First Oracle acquired Hyperion for $3.3B then SAP snatched up Business Objects for $6.8B. Now, in what is not a particular surprise, IBM announced it would acquire Cognos for $5B.

What’s it all mean for the geospatial market? I discussed the SAP/BO combo in April when it happened and said Oracle is more geospatial-aware than SAP, even with the acquisitions. IBM buying Cognos helps IBM with BI but not with geospatial. IBM was already geospatial savvy with its geodetic capabilities inside the Informix technology acquired years ago. Cognos supports geospatial data but was never a leader in that area amongst the BI vendors.

Furthermore, IBM is an important ESRI partner, and with Cognos provided the IBM-Cognos Crime Information Warehouse. ESRI is still the market share leader in business and government geospatial software. However, Cognos has a partnership with ESRI competitor Pitney Bowes Software MapInfo that allows users to insert maps into reports. Cognos also worked with Google Maps and Bentley.

While the IBM buy of Cognos is of significance to enterprises seeking BI software, the deal will likely have little affect on geospatial. What is does mean, however, is that geospatial companies trying to partner with the BI firms are now dealing with huge mega-providers instead of merely large BI vendors. There is inevitably increased bureaucracy and there are more decision-making layers in IBM, Oracle, and SAP than there were in Cognos, Hyperion, and Business Objects. This also affects geospatial service providers and, of course, customers of BI/geospatial integration who might wait longer for their requests to be addressed.

ESRI and PB MapInfo should be able to navigate the new BI landscape with relative ease, since they already deal with the three acquiring firms. However, The Geo Factor wonders how long Autodesk, Bentley, ESRI, and Intergraph, might remain independent. We’re already seeing the big map data providers Navteq and TeleAtlas being acquired by mobile device makers. With CAD and GIS becoming more integrated into the enterprise, and the geospatial market growing, the acquisition of these firms becomes logical, perhaps inevitable. Stay tuned.