INDUSTRY

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, and IBM today announced the companies will host "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. Beginning November 16, the seminars will showcase best practices and practical strategies for businesses to achieve greater organizational success through advanced business intelligence and performance management techniques, including Linux. "Executives are once again looking to IT to provide solutions to drive new business initiatives and revenue opportunities - a change from the mandate to 'just cut costs'," said Evan Bauer, Principal Research Fellow, Robert Frances Group, a research and advisory firm for IT executives. "At the same time, the new regulatory environment is putting increasing demand on enterprises to report accurately and in a timely fashion. In turn, this drives the need to gather, analyze, and make available increasing amounts of comprehensible data to report compliance and to better manage risk. These imperatives have put business intelligence back at the top of the CIO 'to do' list." During the morning seminars, attendees will learn how to move from solving problems to advancing performance with the benefits of open platform computing and business intelligence. Specifically, attendees will: -- Gain insights into the evolution and opportunities of open-platform computing. -- Understand how Linux, coupled with Web-based business intelligence affords CIOs the opportunity to drive performance across today's global enterprises. -- Hear best practices and about organizations that are using the new economics of Linux to deliver innovation and new revenue opportunities. -- Learn about an integrated, best-of-breed solution from Cognos and IBM that enables high-performance, high-value, high-availability business intelligence. "Scalability, optimized performance, and the lowest cost of ownership: all are critical for executives who are deploying a Linux solution," said Gary Schneider, Director of Linux for IBM's DB2 Information Management division. "Our goal is to provide IBM and Cognos customers with more knowledge and greater performance, at the lowest possible cost. Together, IBM and Cognos are providing these capabilities to a greater number of organizations." "The maturity of open source computing platforms, like Linux, coupled with the market entry of a pure Web-built reporting solution like Cognos has changed the economics of distributing information to decision-makers," said Jennifer Francis, Cognos vice president of business intelligence. "CIOs now have an alternative to costly high-end, proprietary computing platforms and multiple, incompatible business intelligence solutions. That alternative is information everywhere, all the time." For more information on these seminars, including dates and venues, please visit: http://www.cognos.com/economics_home/.