BI Questions Blog

IBM couldn't take the heat any more -- it's Cognos, for $5bn. It seems they were reluctant up until the last minute, given the recent agreements announced with Business Objects XI bundled with DB2. But faced with being left out of the cold, and with other suitors surely bearing down on Cognos, they bit the bullet...  

The only two remaining large BI players are SAS and MicroStrategy, both difficult to purchase: SAS because it's a private company, controlled by founder and CEO Dr. Goodnight, and MicroStrategy because it's a public company, but with voting rights controlled by founder Michael Saylor. Both companies show good revenue growth, and neither founder seems ready to cede control in the near future...

Throw in some aggressive moves from Microsoft, and Google are waiting in the wings, and the next chapter in the history of business intelligence can now be written...