EU signs off on IBM's Cognos acquisition
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IBM&#39;s $5 billion acquisition of business intelligence software vendor Cognos took a step forward on Thursday as European regulators gave their approval to the deal.After examining the acquisition, the European Commission said in a statement that it &quot;would not give rise to competition concerns, since the parties&#39; combined market share would be moderate.&quot;IBM announced its intention to buy Cognos, based in Ottawa, in November, saying it hoped to combine the Cognos software with IBM&#39;s back-end database products. They hope to close the deal by the end of March, but there are still a few regulatory requirements to be met, including the approval of Canada&#39;s minister of industry.Business intelligence software is used to analyze data from different sources within a company and help management get a better picture of the business. Several business intelligence software vendors have been acquired recently, including&#160;Hyperion, purchased by Oracle, and&#160;Business Objects, purchased by SAP.IBM to date has partnered with business intelligence software vendors, providing the back-end infrastructure components. But changing customer demands sparked its interest in Cognos, according to Ambuj Goyal, general manager of information management in IBM&#39;s software group and a key player in the Cognos deal.&quot;Now, more and more clients are saying, &#39;We are not an integration technology business, we are in a business-outcome business. You do the integration,&#39;&quot; he said in a recent interview. &quot;More and more clients are not doing best-of-breed purchases.&quot;(Chris Kanaracus in Boston contributed to this story.)&#160;
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TechWeb - IBM will work to integrate its Websphere middleware stack, DB2 database, and Cognos' business intelligence products.
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EU ministers agree to get the multi-billion-euro Galileo satellite navigation system up and running from 2008.
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Microsoft agrees to comply with the European Commission's 2004 anti-monopoly ruling against it.
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BRUSSELS, Aug 27 (IPS) - +IBMThe new EU member states will soon take lessons  in development cooperation from developing countries.
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Magna Electronics, an operating unit of Magna International Inc., and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the signing of a five-year collaborative agreement for IBM to support Magna's entry into the rapidly growing market of vehicle electronic systems.
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The European Union and United States agreed on Friday to the outlines of a new pact to open transatlantic aviation markets, smoothing over a rift on airline ownership in the hope of boosting traffic and creating jobs.
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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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South Korea and the European Union are to sign a cooperation agreement here next week covering Seoul's participation in Europe's Galileo satellite navigation project, the Finnish presidency said.
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IBM said Wednesday that it has sewn up outsourcing deals with two Danish companies valued at more than $1 billion over 10 years, reinforcing its strength in Europe.
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OTTAWA (CP) - Canadian business software maker Cognos Inc. is bidding to take over Frango AB, a Swedish specialist in financial reporting technology, for the equivalent of about $67.
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The BBC and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have forged a strategic alliance, following the signing of an agreement for a framework outlining several joint projects between the two companies.
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Caixanova and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced details of a 10-year, 70 million euro information technology services agreement that will optimize the savings bank's IT platform and prevent data loss in the event of possible interruptions.
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BRUSSELS: A European Union court is set to rule this week on a $120 billion deal MCI-WorldCom made during the height of the go-go years that still resonates today.
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It looks like only relatively minor administrative tasks stand between the two companies becoming one. By TechWeb News. The European Union has approved Oracle&#39;s takeover of PeopleSoft, bringing the deal closer to completion.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Union has reached a preliminary agreement in the long-runningÂ dispute over the handling of personal dataÂ about E.U. citizens flying to the U.S., a European Commission spokesman said Thursday. Franco Frattini, the commissioner for justice and home affairs, together with German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and U.S. secretary for homeland security Michael Chertoff, reached the agreement on Wednesday. However, details wonât be made public until after a meeting of ambassadors for all 27 E.U. countries slated for Friday morning, said Friso Roscam Abbing, Frattiniâs spokesman. The ambassadors will have to sign off on the deal, which observers say is likely to happen. U.S. authorities have been trying to use the renewal of a transatlantic agreement permitting the transfer of European air passengersâ data, known as passenger name records (PNRs), to beef up their powers of surveillance of foreigners entering the U.S. Sharing the dataÂ breaches strict European data protection laws, but the European Commission and national governments in the 27 countries in the E.U. negotiated an exemption from the rules in order to allow the U.S. to better protect itself from potential terrorist attacks. That interim agreement was deemed illegal by the European Court of Justice, and the court gave the E.U. until the end of July to come up with a new accord. Failure to do so wouldÂ leave European airlines exposed to massive finesÂ and the possible loss of landing slots in the U.S if they donât continue to hand over the data, or legal action on data protection grounds in the E.U. if they do. Roscam Abbing declined to comment on reports that the political agreement reached Wednesday allows U.S. authorities to hold onto PNR data for 15 years. âWait until the briefing tomorrow,â he said.
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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.