INDUSTRY

Cognos, a world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, today announced that through the company's strengthened partnership efforts with IBM leading customers are selecting their joint best-in-class solutions. Through the companies' multi-year global agreement to market joint offerings, IBM and Cognos offer comprehensive business intelligence solutions to help customers break down the walls that divide their business information assets, improve corporate performance management (CPM), and drive profitability. "IBM and Cognos' long-standing relationship has become significantly more proactive over the past year, with more customers adopting business intelligence solutions built on IBM middleware and Cognos business intelligence applications," said Karen Parrish, vice president, Business Intelligence Solutions, IBM Software. "We look forward to expanding our work with Cognos to drive business value for our clients, and extend the reach of business intelligence solutions into new markets." Together, Cognos and IBM are working on several joint technology projects and with numerous leading customers such as Desjardins, NYS Department of Family Assistance, Werner, State of Mississippi, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Alberta Children's Services. These customers are selecting Cognos and IBM based on their comprehensive business intelligence offerings and level of activity: -- Enhanced IBM DB2 Support: Thousands of Cognos customers worldwide have implemented DB2 as their enterprise data management solution as testament to the performance that DB2 provides. Cognos has added significant enhancements to key IBM DB2 features, such as Cube Views, Information Integrator, DB2 OLAP Server, and Intelligent Miner. For example, the use of Information Integrator (federated data access) provides a seamless interface to heterogeneous data sources with a single SQL statement. -- Product Packaging and Solutions: Designed to deliver a robust BI solution targeted at small to medium size businesses, Cognos provides an entry level offering of Cognos ReportNet when sold with IBM's Data Warehouse Edition. -- Performance and Testing: Cognos recently completed testing of Cognos ReportNet as a follow on to successful testing under Windows at the IBM Center in San Mateo, CA. Cognos ReportNet demonstrated massive scalability in a truly concurrent user environment with mission- critical response times for Web-based content navigation, report viewing and report execution to 190,000 named users. The joint IBM and Cognos business intelligence solutions allow customers to analyze and optimize performance management information -- such as increased product sales via the call center, or reduced inventory at a manufacturing site -- across their extended enterprise. Individuals throughout an organization can obtain information that is personalized and relevant to their job function. The ability to anticipate opportunities and respond quickly to changes is an important element of an on demand environment, and the integrated IBM and Cognos solutions provide businesses with a way to influence internal and external performance more effectively. "Our long-standing relationship with IBM has helped us reach tens of thousands of new users in key markets and we're extremely excited about the continued strengthening of this relationship. Our strategic partnership with IBM is driving business value throughout our customers' extended enterprise, broadening and deepening the reach of business intelligence solutions into new and emerging markets," said Neal Hill, senior vice president, corporate development, Cognos. "At Cognos, we are committed to delivering industry- leading business intelligence solutions for our customers through an innovative partnering strategy." Cognos is an advanced member of IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers, is certified as an IBM Total Storage Proven and is IBM Server Proven partner.