Analysts: IBM abandons vow not to compete with partners

Hamerman thinks the IBM/Cognos deal is the "cleanest" of the three.

"There are fewer product overlaps that have to be rationalized," he says. "In the case of SAP and Business Objects there was quite a bit of overlap, particularly in the business performance management area."

While it's easy to view the IBM/Cognos deal as a response to Oracle/Hyperion and SAP/Business Objects, Gartner database analyst Colleen Graham sees it as a response to Microsoft and Oracle embedding basic BI functionality into database offerings. IBM is likely to take Cognos's technology and integrate it with its own DB2 database software, she says.

The BI market is consolidating rapidly because "it's a profitable business to be in," Hamerman says. IT executives named business intelligence their top spending priority in one survey earlier this year.

There's still room for more consolidation in this market, with potential targets including midsize BI vendors MicroStrategy and SAS, Hamerman says.