IBM announced yesterday that it would buy Canadian business intelligence software firm Cognos for nearly $5 billion, its largest acquisition in history. Cognos’ U.S. headquarters is in Burlington, MA, and the company employs nearly 400 people in Massachusetts. The staggering purchase price nearly equals the total Big Blue paid for two other state software powerhouses, Lotus ($3.1 billion in 1995) and Rational ($2.1 billion in 2003).
The Boston Globe has a good write-up today. The purchase price of $58 per share represents a nearly 10 percent premium over Cognos’s Friday closing price. Subject to Cognos shareholder approval, the all-cash deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
A few months ago, when Big Blue announced plans to consolidate its software operations in the Bay State, we put together a map of IBM’s locations, old and new. We’ve updated it here to include the two Cognos operations, the main headquarters in Burlington and a satellite site in Westborough (the location of business forecasting software maker Applix, which Cognos acquired in September and which now also becomes part of IBM).
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| Locations of IBM Facilities in Greater Boston, including software firms acquired since 1995. |
Author: Robert Buderi
Bob is Xconomy's founder and chairman. He is one of the country's foremost journalists covering business and technology. As a noted author and magazine editor, he is a sought-after commentator on innovation and global competitiveness. Before taking his most recent position as a research fellow in MIT's Center for International Studies, Bob served as Editor in Chief of MIT's Technology Review, then a 10-times-a-year publication with a circulation of 315,000. Bob led the magazine to numerous editorial and design awards and oversaw its expansion into three foreign editions, electronic newsletters, and highly successful conferences. As BusinessWeek's technology editor, he shared in the 1992 National Magazine Award for The Quality Imperative.
Bob is the author of four books about technology and innovation. Naval Innovation for the 21st Century (2013) is a post-Cold War account of the Office of Naval Research. Guanxi (2006) focuses on Microsoft's Beijing research lab as a metaphor for global competitiveness. Engines of Tomorrow (2000) describes the evolution of corporate research. The Invention That Changed the World (1996) covered a secret lab at MIT during WWII. Bob served on the Council on Competitiveness-sponsored National Innovation Initiative and is an advisor to the Draper Prize Nominating Committee. He has been a regular guest of CNBC's Strategy Session and has spoken about innovation at many venues, including the Business Council, Amazon, eBay, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.
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