In early November, IBM unveiled a $5 billion deal to purchase business intelligence (BI) tool vendor Cognos. It's part of a more general recognition in the wider IT market that BI applications are going to become a more significant source of revenue.

One issue in BI that's coming to the forefront and that's definitely on IBM's mind is a concept currently called "a single version of the truth." Although tying large amounts of data together better than ever before is generally a good idea, it isn't automatically useful if some of the data is faulty.

What's more, you can find useful information in many places besides databases, for example, in "unstructured" sources such as e-mail messages, images, custom applications, and so forth. Drawing all these threads together to make a useful collection of facts for analysis is a challenge.

IBM's plan for dealing with these problems is Information on Demand, its stated reason for emptying its deep pockets a bit for Cognos, acquisition of which IBM expects to help with this strategy. IBM's plan with Information on Demand is to provide it by blending products and their elements from multiple acquisitions and ultimately offering it within a framework that supports a service-oriented architecture.

What's of most interest to you and me is what this means to the System i market. To begin with, Cognos products don't run natively on the System i. However, they use an open architecture, and they interact with DB2 databases on System i servers, and in that sense they support the System i and applications that run in environments that include the System i.

To get a feeling for the short-term impact of the acquisition on our market, I decided to do an informal opinion poll of some System i BI application vendors.

"The consolidation of companies that's underway in the BI market strengthens those companies' stacks," ventured Datawatch Corporation COO (and soon to be CEO) Ken Bero. "Among customers, though, I believe it will cause some consternation. It throws things up in the air. No one knows how to position their [BI] strategies. It makes it more difficult to make decisions. Here at Datawatch, we view this as an opportunity to continue to provide easy-to-use BI tools with a strong ROI, today." As for IBM's justification for buying Cognos particularly, "it's not clear what they are thinking," Bero opined.

"I think the most significant thing about [this acquisition and SAP's of Business Objects] is that it has brought attention to the value of BI," states New Generation Software's Marketing Director, Bill Langston. "We think this will make more executives ask their IT directors and CIOs to investigate BI, and that's good for everyone in the BI market," he continues. But, he noted, Cognos products don't run on i5/OS "and I would be shocked if IBM elected to make the investment required to change that. From a technology perspective, the Cognos acquisition really doesn't change anything for System i customers."

John Hughes, Silvon Software's senior vice president, had an outlook similar to Langston's. "We don't see any significant impact to Silvon resulting from this merger, since for many years we have been a System i 'application-centric' BI provider. That means our domain expertise across supply chain, manufacturing, and distribution has driven demand for our solutions."

BCD International's Eric Figura agreed with Datawatch's Bero. "While this could be a good fit for IBM, are they not simply creating a lot of marketplace confusion for System i users? Isn't IBM [already] doing a full-court press pushing Cognos's competitor Information Builders' web query tool? What is [IBM's] clear message with this news?"

Doug Mack, IBM's System i DB2 product marketing manager, responded: " We are already working on the next version of DB2 Web Query, and this acquisition will have no impact on that effort. For those customers looking for an i5/OS-centric solution, we expect DB2 Web Query for System i to continue to be an attractive query and reporting solution."

DB2 Web Query is also a basis of mrc President Joe Stangarone's optimistic view. "I don't believe the Cognos acquisition was done with DB2 or the System i as a primary consideration. If it was, how could you rationalize the rollout of DB2 Web Query for the System i just a few months ago?" he asks. "The System i BI market will find [itself] shifting to smaller, more capable vendors, who are nimble and far less constrained than the behemoths. Small and midsize vendors in the BI marketplace who can listen to their customers and deliver customized BI solutions without all the headaches will be able to offer solutions in a much more timely manner."

John Ghrist is senior products editor for System iNEWS.