IBM, Cognos Outline IOD Strategy, Road Map - Moving a Shared History into the Present (
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IBM announced its Information On Demand strategy—a
compilation of software, hardware, research and services designed to help
companies manage data and content to gain insight and optimize business—in February
2006 and has since invested about $1 billion in building out the division.
Prior to the formal launch of IOD, IBM had
already acquired a number of companies: Ascential Software, Trigo Technologies,
DWL, SRD, Venetica, iPhrase Technologies. As IBM
put the IOD wrapper around its data strategy, it continued acquiring companies
to add to the mix. From 2005 to date IBM has
acquired LAS (Language Analysis Systems), Unicorn Solutions, FileNet,
DataMirror, Princeton Softech, Solid Information Technology and, most recently,
Cognos.
With similar BI acquisitions under their collective belts (Oracle acquired
Hyperion in March 2007 and SAP acquired
Business Objects in January 2008), IBM,
Oracle and SAP will battle it out for
supremacy in the fast-emerging performance management market.
Since IBM has had a longstanding
partnership with Cognos, a relationship that has spanned 15 years, both groups
have been able to at least start to bring their product portfolios together
relatively quickly.
The 10 new industry solutions include an expansion of the IBM
Retail Integration Framework to incorporate Cognos' Store Operations Planning Blueprint,
which has been preintegrated with IBM's
retail data models. At the same time, the Cognos 8 BI "starter pack"
for IBM InfoSphere Warehouse and
distribution of InfoSphere Warehouse with Cognos 8 BI have been combined.
The Cognos 8 platform has also been preintegrated with IBM's
Information Server software platform, which brings about data integration and
quality capabilities and metadata integration for better data lineage. This in
turn helps companies track the basis for business decisions (key in areas like
governance, risk and compliance).
IBM and Cognos have also developed preconfigured
templates for integrating Cognos 8 BI with IBM
FileNet Business Process Management software.
At the same time, IBM's Dashboard
Accelerator starter kit has been bundled with Cognos 8 BI to help users quickly
build portal-based dashboards.
Finally, IBM plans to include Cognos 8 BI
software with its IBM Balanced Warehouse C-Class,
which provides integrated system components of IBM
data warehouse software, server and storage technologies for small and midsize businesses.
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