Cognos ships BI update on eve of IBM buyout

by Chris Kanaracus

January 15, 2008 —

Cognos shipped the latest
version of its business intelligence platform on Tuesday, in what could be the
last update before the company's sale to IBM becomes final.

Cognos 8 v3 includes features meant to spur end-user adoption and ease deployment
and management.

There is a new "express" authoring mode that financial and business
analysts can use to quickly generate financial statement-like reports, Cognos
said in a statement. Users can also create OLAP (online analytical processing)
"cubes": scaled-down, faster sets of business data shaped to their
particular needs. Also new is a personalized alert feature that lets end-users
determine when they want reports, thereby easing the burden on IT departments;
and upgraded dashboarding capabilities, Cognos said.

"There's lots and lots of self-service stuff," noted David O' Connell,
senior analyst with Nucleus
Research in Wellesley, Massachusetts. "Cognos is very good at finding
ways to make it easier to have more people using BI in enterprises."

Features aimed at deployment and management include best-practice guidelines
for developing data models; system health monitoring capabilities; and an upgrade
manager.

Still to come, though, is the integration of OLAP technology that Cognos acquired
through its purchase of Applix in September. The products are not yet integrated
with Cognos 8. That work will be complete by mid-2008, Cognos has said.

In a research
note published Tuesday, Ovum
analyst Helena Schwenk said the release is more significant than its version
number may suggest. "Cognos 8.3 is a major launch for the company -- and
most likely to be its last as an independent BI vendor before the acquisition
by IBM completes in Q1 2008," Schwenk wrote.

IBM
offered to buy Cognos for $5 billion in November. Cognos' shareholders approved
the deal on Monday and it is expected
to close in the first quarter.

Ambuj Goyal, general manager of information management in IBM's software group
and a key
player in the Cognos deal, said in a recent interview that its technology
combined with IBM's back-end infrastructure will result in a formidable platform.

"What did [Oracle] get with Hyperion? They got Essbase and a great OLAP
capability," he said. "But that's a 15-year-old, historic OLAP capability.
When the Cognos acquisition completes, what is the latest, open standards-based,
high-speed OLAP capability in the marketplace? Applix."

IBM to date has partnered with BI vendors, providing the back-end infrastructure
components. But changing customer demands sparked its interest in Cognos, according
to Goyal. "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.'
More and more clients are not doing best-of-breed purchases."

IDG News Service