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Cognos unveils solutions plans for financial performance management

~ new product integration, expanded blueprints for accelerated customer success, and joint customer advisory board add to broadest financial performance solution in market ~

London, UK - December 12, 2007

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, has announced key product integration and customer initiatives with recently acquired Applix. This extends the company’s proven expertise and leadership position in financial performance management.
The combined offerings create a predictable, financial view of performance by structuring and automating the processes that help companies plan, forecast and control enterprise resources, analyse and optimise, and report on corporate performance with confidence.

The newest Cognos solutions extend planning, consolidation, and reporting processes and gives customers new and improved capabilities for complex, interactive business modelling and analytics. These can be applied to solution areas like customer and product profitability, sales mix, and price / volume variance analysis among others.
Cognos TM1 Server, TM1 Excel, TM1 Web, and TM1 Executive Viewer are available immediately and leverage a patented, 64 bit, in-memory multidimensional server. Cognos TM1 offerings, like all Cognos solutions, have strong self-service values that allow business analysts to create and evolve the performance management solution with the changing business requirements without extensive IT support.

Cognos is also extending its functional and industry Performance Blueprints with TM1 technology so that customers can leverage the planning and analytic power of Cognos TM1. The first TM1-enabled Performance Blueprint will extend life sciences blueprints that address a critical sales and marketing investment area for Samples Allocation and Sales Quote management. The new blueprint will be available to customers free of charge in calendar Q1.

“The Cognos plan for integrating the Applix solution is based upon three main tenets that are aligned with customer requirements,” said Kathleen Wilhide Research Director, Compliance and Business Performance Management Solutions at IDC. “First, to provide their customers with enhanced and optimised analytic capabilities supporting their applications. Second to augment the current offerings of the Cognos product suite in the areas of planning, budgeting, consolidation, and new areas such as profitability. Thirdly, to continue to evolve and enhance the TM1 solution, honouring existing development roadmaps as they unfold the integration plan and articulate a vision for a broader set of applications and capabilities.”

To map out future solution milestones, Cognos has formed a special customer advisory board for joint Cognos/Applix clients to provide guidance on integration strategy and product innovation roadmap. Leading organisations such as American Express, Amgen, BAE Systems, NSTAR, Wiley and Simmer are now members of the advisory board.

Joint partners of Cognos and Applix also understand the value that the integrated solutions bring to their customer base. “Having become very familiar with Applix TM1 capabilities in the past year and as a long time Cognos partner, we see the integration plans as very compelling. The combined strengths of TM1 and Cognos allow us to offer our customers a best-in-class performance management solution while leveraging common platform services,” said Mark Mueller, President of DataClarity, a Cognos Platinum Reseller Partner.

“Our vision for financial performance management is to provide integrated solutions for the core processes that finance engages in to drive enterprise performance and to extend those solutions through the use of Cognos 8 BI and its broad user reach,” said Doug Barton, vice president of product marketing, Cognos. “Our announcements today ensure current customers can continue to transform their performance management processes with confidence in Cognos FPM solutions.”

Technical specifications

By mid 2008 Cognos expects to introduce new capabilities to customers and partners. Areas of investments may include innovation in the core Cognos TM1 solution set with improved, interactive web-based reports, distributed administration, and support of multi-lingual implementations for global, multinational customers. Cognos will deliver increased levels of automation between purpose-built Planning, Consolidation, and Reporting applications and Cognos TM1. This will ensure finance and business users are in greater control of performance management data supporting these core financial processes. And finally, Cognos TM1 Server data access will be supported by Cognos 8 Business Intelligence.

Cognos training, consulting and support teams are providing customers with a range of offerings and resources to help ensure their success with the Cognos TM1 products. This includes a full complement of training courses for business users and project teams, Guardian Services from consulting for Cognos TM1 review, technical design and performance optimisation, and full product support. These can be found at www.cognos.com/products/tm1/services-overview.html

About the company

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organisation’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management 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 .
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Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on Cognos' Web site at http://www.cognos.com

Contact details

Tulna Shah or Steve George at LEWIS
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7802 2626
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7802 2627
cognos@lewispr.com
Internet: http://www.lewispr.com

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