And so it continues…..with IBM agreeing to acquire Cognos for approximately $5 billion [$58 per share]. The acquisition is subject to Cognos shareholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, but is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.

Following completion of the acquisition, IBM intends to integrate Cognos as a group within IBM’s Information Management Software division, focused on BI and performance management. IBM has announced it will appoint current Cognos President and CEO, Rob Ashe, to lead the group.

 Aquiring Cognos supports IBM’s Information on demand strategy and will expand the BI capabiltiy across organisations, and across multiple industries and geographies with a more complete offering, including consulting services, hardware and other middleware software.

How this will pan out with existing implementation partners of Cognos is anyones guess, but there is certainly no longer an indepence when choosing such a partner. Cognos claims to provides the only complete BI and performance management platform, on an SOA architecture. Its philosophy towards supporting heterogeneous application environments is consistent with IBM’s approach.