COGNOS ANNOUNCES IMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY OF COGNOS® WEB SERVICES

Available for Microsoft and Unix platforms, Cognos Web Services was rigorously tested by companies such as travel giant Carlson-Hotels. Cognos Web Services allows organizations to bring the power of Cognos into a broad range of applications including CRM, ERP, SCM, collaborative computing, specialized vertical applications, a full range of mobile devices, and to extend Cognos capabilities into areas such as .NET and J2EE.

International Data Corp. predicts the total software, services and hardware opportunity derived from Web services will rise from $1.6 billion in 2004 to $34 billion by 2007.

Carlson Companies, Inc., is a global leader in corporate solutions and consumer services in the marketing, travel and hospitality industries. Ranked among the largest privately held corporations in the United States, Carlson Companies is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Carlson-related brands and services employ about 180,000 people in more than 140 countries.

“Cognos Web Services opens up worlds of possibility for the delivery of Cognos business intelligence which is highly strategic to our organization. A significant percentage of our workforce is mobile, needing up-to-date information about customers, sales and operational information. With today's announcement, Cognos makes it possible for us to extend our business intelligence footprint even further across our extended enterprise, giving mobile users access to the information they need on our corporate performance via rich multi-metric displays, scorecards or status reports,” said Scott Heintzeman, CIO, Carlson Hotels Worldwide.

“The effective exploitation of Web services to enable integration of OLAP analysis, reporting and performance scorecarding into applications, and across business boundaries, will become one of the key success factors in the business intelligence market,” said Dave Folger, vice-president, Web & Collaboration Strategies (WCS), Meta Group.

Cognos Web Services offers Cognos users the ability to flexibly extend their business intelligence solutions. Examples include:

  a.. Integrating Cognos BI functionality into other applications faster and more easily. Rather than developing reporting functionality from the ground up into an existing application, most organizations prefer to integrate capabilities from a leading vendor.
  b.. Customizing Cognos BI to fit unique needs. Cognos Web Services is designed to provide developers with the flexibility to customize software and create new, one-of-a kind capabilities to meet an organization’s unique requirements.
  c.. Integrating Cognos applications into portal environments. Cognos Web Services allows for content from a Cognos application to be displayed in a custom fashion, within an existing UI, with less effort than ever before. BI functionality can then be seamlessly added to existing portals such as Plumtree, IBM WebSphere, SAP Enterprise Portal and other Enterprise Information Portals.
Cognos is a member of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I).  WS-I is an open, industry organization chartered to promote Web services interoperability across platforms, operating systems, and programming languages.

“WS-I is pleased to welcome Cognos to our membership,” said Tom Glover, chairman of WS-I.  “The active participation and contributions of industry leaders like Cognos are critical to our efforts to promote universal Web service interoperability.”

“With Cognos Web Services, business intelligence today has truly become pervasive allowing Cognos to reside in any application or on any device. Developed in close partnership with our customers, Cognos Web Services is today delivering even greater enterprise value to customers who demand mission-critical and scalable Extranet, Intranet, and Internet technologies,” said Don Campbell, vice-president, product innovation and technology, Cognos.

About Cognos
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI), delivers software that helps companies improve business performance by enabling effective decision-making at all levels of the organization. A forerunner in defining the BI software category, Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage¾Corporate Performance Management (CPM)¾achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale.

CPM lets organizations measure execution against business strategy to ensure the two are aligned at all levels across the enterprise. Cognos provides a framework for CPM that links people, information, and decision-making processes throughout the organization, and enables the complete management cycle with integrated software for planning, budgeting, reporting, analysis, and scorecarding.

Cognos serves more than 20,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers.  For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com .

Noot voor de redactie (niet voor publicatie):

Voor meer informatie kunt u onze website (http://www.cognos.com/news) bezoeken of contact opnemen met de heer Arno Broere, Marketing/PR Manager Nederland en Denemarken van Cognos B.V. te Nieuwegein. Zijn telefoonnummer is 030-6028821. E-mailen kan ook via arno.broere@cognos.com.

Media Contact Cognos Inc.:
Tanya Pobuda and Brooke Somers (Cognos) 613-738-1440
Samantha Smith (Horn Group Inc.), 781-356-7139
Investor Relations Cognos Inc.:
John Lawlor (Cognos), 613-738-3503

Met vriendelijke groet,

Arno Broere
Marketing/ PR Manager

COGNOS B.V.
Edisonbaan 14k
3439 MN NIEUWEGEIN

Phone: + 31 (0)30 - 602 88 21
Fax: + 31 (0)30 - 603 53 94
<http://www.cognos.com/nl/persberichten/index.html>