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Rob Ashe of Cognos. (Photo supplied)

Cognos has added 200 employees locally since IBM deal, Ashe says

Cognos vice-president Peter Griffiths knows a thing or two about acqusitions.

After all, the co-founder of the formerly U.K.-based Relational Matters – one of Cognos's first company purchases, back in 1998 – has been through it all before, on both ends of the equation. And that was before IBM's pitch for and eventual purchase of Cognos, a $5-billion deal finalized earlier this year.

But there are two ways to do a deal, explained Mr. Griffiths, and either can have dramatically different outcomes. "There's what I'd call the 'West Coast way,' where you reduce as much cost as you possibly can and reduce expectations, and protect the profit with very low risk. And then you rebuild it, you hope, over many years," he told OBJ at the IBM Information On Demand conference in Las Vegas last week.

"But ours and IBM's philosophy is very different," he continued. Indeed, he said a mind-set of investment and desire to build on the Cognos-IBM brand is why he and former CEO Rob Ashe – now general manager of business intelligence and performance management – agreed to be taken over by the computing giant in the first place.

The proof? Just look at what's happened since, said Mr. Ashe, as the deal nears its first birthday.

"These are big, complex activities – there's a hell of a lot of work going on to make the whole thing work," he explained of the consolidation process. "But I'd say if you look at it from a resource perspective, we've added close to (800) people to the organization worldwide, that I don't think we would have had the capacity to do otherwise, given the (economic) environment," he said, adding 200 employees in various departments have been added locally in the last few months.

"And the net result is that we're up very significantly in terms of our staffing, first of all. Second of all, in terms of reach, we've gotten to add and connect to people in places like India, Russia and South America," explained Mr. Ashe, adding that around 100 IBM employees have been assigned to the transition team, handling 80 or 90 integration areas, since the deal went down. "And the third area is technological, and contains significant areas of integration."

Mr. Ashe went on to say that Cognos's plan from one year ago – that Ottawa would become IBM's business intelligence and performance management headquarters – has now come to fruition, adding that IBM's sales and support staff have given the company a global reach "we could only dream about" before the deal.

Indeed, both Mr. Ashe and Mr. Griffiths said the company wouldn't necessarily be in the good position it now finds itself had the acquisition not taken place. That's especially so given the recent credit crunch and resulting economic downturn, said Mr. Ashe. "We would have been a lot more constrained, and the competitive environment would have been a challenge," he said. "I think, on balance, we're in a much, much better place than we would have been on our own."

Mr. Griffiths agreed, adding that although Cognos "would have weathered this storm ... with some small challenge," it was also "very good timing" to be snapped up just before a major market downturn.

"It's a very challenging time for any company," he said.