IBM's Cognos acquisition gets EU approval

by Robert McMillan

January 25, 2008 —

IBM's US$5 billion acquisition
of business intelligence software vendor Cognos
took a step forward on Thursday as European regulators gave their approval to
the deal.

After examining the acquisition, the European Commission said in a statement
that it "would not give rise to competition concerns, since the parties'
combined market share would be moderate."

IBM announced its intention to buy Cognos, based in Ottawa, in November, saying
it hoped to combine the Cognos software with IBM's back-end database products.
They hope to close the deal by the end of March, but there are still a few regulatory
requirements to be met, including the approval of Canada's minister of industry.

Business intelligence software is used to analyze data from different sources
within a company and help management get a better picture of the business. Several
business intelligence software vendors have been acquired recently, including
Hyperion,
purchased by Oracle, and Business
Objects, purchased by SAP.

IBM to date has partnered with business intelligence software vendors, providing
the back-end infrastructure components. But changing customer demands sparked
its interest in Cognos, according to Ambuj Goyal, general manager of information
management in IBM's software group and a key player in the Cognos deal.

"Now, more and more clients are saying, 'We are not an integration technology
business, we are in a business-outcome business. You do the integration,'"
he said in a recent interview. "More and more clients are not doing best-of-breed
purchases."

(Chris Kanaracus in Boston contributed to this story.)

IDG News Service