The Dozen 2002Cognos Inc.Ottawa, Ontario, CanadaA cruel truth of the software industry is that you pay for your success. When the paradigm changes — always does, always will — software companies face a defining moment. The long view of the BI industry is that we've experienced a smooth, continuous evolution from few users to many, and from small amounts of select data to distributed enterprise access to terabytes of data. Not that long ago, mainframes crunched numbers in batch, which were served to users on monthly printouts; then, client/server systems took advantage of "fat" PCs to pump up departmental analysis; and today, portals and intranets deliver realtime results, whenever and wherever users want them. It all makes perfect sense. Tell that to a software company trying to survive all of these "strategic inflection points." Each shift leaves the best and brightest of the previous one high, dry, and in danger, like the Neanderthals. Only the fittest survive, and even then it takes a while to catch up. The usual route is through acquisitions, which present their own challenges and demand superior vision on the part of the CEO and his or her team. Which brings us to Cognos. Founded in 1969, the company has survived and prospered through many an inflection point. It grew strongly in the 1990s to become a market share leader, primarily in the query and reporting sectors of the emerging BI marketplace. Cognos played a critical role in pushing graphical, data-driven analysis out into the hands of thousands of users who had never enjoyed anything like it before. But then the Internet changed everything: Cognos, led by CEO Ron Zambonini, had to reconstitute itself in a hurry. STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITYThe Internet has made BI an enterprise issue, once and for all. Users need to touch many different data sources; they need to flow data into many different kinds of reports. And to make it happen, IT needs a resilient infrastructure that is independent of specific data resources. In 2000, Cognos set out its Enterprise Business Intelligence Architecture, which brought needed integration to Cognos' tools. It made clear the company's ambition to become a total BI solutions provider for the enterprise. Acquisitions then brought in an infusion of new technology. In 2002, the company could field a selection of analytic applications that offered a variety of reporting and analysis styles, including OLAP, performance metrics, and kpis. Working with Plumtree Software, Cognos can deliver BI within an enterprise information portal. The new Series 7 positions Cognos and its many customers in perfect harmony with the brave new BI world: event-driven, realtime intelligence that is embedded in workflow processes. Yep, it all makes perfect sense. MAJOR MOVES IN 2001· Announced Series7, a major update to its BI framework, which integrates NoticeCast monitoring and alerting · Launched Enterprise Account Practice, a new service organization targeted at large organizations CLASSIC CUSTOMERS· Harrah's Entertainment uses Cognos software to analyze customer data and execute its Total Rewards customer-loyalty system · Boeing Co. chose to implement Cognos for enterprisewide financial and manufacturing reporting and analysis
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