Cognos today announced several new strategic initiatives to further address growing demand from the company's enterprise customers for large-scale Cognos standardization and performance management deployments. These new initiatives include executive appointments to two key customer-facing positions, and several new initiatives related to Cognos customer success, support and services operations. Companies around the world have made BI standardization and performance management top priorities for their organizations, driving a rapidly growing number of Enterprise BI and CPM implementations. A recent Gartner survey found that most organizations want to standardize BI software across the enterprise. According to an AMR Research poll, 53% of the large companies surveyed have either completed or are in the early stages of standardization. According to Gartner, the CPM market is projected to grow over 13 percent in 2005, reaching approximately $650 million in new license revenue. Gartner projects this market will reach over $900 million by 2009 with a compound annual growth rate of 9.9 percent. Cognos is taking its business intelligence delivery method to the next level. The enterprise business intelligence roadmap will guide Cognos customers, consultants and partners with structured steps, tools, best practices, role definitions, tips and techniques. Creation of a Cognos standard roadmap for enterprise business intelligence implementations is critical to consistent, repeatable, successful enterprise-level business intelligence deployments. Product and Technology Best Practices Development Cognos is launching a new Product and Technology Best Practices Development initiative. This new program will enable customers and partners to more directly leverage extensive best-practice knowledge and resources to help generate maximum return on investment from their business intelligence, enterprise planning, consolidation, and performance management implementations. This initiative will cover a wide variety of topics, including individual product guidelines, infrastructure design, deployment strategies and advanced data modeling. Expanded Cognos Certification Program Cognos is expanding its certification program to provide customers with greater numbers of Cognos Solutions Professionals. Cognos consultants and service partners will acquire advanced enterprise business intelligence and enterprise planning skills, techniques and best practices through these solution certification programs. Expanded Customer Advocacy Program Cognos is expanding its Customer Advocacy program to proactively support more of the company's largest enterprise customers toward successful deployment of their Cognos solutions. Cognos Customer Advocates are technical experts who work with enterprise clients as part of a premium support package for those customers. They provide those customers with valuable expertise, as well as liaison services with the Cognos customer support and products organizations. The Customer Advocate plays a critical role as part of the enterprise account team to ensure fast customer response times and maximize speed and success with large-scale implementations. "Cognos continues to set itself apart by delivering innovative solutions and services for our largest enterprise customers," said Rob Ashe, Cognos president and chief executive officer. "These new customer success initiatives once again raise the bar for Cognos and our industry. They reflect our ongoing commitment to help Cognos customers deploy our solutions quickly and achieve significant, measurable returns on their investment." Executive Appointments Effective immediately, Dave Achtemichuk is appointed vice president, customer success and support, and David Pratt is appointed vice president, global professional services. These appointments demonstrate the continued investments Cognos is making to help ensure its customers are successful in deploying large, enterprise-wide solutions. Mr. Achtemichuk will be responsible for the company's worldwide enterprise support programs and operations. Specifically, Mr. Achtemichuk will lead the company's global customer support operations, global support renewal programs, product and technology best practices development, and customer advocacy and success programs. Mr. Achtemichuk joined Cognos in 2001 as the company's vice president, global customer services. Prior to joining Cognos, Mr. Achtemichuk held leadership positions with PeopleSoft and Accenture. Mr. Pratt will be responsible for leading the Cognos consulting development and education development operations, and will provide overall strategy and direction to the Cognos services organizations in the Field. Mr. Pratt is an experienced software services professional with a proven track record for developing and leading enterprise-class service organizations. Throughout his career, Mr. Pratt has demonstrated a deep understanding of the IT goals and requirements of the largest organizations in the world. Before joining Cognos, Mr. Pratt served as senior vice president, global services operations at SAP, as well as other leadership positions at SAP, PriceWaterhouse, and SystemHouse. "Dave Achtemichuk and David Pratt have both established impressive track records of understanding and addressing the requirements of Global 1000, enterprise software customers," said Mr. Ashe. "I am very confident that both men will deliver tremendous results for Cognos and our clients in their new positions."