On 5 September 2007, Cognos announced it would buy Applix for $339 million. The deal is scheduled to close in 4Q07.

Bron: www.gartner.com

This proposed acquisition shows the continued consolidation of the corporate performance management (CPM) market. This should be a good move for Cognos and Applix customers, by providing more robust choices for their CPM solutions. But as with all consolidations, this deal would leave fewer choices for new solution prospects.

With this deal, Cognos would gain:

• A stronger CPM offering
• A more solid market position for CPM and business intelligence (BI) solutions
• Financial analysis capabilities to enhance Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 Controller
• 3,000 Applix customers (to add to its 3,500-customer CPM base)
• Technology to improve CPM reporting and analysis capability performance and scalability through TM1, a leading 64-bit in-memory online analytical processing (OLAP) engine that powers Applix's CPM solutions and BI platform

TM1 could form the foundation of Cognos Planning, by providing an OLAP engine that can be optimized for read/write capability. It could replace the distributed calculation engines that Cognos acquired when it bought Adaytum in 2003. This could be a major technology upgrade for CPM, since most leading planning solutions are built on OLAP engines. Cognos has stated that the products are complementary and it intends to sell both.

Cognos will need to explain quickly how it plans to integrate Applix into its CPM and BI solutions. Cognos has not explicitly stated its consolidation plan, but Gartner expects that Applix will have a central role in CPM and will coexist with Cognos Planning for the next two years. Cognos does not expect TM1 to replace PowerPlay. Gartner believes that Cognos should position the TM1 technology as an in-memory acceleration layer to improve reporting and analysis performance.