IBM scoops up BI leader Cognos in $5B cash bid

The thought on the street was that Cognos had to get bought soon, given the business intelligence (BI) consolidation land-grab of late -- punctuated by Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion and SAP's buy of Business Objects.

So now Big Blue steps up to the plate, and for $5 billion in cash, buys Cognos. This quite large acquisition for IBM quickly adds more BI-oomph to the IBM "Information" portfolio, but also importantly takes Cognos off the market from anyone else. Other suitors would probably have been Microsoft and perhaps HP. This BI value could have burnished HP's total managment drive and complemented the Opsware purchase.

Publicly held Cognos, of Ottawa, Canada will become part of IBM’s Information Management software and should well augment IBM's aggressive Information on Demand initiatives through new BI and Performance Management capabilities. The Cognos assimilation will be led by managed by Information Management General Manager Ambuj Goyal.

It will be interesting to see how IBM will support all the Cognos partnership deals with many vendors, ISVs, channel players, SIs, and users. For example, Cognos just joined a partnership with Software AG, which competes with IBM on several levels.

Despite the complications of how to best merge the Cognos ecology into the IBM arsenal/universe, the purchase shows the importance of insight into and improved management of business activities to the global enterprise leadership. IBM has put a premium on ramping up its Information on Demand values through rapid acquisitions and business development.

Just this year, IBM has bought (or is in the process of buying) Watchfire, Telelogic, DataMirror, WebDialogs, and Princeton Softech.

Helping huge and complex corporations to get a handle on their data, content, metadata, and digital assets -- as well as to refine, consolidate and automate access to said assets -- forms a needed foundation for IBM's strategies around services oriented archirecture (SOA) and business process managment (BPM). Providing end-to-end, top-to-bottom value in the data lifecycle also buttresses IBM's goal of easing the customization of and ongoing agility of business applications and processes, even into granular vertical business niches. And all of these values further empower IBM's professional services offerings and depth.

Indeed, IBM has wasted no time nor expense in cobbling together perhaps the global leadership position in data management in the most comprehensive sense. IT vendor competition has long centered on entrenchment via platform, development framework, proprietary technologies, and price-performance persuasion. Long-term advantage via best solutions for complete data lifecycle management and mastery has additional relevance in a market where virtualization, SaaS, SOA, and open source are dislodging the old-school vendor lock-in options.

Software AG and Cognos bring BI and BPM into common orbit

The much-discussed marriage of business intelligence (BI) and business process management (BPM) may be a step closer to the altar with last week's announcement by Software AG that it will embed Cognos 8 BI with the webMethods product suite.

Software AG, which made the announcement at Integration World 2007 in Orlando, Fla., says the strategic partnership and OEM licensing agreement will allow companies to combine BI with BPM and business activity monitoring, providing real-time and historical data on a single dashboard for actionable insight. The new out-of-the-box component will let users:

• Streamline change management, because requirements and implications of proposed changes will be illustrated before implementation.
  
  
• Accelerate process improvements by drilling down on operational data.
  
  
• Enhance business agility through more rapid implementation of operational changes.
  
  
• Achieve closer alignment with line-of-business objectives due to using the same platform for business planning and performance monitoring.
  
  
• Improve accountability through the embedded use of scorecarding and analytics.

Pundits and analysts have been talking about the merger of BI and BPM for a long time, and the talk heated up with TIBCO's acquisition of Spotfire last May, but all that talk has led to a lot of dating, but no commitment.

Peter Kürpick, president and chief product officer for the webMethods division of Software AG referred to the all the talk in making the announcement. "Many talk about delivering an integrated product suite and a seamless user experience, but few actually deliver. The inclusion of best-in-class BI and reporting is one key element. Others include a shared metadata model and lifecycle governance for all assets, real-time monitoring, and process-based collaboration."

Tony Baer at CBR Online sees this as a pre-emptive strike by Software AG in a market where the big players are lining up their BI assets:

"With rivals such as IBM and Oracle also having collected BI assets as part of their greater software platforms, which also include BPM and BAM, Software AG's tie-in with Cognos (for now, the last major independent BI vendor, unless you're counting Information Builders) was an important pre-emptive move."

Current customers can add Cognos BI as a supported feature immediately.

In other news from Integration World, Software AG has opened the door for bringing rich Internet applications (RIAs) to enterprise transaction systems with the introduction of Natural for Ajax, an enhanced version of the company's Natural 2006 application development and deployment environment.

Natural 2006 allows developers to create highly scalable enterprise transactional systems running on either mainframe or open source platforms. Natural for Ajax follows close on the heels of Software AG's release of Natural for Eclipse. Key benefits of RIAs include the streamlined ability to create composite views of application and data, as well as the availability of more dynamic, high-performance and interactive reporting.

According to Software AG, Natural for Ajax can be used to create browser-based, rich user interfaces for enterprise applications and mainframe systems that rival the look, feel and performance of the latest Web 2.0 applications. Developers can implement rich-client functionality using a library of more than 50 pre-defined Web graphical user interface (GUI) controls. Other interactive features -- such as “drag and drop,” context menus and advanced grid processing -- can be used within a standard Web browser to streamline development and boost productivity.

Among the other announcements:

• Software AG will offer and support Layer 7's SecureSpan SOA security and policy enforcement solutions on a global basis. Layer 7 provides gateway software and appliances for securing, scaling, and simplifying production SOAs. The Layer 7 product will also serve as a fully interoperable policy enforcement point (PEP) for services government by CentraSite, a SOA governance solution developed jointly by Software AG and Fujitsu.
  
  
• The CentraSite community, which brings together partners who are developing solutions that interoperate with CentraSite, has grown to over 50 members. A standards-based organization, the CentraSite Community now includes such members as Progress Software, MID, BAP Solutions, JustSystems, Composite Software, Intalio, IONA, iTKO, Solstice Software, SOA Software, and SymphonySoft.
  
  
• Software AG and Satyam Computer Systems Ltd., announced they will expand their global partnership for developing vertical solutions using WebMethods. This partnership focuses on industry-specific process frameworks for such key sectors as insurance, manufacturing, and telecom.

Looks like the The Gang, rounded up by Steve Gillmor, is back in the saddle

Jason Calacanis is blogging about the latest debut of The Gang, aka Gillmor Group, aka Bad Sinatra, aka Gillmor Gang. The first episode is on Facebook, in four parts. I was happy to be a part of this, nearly a year since the last real Gang recording.

It actually came out quite good, just like the olden days. And a critical mass of the original gang is on the call: Steve Gillmor, Nick Carr, Mike Arrington, Doc Searls, Robert Anderson, Jason Calacanis, Mike Vizard, and yours truly. Expect more.

At least this first weekly and lively discourse on the really important things in life is not in 18 revolting segmentations, as was the norm in some past iterations. I can only surmise that Steve is out hustling up some underwriters for the podcast. Why else break it up at all?

Anyone care to cut a check on this? Six figures? Jonathan? I'm sure Steve's voice-overs on your introductions will be inspiring. ... ("He'd never be in blogging if it weren't for me!") Actually, I'd probably not be in blogging if not for Steve either. Thanks, pal.

True to his attention-deficit marketing mentality, there is virtually no promotion of the new The Gang. Links are dead after all. It's all about negative gestures, don't ya know. Ya, and I buried Paul, you expert textpert.

I'm very glad to see that Steve is producing this independently. No more Pod.*. And Facebook will make a fascinating viral platform. It's good to experiment. Just open enough. He might even be able to measure the audience; might even be able to define the audience members, might even be able to invite the audience individually. Ah, the good old days of controlled circulation ... much better rates that way. And the list -- My God, he could sell the list! Elitism has its advantages.

And I'm glad it's not video either, leave that to the infomercials. See Gate, et al. Voice is plenty. Just repurpose it on iTunes and monetize on the Facebook picket-fence garden. Screw the rest of 'em.

And so, how do you post "music" to Facebook? Is that an application, or a feature?

Red Hat partners with Amazon for Enterprise Linux fabric in Elastic Compute Cloud

Seeking to make ISVs an offer they can't refuse, Red Hat has teamed with Amazon to provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.x instances in the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure as a service offering.

The beta Amazon-hosted monthly payment subscription service will allow developers -- be they in ISVs or enterprises -- to develop to RHEL and then deploy the applications as a service. The applications owners will then only pay for the hosting of those applications and services based on their use and support infrastructure demand -- known as pay as you drink.

Red Hat also announced Wednesday the release of RHEL 5.1, which follows from RHEL 5.0's arrival last March. The newer point release provides an even deeper and aggressive reach into virtualization benefits, including significant performance boosts.

Additionally, Red Hat plans in mid-2008 to debut a series of software appliances, beginning with Red Hat Appliance OS and an associated development kit. This will allow entire packages of platform, middleware and applications to be crafted into an easily deployed functionally targeted and optimized appliance.

The goal is to allow developers and ISVs myriad choices on how to deliver their applications and services, as long as they deploy to the RHEL stack of open source infrastructure. Red Hat then charges for maintenance and support, or via on-demand subscriptions. By targeting just RHEL, developers can then deploy directly to dedicated servers, to virtualized instances of Linux, via optimized software appliances (apps plus OS plus required stacks), as well as via several choices for on-demand hosting (including Amazon).

Red Hat calls this plethora of deployment models and approaches as its new Linux Automation strategy. Red Hat is also interestingly getting chummy with Sun Microsystems on enterprise Java support, now that Java is open source.

What's more, through its burgeoning embrace of virtualization options, Red Hat plans to aggressively support Windows instances on Red Hat, so that any Windows 32-bit applications (from across many versions of Windows) can be supported virtually on RHEL. The leading Linux supplier also plans to work inside of Microsoft's pending Viridian hypervisor, which is based on the Linux-based Xen hypervisor (at least for now).

On a large business level, Red Hat is seeking to bring more open source deployment options to global developers of nearly every ilk. For operators, Red Hat hopes to simplify their infrastructures while offering strong performance and lower total costs through higher utilization and capacity management on top of lower licensing and hardware costs. Red Hat says that RHEL is gaining ground quickly on mainframes, including IBM's System Z.

My take on these announcements is that Red Hat wants to take its Linux distribution clout far beyond the market for dedicated servers and blades at individual enterprises, and become the de facto industry standard for how hosting organizations, telecommunications providers, entertainment providers, and on-demand ISVs deploy all their applications over the next 10 years.

Red Hat is banking on the trends around virtualization, clustering and utility computing, multi-core hardware/parallelism, and the increasingly advantageous on-demand subscription economic models to become the low-cost, high-performance enough foundational supplier.

With virtualization performance gaining ground, and allowing many types and kind of server applications to run on instances of many OSes, then more (and nearly) all things become equal such that a pure price-performance comparison can be made for providing applications and services. Whether you are building, hosting, providing, or monetizing around those services -- you will eventually move to the best price-performance deal.

The race is on then: Windows, Solaris/Open Solaris, Red Hat Linux -- on various types of platform iterations -- for the best story when it comes to hosting price-performance and deployment ease experience. Red Hat is aiming high on this one. And it has a pretty good shot at it doing very well.

Red Hat is boldly predicting it can, by 2015, double its market share and support more than half the worlds server instances. And they didn't even use the "grid" or "utility" words, not once.

Enterprise mobile remains up for grabs despite Google, Android and OHA

What do the major players missing from the Google Android and Open Handset Alliance (OHA) have in common? An abiding interest in enterprise mobile, and effectively integrating IT back-end resources for delivery to mobile B2E, B2B and B2C endpoints.

So-far, the non-OHA-committed players include Apple, Microsoft, Sybase, Adobe, Oracle, BEA Systems, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, SAP, and HP. When viewed through this prominent global crowd, the OHA roster seems a bit flimsy for satisfying the major business activities/corporate opportunity.

Many questions arise on what will happen in an OHA world on the business side of the aisle. For example, should Google and the OHA members be satisfied with the B2C play? Will the current B2C OHA, if successful, play a coalescing role for B2B and B2E architectures? Could a separate business-oriented OHA or equivalent be in the offing?

For mobile especially, why have separate architectures for B2C and B2B? Why should enterprise mobile SaaS be constructed any differently from mobile Web SaaS? Fragmentation is the problem, not the solution.

If Android is to progress as an open environment into PC-like devices, then the architectural approach should be common. Respondents to my ZDNet blog poll say 58% to 42% that open mobile devices threaten closed PC models.

Well, of course, many things need to happen for an "open" business-ready mobile architecture: security, control, management, governance and mission critical reliability come to mind. The level for such risk-avoidance measures would be lower for a B2C and mobile commerce approach, at least at the outset.

So perhaps what is needed is a two-tiered approach to Android/OHA. One level, for Web-facing and consumer-type activities (supported increasingly by ad and mobile commerce revenues), will arrive Nov. 12. But how about a second level for a more enterprise-calibre stack, one with the concerns of CIOs addressed (supported more by a licensed, royalty, maintenance/support or subscription revenue model). Come on, guys, let's see the business version!

In fact, this could well mirror what has happened with free open source and so-called commercial open source. You take the same code base, the same adherence to openness, standards and interoperability -- yet take it to market on two levels. Android may very well need an more mature brother: Robot.

Android can be the mobile consumer-facing approach. Robot can be the workhorse for the business-class needs. This makes a great deal of sense and would allow for the common community of development while satisfying two quite different architectural integrity needs. It also allows for more traditional business monetization for Robot, one that would jibe with enterprise licensed and commercial open source selling. The Apache license could work for both, another essential commonality.

I think that Sybase, IBM, Oracle, Apple, Sun, Red Hat and the business revenue-hungry networks might go for it. Only Microsoft might be left trying to figure what in heaven's name to do about this whole thing. (What? Windows Mobile Open Live Software and Services .NET?)

Make no mistake. There is growing demand for enterprises to get mobile to their employees, partners, and customers. Sybase is betting the company on it. Based on a poll I presented in a recent ZDNet blog here, a whopping 78% of respondents think that IBM and Apple should work together to bring a Lotus Notes client to the iPhone.

I say three cheers for Notes on iPhone! It would be a great solution and drive Apple deeper into enterprises, while extending the shelf life of Notes/Domino. But why not build it via a Robot architecture, with Android at the core, and allow these mobile devices to be common endpoints for corporate and consumer activities, such as Notes/Domino, based on a common -- yet two-tired -- open/commercial middleware stack?

Windows Mobile didn't get the job done. Java ME did not get the job done. Embedded Linux did not get the job done. How about a Robot brother to Android?