Thursday, December 13, 2007

The Window Dressing Begins...

News this week from our friends at Cognos that with the closing of the Applix acquisition, they're ready to get going on the rebranding efforts, starting with the names, which take on the "Cognos" front end, while retaining their "Applix" back end.

Frankly admitting that "The products do not currently integrate with the Cognos 8 BI software," and that that work should be done sometime next year, is refreshing. Too often vendors who grow by acquisition try to apply some quick back-end band-aids, which end up fooling no one. And with the enormity of the roadmap exercises facing the big vendors as they try to digest these acquisitions, few would believe that the necessary resources have already been devoted to back-end integration at this piont anyway.

It's been a busy week for our friends up in Ottawa, which we'll continue detailing next...