INDUSTRY

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced it is strengthening its relationship with IBM through a new OEM agreement. Cognos is embedding strategic IBM middleware into a special edition of Cognos ReportNet. Cognos ReportNet IBM Special Edition will come with an embedded version of Websphere as its Application Server and DB2 UDB as ReportNet's content store. Based on open standards, such as SQL, JAVA, XML, SOAP, and WSDL, and built to leverage existing enterprise infrastructure investments including relational databases and web application servers, ReportNet will now be available with these components bundled into the IBM Special Edition. This will give customers additional choices and complete flexibility as they design and deploy their enterprise reporting environment. "This new OEM agreement with IBM will allow us to offer an optimized and uniquely integrated infrastructure -- significantly lowering the cost and time to create high performance business intelligence solutions," said Rob Ashe, president and CEO, Cognos. "The many thousands of Cognos customers worldwide who have implemented IBM as their enterprise data management solution are testament to the reliability, robustness, and unsurpassed performance that IBM and Cognos provide." Cognos ReportNet offers a complete zero footprint Web-based report and query authoring environment, extensive multi-lingual support, and modern Web Services architecture to meet the needs of today's multi-national, diversified enterprises and to dramatically reduce total cost of ownership. The power of the IBM middleware and server platforms, in conjunction with the mission- critical, user-friendly performance of Cognos ReportNet, delivers key competitive advantage and time to value to joint customers. "Customers want an end-to-end information infrastructure that helps them drive business value through real-time, integrated access to disparate and distributed information," said Janet Perna, general manager, IBM Information Management. "We're working with Cognos to provide solutions that leverage IBM middleware and Cognos business intelligence applications, enabling clients to make timely, informed decisions that are critical to their bottom-line success." Cognos and IBM plan to co-market the special edition of Cognos ReportNet with IBM DB2 Warehouse Editions. In addition, Cognos and IBM are hosting "The Changing Economics of Business Intelligence: An Executive Forum on Delivering Top-line Revenue" -- a series of global seminars in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. The seminars are showcasing best practices and practical strategies for businesses to achieve greater organizational success through advanced business intelligence and performance management techniques. For more information on these seminars, including dates and venues, please visit: http://www.cognos.com/economics_home/.