As expected, BI tools vendor Cognos has been acquired (by IBM this morning). Like the SAP-Business Objects acquisition announced last month, IBM’s move underscores what has been evident for some time: BI – particularly BI query and reporting tools – has become a commodity. What is key to companies now is the importance of Enterprise Intelligence, which elevates knowledge and decision-making capabilities from the departmental level to the executive suite.

With Cognos, IBM has continued its move into the software business, and will offer BI reporting tools to go along with its middleware and database software and strong services arm. IBM has made more than twenty such acquisitions during the past five years.

Yet a few lines in the release announcing the deal talk about “analytics.” Analytics – data mining, forecasting and optimization – are key to business success. Yet in this deal, neither IBM nor Cognos delivers the goods. The few lines in the release seem to be more of a hope and a prayer than a description of what’s in place. And hope has never been a good business strategy.

The rise of analytics, combined with data integration and the BI reporting, are leading companies in all industries to seek more. More than reports that tell them what happened last year, last month or last Tuesday. They need to see around corners and know what will happen next (next Tuesday, next month, next year). And they need to make decisions in the context of the issues most relevant to their industry.

Enterprise intelligence -- combining BI tools, data integration and data quality, and predictive analytics -- is the hottest area in software today. Its momentum was underscored in a recent IDC report on the business analytics market.

Cornell professor Jon Kleinberg has described the business world experiencing a "revolution in measurement" – data integration combined with analytics to give companies the ability to make smarter, more precise decisions, based on math. Based on analysis. Not on a hope and a prayer.

In addition to providing an enterprise intelligence platform powered by analytics, SAS is now the largest independent BI tools vendor (after the acquisitions of BO and Cognos).

Richard Kellett, Marlow, UK