Cognos to pay $339 million for Applix
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(InfoWorld) - Business performance software vendor CognosÂ has agreed to buy Applix, a developer of performance analysis software, and plans to integrate the companies' products by early next year. With TM1, Applix's 64-bit in-memory analytical engine, Cognos said it hopes to boost its software's ability to analyze and optimize complex financial performance data. Cognos and Applix expect to complete the $339 million cash transaction in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approvals. It will only take a modest effort to integrate Cognos 8 with TM1, Cognos CEO Rob Ashe said on Wednesday in a conference call with analysts. He expects to have an integrated version on sale in the first quarter of next year. Cognos has around 3,500 customers for its financial performance management software -- and almost 20,000 more for its other products, while Applix has around 3,000 customers. Between 25 percent and 30 percent of those are joint customers, Ashe said. Many of them are already asking Cognos to support the TM1 engine, he said. One of the attractions of the Applix acquisition was the company's focus, Ashe said. "We like everything Applix does: they live and breathe performance management," Both companies compete withÂ Hyperion, now owned by Oracle, with Business Objects, and in some areas with SAP, whichÂ acquired performance analytics vendor OutlookSoftÂ in May. In 2006, Cognos was the second largest vendor of corporate performance management software, ahead of Oracle and behind Hyperion, according to market estimates published last month by analysts at Gartner. Those rankings have changed with recent acquisitions, with Business Objects now claiming third place thanks to its purchase of Cartesis and ALG Software, while Oracle-Hyperion moves to the top.
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The price for Onex Corp., Canada's biggest buyout firm, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to buy Raytheon Co.'s aircraft unit is about $3 billion, a person with knowledge of the agreement said.
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MONTREAL (CP) - CAE Inc. has won a &#36;23 million contract to provide China Eastern Airlines with a flight simulator to help train pilots to fly Airbus jets.
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In response to the latest external reporting requirements from the Feds, Cognos announced this week three additions to its suite of financial applications targeted at the enterprise office of finance.
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Software giant Cognos Inc. continued to strengthen its sales channel in Europe on Tuesday with the acquisition of a small operation located in Madrid, Spain.
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Cognos executives first approached IBM in the months leading up to&#160;IBM&#39;s pending $5 billion deal to buy the company, not the other way around, according to a document Cognos submitted Friday to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.The filing was prepared for Cognos shareholders in advance of the Jan. 14 vote on the sale.The details it provides of the negotiations between IBM and the company stand in contrast to past statements made by Rob Ashe, the Canadian business-intelligence software maker&#39;s CEO, who at one time stressed the company&#39;s game plan was to become the top independent BI vendor in the market.But clearly, those ambitions weakened as the space saw a dramatic consolidation in 2007 with&#160;SAP scooping up Business Objects&#160;and&#160;Oracle buying Hyperion.In fact, Cognos talked with potential suitors as far back as the middle of last year, according to the filing. The vendor said a firm it identified only as &quot;Company X&quot; approached it about a possible acquisition on July 19, 2006, but those discussions eventually broke down, according to the filing, which does not reveal Company X&#39;s price-per-share offer.Negotiations ceased on Nov. 20, 2006, and Cognos subsequently reached out to IBM in December 2006 to gauge its interest, according to the filing. &quot;While our board of directors had not determined that a sale of Cognos was the most desirable outcome, it believed that IBM&#39;s interest was of relevance in considering any strategic alternative in the event that Company X or other potential acquirers approached us,&quot; it states.Company X attempted to restart talks with Cognos on Dec. 6 but refused to raise its offer, according to the filing.Ashe then met on Jan. 8 with Ambuj Goyal, general manager of IBM&#39;s information management division, and Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group.Cognos entered a confidentiality agreement with IBM on Jan. 31, and executives from the two companies met a second time on Feb. 2.Talks continued throughout the year but revolved around partnership opportunities until Sept. 21, when Goyal and David Johnson, IBM&#39;s vice president of corporate development, called Ashe &quot;on an unsolicited basis, and expressed IBM&#39;s interest in acquiring Cognos,&quot; the filing states.The two firms spent the next several weeks haggling over a price for Cognos. IBM&#39;s initial offer was $50 to $52 per common share in cash, but Cognos deemed it insufficient, according to the filingFollowing a series of back-and-forth negotiations, IBM raised its price to $57. Cognos did not accept, but said it would proceed based on a $58-per-share offer, the filing states.IBM agreed, and the firms eventually signed the deal on Nov. 11.A Cognos spokeswoman said Monday that the company would not comment on the filing. Shares of the company were trading at about $57 midday.
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InfoWorld - IBM announced the first results of its recently closedÂ acquisition of business intelligence vendor Cognos, unveiling an array of product offerings and services that tie into its Information on Demand strategy.
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InfoWorld - Business performance software vendor Cognos&#160;has agreed to buy Applix, a developer of performance analysis software, and plans to integrate the companies&#39; products by early next year.
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Dutch banking and insurance group Fortis said that its international insurance arm will acquire the Ukranian insurer Etalon Life, for 7.6 million euros (9.7 million dollars).
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Qwest Communications International Inc.  has agreed to pay &#36;250 million to settle financial and disclosure fraud charges, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.
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Last November, we wondered what IBM expects to come out of its acquisition of Canadian business intelligence software provider Cognos. This morning we found out, as Big Blue enters the "business optimization" business.
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Ireland's major pharmaceutical firm, Elan Corp. PLC, said Tuesday it plans to pay &#36;55 million to resolve a U.S. class-action lawsuit and a related investigation by American federal regulators into alleged accounting malpractice.
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The Defense Department awarded a $31 million contract for implementation and training services to Unisys Corp. The contract pertains to DOD&#39;s electronic medical records system, called the Composite Health Care System (CHCS) II.
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On Tuesday, Cognos unveiled Cognos 8 BI v3, most likely the last upgrade before the acquisition by IBM is final. The Cognos board ratified the acquisition earlier this week.However, Version 3 was under development long before IBM made its offer, according to officials.While the new capabilities in release 8.3 are meant to attract a wider group of knowledge workers, it is also meant to reassure IT executives, wary of having to support an ever increasing number of business managers, that version 8.3's new features will make it is easier to monitor and manage BI performance.The new, richer administrative capabilities will allow IT to take a snapshot of the BI environment in real time and identify everything from a runaway query to what reports are waiting in the queue. The admin tool can reprioritize jobs and rerun reports before a user even realizes there is a glitch in the system."Now a system administrator can be more proactive before someone calls in to the help desk," said Harriet Fryman, executive vice president of product marketing at Cognos.Using an administrative console, IT can monitor metrics and step up the thresholds to say what is acceptable behavior before action is required.IT will also be able to build its own set of reports and analyses to understand how well the system is functioning, including how the servers are performing and whether more need to be brought up, said Fryman."It will help IT make decisions on how they want to run the BI environment," Fryman said.The driver behind the additional administrative capabilities comes out of the realization that IT always worries whether too many people using the system will overwhelm the help desk, or whether users could shut down the system if they have too much functionality available to them, said David O'Connell, a senior analyst with Nucleus Research."IT might be overconcerned. They want to keep down how much they let BI get out there. They worry about a runaway query. Now they have less reason to fear," said O'Connell.Version 8.3 also makes it less costly to administer and manage, all of which will goes toward easing IT's reluctance to take on more users.Cognos 8 BI v3 is available now.
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Ottawa&#39;s Cognos Inc. logged yet another quarter of record results after Tuesday&#39;s market close, with third-quarter profits up 42 per cent from the year before.
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InfoWorld - On Tuesday, Cognos unveiled Cognos 8 BI v3, most likely the last upgrade before the acquisition by IBM is final. The Cognos board ratified the acquisition earlier this week.
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TechWeb - The Cognos-IBM Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint provides a performance-management framework for building multi-dimensional, product-level profitability plans and forecasts aligned with risk-management strategies.