INDUSTRY

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, today announced that it has been ranked a leader in the META Group's Business Intelligence METAspectrum market evaluation for the second straight year. According to META Group, with top rankings for market leadership, vision, execution and technology, Cognos has performed well against the competition and solidified its position as a front- runner in the business intelligence market. The report evaluated 15 vendors on a broad range of factors that determine both market presence and performance. Specifically, the METAspectrum analyzed criteria such as vision and strategy, channels, geographic coverage, business drivers, investments, and market share to score vendors for market presence. Factors examined to determine market performance included technology, services, pricing, personnel, and profitability. Cognos received excellent marks in several categories including; market leadership, research and development, Internet functionality, and information delivery and reporting. The evaluation also noted Cognos' strengths in several other key categories such as technology, execution, quality of services, investments, industry focus, mind share, and awareness/reputation. "We believe the long-term prospects for the BI market look very solid, especially as corporations embrace business performance management (BPM) principles," said Kurt Schlegel, program director, META Group. "AS BPM is rolled out to more and more business processes, BI tools will be needed to provide analytic scorecards as well as drill-down query and reporting." Cognos continues to expand its leadership position in BI on the strength of its Cognos Enterprise BI Series, the industry's most comprehensive business intelligence solution, and delivering on its vision of corporate performance management (CPM). The Cognos EBI Series offers customers rich data visualization and dashboards, managed reporting, powerful analysis, advanced ad hoc query, actionable event-driven BI, and data integration. Combined with Cognos Enterprise Planning Series, its industry-leading solution for planning, budgeting, modeling, and forecasting, and Cognos Metrics Manager, the most robust and flexible enterprise scorecarding solution, Cognos is the only company to deliver a complete and integrated solution for CPM. "Enterprise customers are looking for innovation, integration, and the lowest overall cost of ownership from a single BI strategic supplier. Our position as a market leader by META Group is further confirmation that our strategy is right on," said Rob Ashe, Cognos president and chief operating officer. "Cognos today has the industry's leading product set, customer focus, and ability to execute to deliver a complete and integrated solution for corporate performance management." For complete details on META Group's Business Intelligence METAspectrum(SM), visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com/news/analyst_reviews.html.