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BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Cognos the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance management, today announced that organizations like Pitney Bowes, Arla Foods and Deltek have embraced Cognos Series 7 Version 2. Offering the industry's best BI breadth and depth, Cognos Series 7 Version 2 continues to extend its enterprise value with industry-leading OLAP, advanced analysis on the Web, enterprise reporting, instant projection capabilities, and support for massive data volumes and user communities. Today global organizations rely on Cognos Series 7 to deliver flexible scorecarding, robust visualization, enterprise reporting, powerful analytics, advanced ad hoc query, actionable event-driven BI and data integration in one integrated framework. Cognos Series 7 Version 2 beta testers joined to endorse Cognos Series 7 Version 2's continued BI leadership: Pitney Bowes Inc. Pitney Bowes Inc. is a $4.1 billion global provider of mail and messaging solutions. It serves over 2 million businesses of all sizes in 118 countries through dealer and direct operations. "Pitney Bowes demands a mission-critical business intelligence environment. Cognos Series 7 Version 2 will be rolling out on a distributed HP-UX 11i environment to hundreds of our users," said Aidan Doyle, Manager of Data Management, Pitney Bowes. "Cognos Series 7 offers technical and business users a breadth of application, performance and scalability that we need for our fast-paced business. As well, the ease of use and power of the Cognos OLAP solution is critical to perform the advanced analytics and predictive capabilities we require." Arla Foods 5.1-billion-Euro company, Arla Foods is the largest dairy company in Europe, and runs as a co-operative owned by approx. 7,200 Swedish and 8,300 Danish milk producers. "A longtime Cognos customer, Arla Foods relies on Cognos to monitor our corporate performance and drive our continued growth. Through the beta testing, we saw that Cognos Series 7 Version 2 provides new richness in its Web-based, zero footprint OLAP functionality and robust managed reporting. For our more than 600 users, Cognos Series 7 Version 2 offers much in the way of new functionality, delivering an end-to-end BI solution that can address our growing requirements," said Henrik Lauridsen, IT Manager, Arla Foods Amba. Deltek Systems Deltek Systems is the leading provider of enterprise software, solutions and consulting to more than 8,000 professional services firms and project- based businesses worldwide. Deltek's solutions encompass client relationship management and proposal automation; employee time and expense; project and resource planning; budgeting and control; accounting and billing; procurement and materials management; human resources management; and e-business. "Deltek offers Cognos Series 7 Version 2 as part of our enterprise software suite because it gives organizations rapid access to information with the most robust analysis and reporting on the Web -- all with the rich functionality of a client environment," said Shimi Minhas, Director of Business Intelligence for Deltek. "With this release, Cognos is offering organizations zero footprint functionality with no applets or plug-ins, which is particularly beneficial with large installations. In addition, the robust business activity monitoring (BAM) and event management capabilities in Cognos Series 7 Version 2 are tremendously important for many of our clients, for whom a single day of project delay can translate into millions of dollars." Ultimate Software Headquartered in Weston, Florida, Ultimate Software is a leading provider of Web-based payroll and workforce management solutions that include the most HRMS/payroll functionality for the price. The company markets award-winning UltiPro solutions to businesses that want in-house control of their data and offers Intersourcing, a hosted UltiPro solution, to businesses that prefer an outsourced, services approach without sacrificing control. UltiPro customers can empower their entire workforce -- executives, managers, administrators and employees -- and centralize collaborative information sharing through UltiPro's Web portal. Ultimate Software customers include The Arizona Diamondbacks/Phoenix Suns, Benihana Restaurants, The Container Store, Elizabeth Arden, Omni Hotels, Ruth's Chris Steak House and Trammell Crow Residential. "For our customers, immediate Web-based access to their workforce and payroll information is critical. With Cognos Series 7 Version 2, Cognos has raised the bar on superior Web-based analysis and reporting," said Laura Perkins, VP Product Strategy, Ultimate Software. "The result is a complete business intelligence solution that delivers a robust analysis on the Web with zero footprint since it's 100% available through a browser. Customers get the robust functionality of a client experience with no plug-ins to install and no end-user complexity -- which translates into a lower cost of ownership and higher customer satisfaction." Platform Computing Platform Computing provides distributed and Grid computing solutions that help enterprises effectively connect, measure, manage and optimize their enterprise resources. Platform's integrated desktop to Grid software solutions are used by over 1,500 customers worldwide in the financial services, government, life sciences and manufacturing industries to deliver higher quality products and services, improve business performance and maximize the return on IT investments. Founded in 1992, Platform has strategic relationships with Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, SAS and SGI, and the industry's broadest application integration support. "With Cognos Series 7, we can expand the functionality of our IT Analytics solutions, including Platform Intelligence (TM), to help organizations make more strategic IT decisions by linking the performance of their IT infrastructure with key business metrics," said Paul Hill, vice president, business development, Platform Computing Inc. "Cognos Series 7 Version 2 significantly extends Cognos' commitment to mission-critical BI by providing a scalable foundation enabling the efficient, effective, and rapid deployment of large scale Enterprise 'IT Visibility' initiatives. By leveraging the Cognos Series 7 portal and metrics view, Platform's customers are able to quickly identify the most important business relationships in order to affect critical decisions about their IT operations." Aston Business Solutions Denmark-headquartered Aston Business Solutions is the world's largest Microsoft Business Solutions partner and number one provider of Microsoft- based solutions to mid-market companies. Together with Cognos, Aston Business Solutions ensures customers get access to the right information at the right time, the right place and in the right format. Developing end-to-end business intelligence and Data Warehouse solutions based on Cognos products, Aston provides integrated business solutions that give customers visibility and predictability into their corporate performance so that companies can be proactive and anticipate issues before they become problems. "In Cognos Series 7 Version 2, the new Web interface of Cognos analysis takes a major leap forward -- that reinforces Cognos position as the leading business intelligence provider. The new interface anticipates all our customers future expectations and as such protects their investment and secures the continuation of the solution years in to the future," Rasmus Stubbe, Product Manager, Business Intelligence, Aston Business Solutions. "Cognos continues to be focused on delivering unprecedented BI value to our growing customer base. Our commitment is underlined by the announcement of Cognos Series 7 Version 2. With the largest and most talented business intelligence research and development teams in the entire industry, Cognos brings to market the industry's most comprehensive business intelligence solution available today -- offering everything from zero footprint dashboarding, proven enterprise reporting, analytics, ad hoc query to enterprise-class data integration," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president, global marketing. "This combination of BI functionality from a single vendor is untouchable."