Cognos today announced that companies worldwide are selecting Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for departmental and enterprise BI. Global organizations are embracing Cognos' one-product, one- architecture vision and turning to Cognos 8 BI to address the complete range of BI requirements, including analysis, scorecarding, dashboarding, and reporting. "We continue to see tremendous enthusiasm for Cognos 8 BI from both new and existing customers," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president, Global Marketing, Cognos. "These forward-thinking companies are pleased with how we can address today's BI needs, and provide the strength and flexibility for a total performance management system. As customers expand their BI needs to more users and more capabilities, Cognos will continue to deliver groundbreaking technologies and proven strategies for BI success." With Cognos 8 BI's intuitive, browser-based interface, business users can easily access the latest information to help make better business decisions. In addition, the Web-services based, services-oriented architecture makes it simple for IT to deploy and administer business intelligence in departments or throughout the entire organization. Recent customers who have selected Cognos 8 BI include: Allianz Life, Austrian Airlines, BJC Healthcare, Beaute Prestige International (BPI), DaimlerChrysler AG, Deutsche DHL, Evanston NorthWestern Healthcare, John Nurminen, Lufthansa, Maple Leaf Foods, Mueller, Inc., QualChoice of Arkansas, Stationery Box, and YIT. "Cognos 8 Business Intelligence has given us the tools we needed for providing our users with more reliable and centralized IT decision making," said Christophe Davy, IS director, BPI S.A. "Cognos 8 BI has enabled us to design a decision-making portal that is now the benchmark for all company figures. It also contributes toward enhancing the way our business is guided." "Our implementation of Cognos 8 Business Intelligence as an enterprise- wide standard will benefit the entire Lufthansa organization," said Dr. Marcus Frenz, Lufthansa vice president IT management for planning and control processes. "We will be able to deploy a full range of BI capabilities while reducing the number of BI solutions we currently manage and maintain." "We decided to standardize on Cognos 8 BI based on its broad range of BI capabilities in one product on one platform," said Mark Lack, planning and financial analysis manager, Mueller, Inc. "The product will make it easy for all of our business users to access key data from across the organization which will help us gain better insight into our business and make the smartest decisions to fuel our growth." In addition to the strong customer support received, Cognos 8 BI has also been recognized as the Business Intelligence "Product of the Year" in TechTarget's SearchCRM.com 2005 Product of the Year awards. A prestigious panel of users, industry experts, analysts and consultants, in conjunction with the editors of TechTarget's SearchCRM.com, judged more than 75 new product entrants and selected Cognos 8 BI for its innovation, performance, functionality, value, and ease of integration into existing environments, use, and manageability. According to SearchCRM.com, judges from the Business Intelligence category noted, "Cognos plays a prominent role in the BI and CPM suite markets. Its strength remains the combination of its CPM applications and its BI capabilities." According to Gartner, the BI platform market will continue to grow at a solid pace during the next five years, with new license revenue experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 7.3 percent. Organizations are increasing their spending, particularly as BI evolves from its reactive, departmental roots to become more pervasive and strategic. Gartner also says the increasing scope of BI platforms to include more users and access more data sources will also perpetuate market growth. Traditionally, BI was just for senior executives and analysts, but many enterprises are extending their BI platform capabilities throughout the organization to operational workers and managers. (Source: Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms," 1Q06, K. Schlegel, B. Hostmann, A. Bitterer, B. Burton, January 9, 2006.)