I have to admit this was sort of a surprise. I understand and am happy to see that IBM has been making a big push into business analytics. However they already own products that can do most of what Clarity 7 does. There is always some level of overlap with these kind of acquisitions, but in this case it appears to be huge. Clarity is primarily a performance management application vendor. Well, IBM's earlier Cognos acquisition covers much the same ground (and then some). The IBM Cognos sales force already has its hands full trying to decide which product to roll out when someone wants to do budgeting for example. Do they lead with Cognos Planning or TM1 and/or partner applications in this area? What they don't need to add to the mix is another budgeting and planning solution such as Clarity's.

So, why the purchase then? FSR. Financial statement reporting. This Clarity solution is focused on financial governance and the facilitation of external reporting. We believe this has been where most of Clarity's sales and growth have come from, at least in the past year. It is certainly a hot area in performance management and it makes sense for IBM to want in. Other vendors are also jumping on this bandwagon such as Longview with their FXR offering.

My view of all this is that it is a good acquisition for IBM (especially if the price they paid reflected that FSR was really the only valuable piece of the product set for them) and will strengthen their expanding business analytics offerings. I also believe that it doesn't make sense to continue to actively market and develop the competing Clarity 7 performance management applications.

What does this mean for IBM Cognos customers? The ability to incorporate FSR into their performance management solutions. For current Clarity customers the picture is a little different. While I am sure Clarity 7 will be 'supported' for some time to come, it will be frozen in time. In an area of rapid evolution and change such as performance management you cannot stay competitive with your peers if you are utilizing an essentially dead product. As the definition of performance management continues to expand and vendors add new capabilities you do not want to be left behind. These customers must begin planning a migration to an alternative solution from IBM or another vendor much like customers of INEA, SRC, Cartesis and several other acquired and discontinued products have had to do. They should do this before they make significant additional investments in software, training, or implementation. It's always better to invest in the future as opposed to the past.