• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • IBM Snaps Up Another BI Tool Maker

    October 25, 2010 Alex Woodie

    IBM last week bought Clarity Systems, a developer of Windows-based business intelligence tools designed to help finance officers comply with regulatory reporting requirements and derive more insight out of their financial systems. It was IBM’s 24th acquisition of a BI-related company in the last four years.

    Based in Toronto, Ontario, Clarity Systems develops two main product lines. Its flagship Clarity7 products help customers derive insight from their data via ad-hoc reporting and visual scorecards and also includes powerful budgeting and financial modeling capabilities. But IBM acquired Clarity primarily for its Clarity FSR (“financial statement reporting”) product, which helps companies comply with the reporting requirements of the SEC and other government agencies, including the generation of quarterly reports in extensible business reporting language (XBRL) and support of other formats. Lots of companies are struggling with XBRL. IBM is betting that Clarity’s capability to automate XBRL-related tasks will bolster its role in the industry.

    Clarity FSR and Clarity7 are developed and customized using Microsoft .NET and run on the Windows Server operating system and its integrated Web server; all user interfaces are Web-based, which simplifies user access and maintenance by the IT staff. Clarity also supports an on-demand deployment model, where the customer doesn’t have to buy and run hardware and software.

    While Clarity’s applications execute within a Windows paradigm, data for Clarity’s products can be housed in any number of databases, including SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2 relational database management systems. Clarity touts its hybrid database environment–where some of the data is stored in a RDBMS and some in a multidimensional, or OLAP, databases–as being the best of both worlds. Supported OLAP databases include Oracle‘s Hyperion Essbase, IBM DB2-OLAP, and Microsoft’s SQL Server Analysis Services. A built-in ETL tool sucks in structured data from existing ERP and CRM systems, while unstructured data, such as the stuff living in Excel spreadsheets and PDF documents, is also supported.

    Clarity currently has about 600 customers, according to IBM. They are primarily public companies and touch practically every industry, including banking, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and airline transportation. Premiere customers include British Airways, Cost Plus World Market, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Sempra Energy Utilities, and Wyeth.

    As of last week, Clarity was functioning as a subsidiary of IBM. But eventually, IBM plans to incorporate Clarity’s products and its 400 or so employees into its Business Analytics segment of its converged Systems and Software Group.

    IBM says its purchase of Clarity shows how serious it is about business analytics. Over the past four years, IBM says it has invested more than $14 billion in 24 analytics-related acquisitions. The biggest analytics-related acquisition was the 2007 purchase of Cognos for $5 billion, but recent purchases of Netezza, Unica, Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce, and Open Pages, as well as last year’s deal for SPSS, also have analytics-related aspects.

    Here are some other statistics Big Blue shared about itself. It claims to have 7,000 consultants dedicated to business analytics, and 200 mathematicians devoted exclusively to analytics; the company has been rewarded with 500 analytics patents and has eight “Centers of Excellence” dedicated to analytics around the world.

    Clearly, it doesn’t take an analyst to tell you that IBM has gone ga-ga for analytics.

    RELATED STORIES

    IBM Buys PSS Systems for Getting Rid of Unnecessary, Risky Data

    IBM Wants to Buy Netezza for $1.7 Billion

    Unica Snapped Up By Big Blue for $480 Million

    IBM to Buy Sterling Commerce for $1.4 Billion



                         Post this story to del.icio.us
                   Post this story to Digg
        Post this story to Slashdot

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: mtfh_rc, Volume 19, Number 38 -- October 25, 2010

    Sponsored by
    VISUAL LANSA 16 WEBINAR

    Trying to balance stability and agility in your IBM i environment?

    Join this webinar and explore Visual LANSA 16 – our enhanced professional low-code platform designed to help organizations running on IBM i evolve seamlessly for what’s next.

    🎙️VISUAL LANSA 16 WEBINAR

    Break Monolithic IBM i Applications and Unlock New Value

    Explore modernization without rewriting. Decouple monolithic applications and extend their value through integration with modern services, web frameworks, and cloud technologies.

    🗓️ July 10, 2025

    ⏰ 9 AM – 10 AM CDT (4 PM to 5 PM CEST)

    See the webinar schedule in your time zone

    Register to join the webinar now

    What to Expect

    • Get to know Visual LANSA 16, its core features, latest enhancements, and use cases
    • Understand how you can transition to a MACH-aligned architecture to enable faster innovation
    • Discover native REST APIs, WebView2 support, cloud-ready Azure licensing, and more to help transform and scale your IBM i applications

    Read more about V16 here.

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    How Do I Record a PC5250 Macro? Numina Voice Picking Boosts Productivity of Wisconsin Warehouse

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 19 Issue: 38

This Issue Sponsored By

    Table of Contents

    • IBM i Competes with AIX/Oracle on Power 720s, Gets Beat on 750s
    • iManifest Powers On in Japan
    • Power Systems Not Quite Rebounding Yet in Q3
    • As I See It: My Name is Bond–Jane Bond
    • Job Site Data Shows IT Jobs Down Across the Board
    • Reader Feedback on Google Trends: IBM i Traffic Piddling Compared to iSeries
    • IBM Moves Power Systems Factories from Ireland to China and Singapore
    • Gartner Says IT Spending Growth to Be Tepid Through 2014
    • Selected Power Systems Features and Upgrades Get the Axe
    • IBM Snaps Up Another BI Tool Maker

    Content archive

    • The Four Hundred
    • Four Hundred Stuff
    • Four Hundred Guru

    Recent Posts

    • Liam Allan Shares What’s Coming Next With Code For IBM i
    • From Stable To Scalable: Visual LANSA 16 Powers IBM i Growth – Launching July 8
    • VS Code Will Be The Heart Of The Modern IBM i Platform
    • The AS/400: A 37-Year-Old Dog That Loves To Learn New Tricks
    • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 25
    • Meet The Next Gen Of IBMers Helping To Build IBM i
    • Looks Like IBM Is Building A Linux-Like PASE For IBM i After All
    • Will Independent IBM i Clouds Survive PowerVS?
    • Now, IBM Is Jacking Up Hardware Maintenance Prices
    • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 24

    Subscribe

    To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

    Pages

    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Contributors
    • Four Hundred Monitor
    • IBM i PTF Guide
    • Media Kit
    • Subscribe

    Search

    Copyright © 2025 IT Jungle