With the acquisition of Applix by Cognos and the subsequent acqusition of Cognos by IBM, does anyone really believe that IBM will maintain the Applix/TM1 product line family?
Clearly, IBM purchased Cognos for their strong BI reporting and analytic applications. ReportNet has been a strong competitor in the marketplace ever since it was first introduced a few years ago.
But with Cognos' patchwork family of budgeting and planning and consolidation applications (which were all purchased separately) the future of the low end Applix TM1 product is even further in question. The existing BPM (or CPM as Cognos refers to it) financials applications were already barely able to communicate with each other in any kind of a unified offering, what will IBM do with Applix (another completely non-integrated low end application)?
I have been amazed at the organizations that fall prey to the outstanding "smoke and mirror" approach that the well seasoned Cognos sales force utilizes in selling their BPM products as well as the those that do not believe the "you get what you pay for" saying with respect to the Applix product line.
Time will tell whether the IT departments that have played a significant role in influencing the purchase of Cognos BPM products (based on their technology bias towards Cognos BI) will continue to override the finance department who tend to favor more robust, mature products or, alternatively, products based on an entirely new product platforms.
We'll see how the Cognos sales force will be able to overcome this obvious uncertainty in not only the Applix product line, but even within the existing BPM product line. As I mentioned, I have a lot of respect for their sales team, so it would not surprise me that they will be able to minimize this and somehow turn it into a positive!