Cognos 8.3 the company's performance management system will be officially launched today by CEO Rob Ashe during a live webcast from New York City with a further 20 regional launches across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific to follow.
"...Cognos 8.3 is a major launch for the company - and most likely to be its last as an independent BI vendor before the acquisition by IBM completes in Q1 2008."
"While Cognos 8.3 is a substantial and comprehensive release it does not include all the company's product portfolio. In particular, PowerPlay 7 the company's well established and legacy OLAP tool has yet to fully transition to Cognos 8 although the cube building product - Transformer - has now moved."
"Cognos will obviously hope that the bulk of PowerPlay and Applix integration work is finished before the IBM acquisition completes. Until such time it is unclear how the company's BI and performance management portfolio will ultimately integrate with IBM's. What is apparent though is that 2008 is going to be a busy year for both Cognos and IBM."
Full Commentary:
"Although the version numbering indicates this is little more than a point release, Cognos 8.3 is a major launch for the company - and most likely to be its last as an independent BI vendor before the acquisition by IBM completes in Q1 2008."
"Cognos 8.3 does in fact refer to an array of products, features and functionality wrapped together in one main release. The Cognos 8 Platform now includes products that stretch from core BI, search, Microsoft Office integration and analytical ETL to performance management capabilities for planning, budgeting, forecasting and consolidation. All of these components can also leverage the common foundation elements of Cognos 8 for security, configuration and administration. This amalgamation of software alongside specialised Cognos services is marketed under the Cognos 8 Performance System banner."
"Today's launch specifically focuses on the enhancements made to the platform's BI capabilities that make it easier to manage and deploy, and the integration of its planning and consolidation products (Cognos Planning and Cognos Controller). This launch also includes new best practise performance management blueprints and training, support and consulting packages."
"While Cognos 8.3 is a substantial and comprehensive release it does not include all the company's product portfolio. In particular, PowerPlay 7 the company's well established and legacy OLAP tool has yet to fully transition to Cognos 8 although the cube building product - Transformer - has now moved."
"Completing this process will play a pivotal role in improving migration numbers to Cognos 8 (around 15% of customers have completed migration) and would help reduce the support and development costs arising from separate product lines. Cognos is working hard to ensure that the user-based interface of the next version of PowerPlay - due around mid-2008 - remains almost exactly the same so as to preserve the user experience for its loyal user base."
"Likewise the company has plans to integrate Applix, whom it acquired in September 2007, onto the Cognos 8 platform. The new versions of these Applix products will be launched sometime in mid-2008."
"Cognos will obviously hope that the bulk of PowerPlay and Applix integration work is finished before the IBM acquisition completes. Until such time it is unclear how the company's BI and performance management portfolio will ultimately integrate with IBM's. What is apparent though is that 2008 is going to be a busy year for both Cognos and IBM."
-Ends-
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For more information,please contact:
Helena Schwenk
Email: maria.dimartino@ovum.com
EMEA:
Maria Di Martino
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7551 9238
Email: maria.dimartino@ovum.com
North America:
Sara Kaufman
Tel: +1 617-722-4602
Email: sara.kaufman@ovum.com
Asia-Pacific:
Tanisha Kuckreja
Tel: +61 3 9601 6723
Email: tanisha.kuckreja@ovum.com
© Press Release 2008
