Cognos US$160 million buy of Adaytum

Cognos US$160 million buy of Adaytum

Business intelligence (BI) vendor Cognos has completed its acquisition of enterprise performance planning software maker Adaytum.

Cognos has completed its buy of Adaytum, announced late 2002, for a cool US$157.1 million in cash.

Cognos expects the acquisition to kick start its position in the emerging corporate performance management market. Under the deal, Cognos will combine its tools to access, analyse and report on corporate data with Adaytum's enterprise resource software, used for planning and budgeting. Adaytum's software will be appended to Cognos's Corporate Performance Management (CPM) product suite, to provide business intelligence, scorecarding, and now enterprise performance planning.

Ron Zambonini, Cognos CEO said in a statement: "This is a breakthrough acquisition for us. The number one company in BI is set to become the market leader in enterprise planning as well. Prominence in these two pillars strengthens the value of the total Cognos offering and will accelerate our ability to execute on the promise of CPM - to help enterprise customers understand and advance their business performance across their entire company."

"The addition of Adaytum gives us a world-class, enterprise solution that puts us on the leading edge of the corporate performance management (CPM) marketplace," he said.

Guy Haddleton, CEO of Adaytum said that this acquisition will make for a "powerhouse combination".

"With this acquisition, we can fully leverage the best integrated BI in the world. It will be a perfect match," said Mr Haddleton.

Cognos bumped up its fourth quarter sales target by approximately $5 million, but trimmed its earnings per share forecast by two cents to reflect the acquisition.

Founded in the UK in 1990, Adaytum has more than 1,500 customers worldwide including industry leaders Toyota, Lockheed Martin, Kellogg's, Pfizer, 3M, and American Express. Adaytum today is headquartered in Minneapolis US, with offices in the UK, the Netherlands and Australia and represented in more than 35 other countries through a network of strategic alliance partners and value-added resellers.

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