Cognos 8 v3 Gains Support from Industry and Technology Leaders

Cognos® (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, announced strong partner support for Cognos 8 v3, unveiled today. This latest Cognos release includes new performance management user capabilities and service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform enhancements designed to efficiently provide organizations with more targeted performance information across a broader range of decision-makers, with extended modeling and administration capabilities to simplify deployment and maintenance for administrators. Several of the company’s premier partners covering Cognos’ global alliances, technology partners, Powered by Cognos solution providers, and leading resellers expressed their support of Cognos 8 v3, including the third generation of the company’s flagship business intelligence product, Cognos 8 BI v3. "The release of Cognos 8 v3 marks key advancements in our performance management system, which we’re excited to see is resoundingly supported by our broad network of Cognos partners,” said Mel Zeledon, senior vice president of global alliances at Cognos. "Cognos 8 v3 encompasses a complete system that provides all the core components of performance management - from planning and budgeting, to measuring and monitoring performance, to reporting and analysis. Through their industry expertise and specialized knowledge, our partners are critical to extending our latest offering to customers and helping enterprises of all sizes take their performance to the next level.” Cognos Global Alliance partner Deloitte, with vast experience and success in Cognos customer implementations worldwide, sees Cognos 8 v3 as a key advancement in performance management for their customers. "Cognos and Deloitte provide global customers with solutions that create competitive advantages in their specific markets. Both Cognos and Deloitte are dedicated to thought leadership and solutions for integrated performance management,” said Raymond Pineda, Deloitte partner and Canadian Performance Management Practice Leader. "Cognos 8 v3 offers a broad set of BI and financial performance management capabilities for IT and the office of finance.” Noetix, a Cognos technology partner, attests to the seamless integration of Cognos 8 BI v3 with the Noetix Generator for Cognos BI, a Powered by Cognos offering, which provides the tools and technology to tightly link Cognos’ latest BI solution with the operational information found within the Oracle E-Business Suite. "Cognos 8 BI v3 extends Cognos’ leadership in business intelligence, and in turn our ability as a technology partner to accelerate Oracle E-Business Suite reporting initiatives with the Noetix Generator for Cognos BI,” said Jeff Kirk, Director of Strategic Alliances, Noetix Corporation. "Cognos 8 BI v3 delivers true plug-and-play reporting, and together we can meet the customized requirements related to an enterprise’s Oracle E-Business Suite applications. Cognos 8 BI v3 addresses the needs of organizations looking to capitalize on their ERP investments and turn data into actionable, relevant performance information for improved decision-making.” Cognos Platinum Reseller Partner and Accredited Services Partner John Daniel Associates sees Cognos 8 BI v3 portal enhancements, and new report studio capabilities, as providing real and immediate value to their customer base. "We are very keen to introduce the latest release of Cognos 8 BI to our customers and prospects as it addresses the needs of both our large and mid-sized customers with new targeted information delivery and improved analysis capabilities,” said Rob Kovacevic, vice president of quality for John Daniel Associates. "The portal-based dashboard means business users can quickly access all relevant strategy management, scorecard information and diagrams in one view; the updates to reporting provide increased flexibility and the express authoring mode will have our finance-oriented clients very excited. We’re clearly impressed.” Cognos Platinum Partner DataClarity endorses the advancement of the Cognos platform, Cognos 8 BI v3 and in particular the features that address the needs of finance and business analysts and satisfy the unique requirements of line of business users. "Cognos 8 BI v3, with its significant feature enhancements, will provide our clients with more targeted performance information across a broader and more diverse range of business users. It further demonstrates Cognos' continued leadership in business intelligence and performance management,” said Mark Mueller, president of DataClarity. "Specifically, we expect customers to extract substantial value from both the Express Authoring Mode and the Business Driven Modeling.” Hardware vendors see value for customers running Cognos 8 BI v3 on leading hardware platforms, such as those provided by HP. "A combined Cognos 8 BI v3 HP solution will enable enterprise businesses to capitalize on information to optimize business outcomes,” said Carl DCosta, worldwide director, Horizontal Solutions, HP. "We look forward to working with Cognos to ensure that customers can take advantage of the enhanced corporate performance business intelligence capabilities in Cognos 8 BI v3 running on the HP Integrity and BladeSystem server portfolios as well as the HP Neoview enterprise data warehouse platform.” New SOA updates for Cognos 8 BI launched today include extended modeling and administration capabilities, one of which is a Snapshot of System Health. This tool gives administrators a single view of all the information they need to quickly understand the status of the entire system environment. Administrators can also expose metrics to systems such as HP Software or IBM Tivoli to tie into overall enterprise application monitoring activities. "IBM Tivoli works with Cognos 8 BI v3 to manage workload and implementations, ensuring all services are operational and maximizing system uptime. In addition, Tivoli can monitor all Cognos 8 BI services and enable new services based on current load information,” said Christopher O'Connor, vice president of strategy and market management, IBM Tivoli. "This helps ensure that users are getting the level of service they expect from Cognos 8 BI. Using Tivoli Directory Server (LDAP repository) Cognos 8 BI customers can leverage existing security and reinforce the value of Tivoli as the single source of security-based information.” About Cognos: Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies. Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com. Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on Cognos' Web site at http://www.cognos.com