Blog: Craig Schiff

« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »

November 12, 2007

Last of the Big BPM Purchases: IBM/Cognos?

Just when I was about to blog about something other than all the BPM mergers, this comes along. Well, thankfully I think we have run out of large BPM vendors to be bought, and by now most of the companies doing the buying should have had their fill as well. Its time for everyone to settle down and digest what they bought, and then come out fighting. The purchase of Cognos by IBM combined with the other recent M&A activity has created a powerhouse field of huge performance vendors: IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle. Make no mistake about it, this is all about performance management. Business intelligence on its own would not have been as interesting to these companies. Business performance management is driving the purchase of BPM applications, as well as BI tools, as well as related applications, and even the underlying transactional systems they feed off of. That's why some of these new mega vendors, regardless of their roots, are billing themselves as performance vendors. BPM sells. Doesn't every company want to/need to improve their performance, or at least better understand what is going on? Now to the specifics of this particular transaction ...

I actually think this is great news for Cognos, its employees, its customers, and its future customers. Essentially, their already strong BI/BPM product suite is now going to be backed and distributed by a much larger company and brand, with deeper pockets, and global reach. They will be better prepared for the BPM market battle of giants that is shaping up. Also, unlike many of the other recent mergers there is little if any product overlap. Since they were not purchased by one of the large ERP vendors Cognos can continue to emphasize their independence and ability to work well with almost any underlying transactional systems. The deep business expertise of the IBM services force is a great complement to the Cognos BPM suite. The only questions I have are around Applix and IBM itself. Where does Applix and its high-performance TM1 engine fit in all of this? Also, IBM has little experience in performance management. If it relies on the experts at Cognos things should turn out well. If IBM tries to micromanage a business it doesn't fully understand, well the going may get rough.

Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence, BPM, IBM, Cognos

Share: