Cognos buys Applix

Business intelligence company Cognos said Wednesday that it will buy Applix, a performance management software company, for $339 million.

With the deal Cognos can add financial management tools to its business intelligence suite. Under the terms of the deal, Cognos, which recently spoke to ZDNet about the future of BI, will pay $17.87 a share for Applix, which closed at $14.87 on Tuesday.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

In a statement, Cognos outlined the rationale for the deal:

Applix will complement Cognos flagship products -- Cognos 8 Planning, Cognos 8 Controller, and Cognos 8 Business Intelligence -- specifically in the area of financial performance management. Applix performance analytics will give customers new and enhanced capabilities to analyze and optimize financial performance. This will include improved analysis and optimization of large, complex financial performance data; strong finance self-service capabilities such as business rules management; new solution areas including profitability analysis; and innovative technology, including Applix TM1, a patented, 64-bit, in-memory multidimensional OLAP server.