We know that IBM is one of the technological pioneers of how today’s society look like. I remember during my highschool computer subjects how computer chips were introduced and how IBM has participated on this era of information age. Just like any other companies which keeps on reinventing itself for the better, IBM has now evolved from a PC hardware venture into a full grown software house after selling their PC division to Lenovo. Competition in the world of information technology is getting tougher and tougher these days as the remaining Top 5 Software Giants vie for the most powerful and innovative solutions ever known to mankind. Acquisition and company mergers are the trend of the today’s companies…giving better options and reliable software solutions to a myriad of existing client and customers worldwide. And as we keep an eye to the who’s who among the IT players, there will always be an excitement of uncertainty of what’s going to happen in the future. Since i am a developer and an IT Evangelist, this is what keeps my work exciting and never tiring!! =)

The good news came to me instantly after sometime the last week of October 2007 as i’ve been actively and consistently in search about some notes/domino scripts to apply for my projects i have at the office.  My initial reaction to this report was …”WOW. It was cool!” knowing that i am just enjoying learning to produce Cognos Reports at work. It’s great! According the reports and blogs i just read, IBM has acquired Cognos completely on Jan 31, 2008 but it was way back on November 12 2007 when there was a definitive agreement to acquire Cognos for $5 billion, or $58 a share. Not surprisingly, I came to see SAP has acquired Business Objects for $6.48Bln in October 2007 , HP bought KnightBridge announced Dec 12 2006, and Oracle has acquried Hyperion for $3.3Bln on Feb 2007 so the business’ move for IBM to acquire Cognos is a bright strategic play. Business Intelligence Systems, Performance Management and Content Management are the “in” these days as most large companies as well as SMEs or small and medium sized enterprises rely on these systems to improve their business processes domain, analyze data on a larger scale such as sales history, budgeting and financial planning. These are capable of producing benchmarking, dashboarding, scorecarding, reporting and trending analysis. These systems have modules that captures data to produce visual charts, diagrams and graphs depending on key measurements and performance indicators selected. The BI tools’ basic purpose is to be able to arrive a better business decision-making models based on the facts of data presented.

One more thing that i am happy about is that prior to acquiring Cognos in November 2007, i noticed there was not-so-many references i can get from the cyberspace.  About 2 years ago, I remember I was still new to Cognos Reports development, and for this reason i had to resort to research and forum posts to learn the language of Cognos but right after the acquisition, a bunch of references, blogs and forums mushroomed as if there was a contagious Business Intelligence (BI)-Cognos explosion circling around the internet. Thank goodness for these people as i am now able to deliver better business reports and that my skillsets are branching out and are not just on collaboration tools like IBM Notes/Domino but also venturing into Business Intelligence, Performance Management and Datawarehousing IT fields which i think is fun and challenging .=)

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