Blog: David Loshin

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And Then There Were ... (IBM Buys Cognos)

Surely, you could not have been surprised to hear that IBM is buying Cognos. After months of transactions in which business intelligence vendors buy component vendors, only to be purchased by larger vendors as part of "industrial" demand-information programs, it looks like most, if not all of the major BI suite vendors are now absorbed (Cognos, Hyperion, Business Objects, as well as others such as Microsoft's acquisition of ProClarity). This does leave a few morsels left at the table, namely Microstrategy and Information Builders, although whether either is available or up for grabs is just grist for the rumor mill.

These announcements are always somewhat disruptive to the industry, since they shake up expectations about existing alliances and partnerships, and raises the question of whether a solution needs to be a monolithic, stacked one. So here is a quick thought: Large-scale (and pervasive) acquisitions are good for the industry, and are a little like forest fires in that they clear the way for smaller, innovative start-ups to create new tools to fill the void. We might expect that by next year at this time, we will see some interesting vendor offerings that can satisfy the growing market need.

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