information management technology and Cognos will also
help organizations discover new ways to use trusted information spread
across their enterprises to identify new business opportunities and
significantly reduce the expense and time required to address
industry-specific business challenges.
Following completion of the acquisition, IBM intends to integrate Cognos as
a group within IBM's Information Management Software division, focused on
Business Intelligence and Performance Management. IBM also will appoint
current Cognos President and CEO, Rob Ashe, to lead the group, reporting
directly to General Manager, Ambuj Goyal.
Cognos has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide and serves more than
25,000 customers. IBM and Cognos have partnered for more than 15 years, with
extensive technical integrations and eight pre-integrated joint solutions
already supporting many joint customers, such as New York City Police
Department, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Tennessee, Canadian Tire, MetLife,
and Bayer UK.
Other strategic acquisitions in support of IBM's Information on Demand
initiative include Princeton Softech (data archiving and compliance),
FileNet (enterprise content management), Ascential Software (information
integration), DataMirror (changed data capture), SRD (entity analytics),
Trigo (product information management), DWL (customer information
management) and Alphablox (analytics).
More information on IBM's acquisition of Cognos is available on IBM's
investor Web site at:
http://www.ibm.com/investor/viewpoint/ircorner/2007/07-11-12-1.phtml.
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 4:45 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: IBM buys Cognos
I heard that IBM bought Cognos. What does that do for the query product
market for the iSeries?
Rob Berendt
midrange.com
