IBM Acquires BI Software Specialist Cognos for $5 Billion
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The third shoe in the business intelligence market has finally fallen, now that IBM yesterday announced that it would spend $5 billion in cash to acquire Canadian BI software maker Cognos. The IBM deal follows Oracle's snapping up of Hyperion Solutions in March for $3.3 billion and SAP's purchase of Business Objects in October for $6.7 billion. With this deal, the three biggest independent suppliers of business intelligence and analytics software are no longer free agents, no matter how much their new owners will protest otherwise. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories from Around the Web

(InternetNews) The hottest ticket in the mainframe game is arguably application modernization. As well as IBM has been doing with mainframe revenues in recent times, it's a simplified development environment for programming mainframe applications that will keep that fire burning. Here's what Big Blue has in mind for moving big iron customers ahead. READ MORE >

(zJournal) Operating systems come and go. It's a phenomenon in the IT world known as upgrades. Along with the evolutionary tides that bring us new releases and new versions of the OS, comes the inevitable withdrawal from marketing and withdrawal from service. Where do you and your VSE stand in the grand scheme of things? This is a little bit about your place in history and a lot about what your next move should be. READ MORE >

(MainframeWatch) Under the category of what have you done for me lately, comes this blog posting regarding DB2 for VSE and VM. It's been three years since the last major release and the product enhancements are about as exciting as a new pair of socks. READ MORE >

(IBM) New releases on the IBM System z Redbooks page list the following titles: SSL Server Implementation for z/VM 5.2,WebSphere Portal for z/OS Version 6, and GDPS Family--An Introduction to Concepts and Capabilities. These have all been added since the first of October. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

See our full calendar of events at
http://www.itjungle.com/big/big-calendar.html

November 27 -- Webcast - The IBM Information Server for System z and information integration will be the focus of this online session. Topics of discussion will include publishing integration logic as consistent and reusable information services; performing information integration directly on the mainframe without added z/OS operational costs; moving to desired functions, with visuals that help users easily understand data and find anomalies; and designing data flows that extract information from multiple source systems, transform it, then deliver it to one or more target databases or applications. This event begins at 11 a.m. EST. LEARN MORE >

November 29 -- Detroit, Michigan - This one-day System z technical briefing will focus on topics such as increasing programmer productivity using new development technology; running WebSphere, Linux, and data warehouse workloads; leveraging CICS, which now supports native SOA capabilities, to build an On Demand business; gaining competitive pricing with new zIIP, zAAP, and IFL processors; and managing labor costs with the mainframe economies of scale. The event begins at 8:30 a.m. LEARN MORE >

December 2-7 -- San Diego, California - The 33rd annual Computer Measurement Group conference, CMG2007, brings together data processing professionals interested in system evaluation to maximize performance measured in terms of response time, throughput, and through capacity management. Sessions are geared toward making enhancements to existing systems or designing new systems with the aim of providing adequate performance at a reasonable cost. The courses are divided into two groups. One group consists of platform agnostic sessions and provides attendees with basic knowledge that is independent of any specific hardware or operating system. The second group is platform specific specializing in operating systems such as z/OS, Windows, Unix, and Linux. LEARN MORE >

December 2-4 -- Amelia Island, Florida - The second annual Gartner CIO Summit kicks off, with James Popkin, a research group vice president and author of a new book called IT and the East, will be delivering the keynote address to the CIOs in attendance, explaining how China and India will fundamentally change the IT environment. (Like they haven't already, right?) The event has lots of time to hob-nob and network with fellow CIOs. There's almost certainly some time to play a few rounds of golf, too. LEARN MORE >

February 24-29, 2008 -- Orlando, Florida - The SHARE mainframe user group will be hosting its spring event in sunny Florida, and will be focusing on two areas that are affecting mainframe shops in a big way these days: Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) application software design and server virtualization and consolidation. As usual, SHARE will also include the Technology Exchange Expo, where vendors can hawk their mainframe wares and attendees can try to find the tools to solve their IT woes. LEARN MORE >