LAS VEGAS, June 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- COGNOS FORUM -- A record number of Cognos customers from across the world have gathered at Cognos Forum in Las Vegas from June 25-28 to hear from leading industry analysts and Cognos customers, partners and senior executives on the latest trends and innovations in business intelligence and performance management. The event includes keynote sessions, powerful case studies, technical how-tos, and hands-on, practical labs to help participants achieve maximum business impact with Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions.
"Forum continues to be the common thread that connects us to our customers. It's a great opportunity for customers and prospects to get an in-depth exploration of all things Cognos: our products, our services, our partners and our vision that lies ahead," said Rob Ashe, Cognos CEO. "At Cognos Forum, customers will get a clear sense of how Cognos will continue to innovate and lead in the performance management marketplace, witness first-hand the continued expansion of our partner ecosystem, and hear of continued investments in customer success."
During the conference, Cognos senior executives are discussing strategies for improving and managing performance across organizations using business intelligence, planning, consolidation and search solutions. Keynote sessions cover:
* Why performance management is now among the top priorities of CIOs and
CFOs at the world's leading companies
* How IT and Finance are unlocking new opportunities for higher
performance in an age of organizational complexity and regulatory
scrutiny
* The latest IT trends and best practices that are driving BI and
performance management from customers and leading industry experts
* Innovations in Cognos 8 BI, Enterprise Planning, Cognos Go!, and the
impact they are having on organizational performance.
In another general session, Patrick Lencioni, author and founder of The Table Group Inc., a management-consulting firm that specializes in executive team building, discusses how organizational health is one of the last competitive advantages for sustainable success. He will offer insights on how to minimize confusion, politics and communication breakdown in an organization and highlight innovative solutions to help make team members successful.
Leading analysts including John Hagerty from AMR Research, Wayne Eckerson from TDWI, and Kathleen Wilhide from IDC are also participating at Forum to offer personal insights on current trends in performance management, and debate a broad spectrum of issues including the challenges/rewards of broad BI user adoption; key attributes of a world-class BI platform; BI standardization and enterprise reporting.
Leadership in Performance Management
Cognos will showcase enhanced capabilities of the Cognos Performance Management System, its flagship solution. The Cognos Performance Management System enables organizational agility and improves the decision-making process for organizations by connecting people and goals across operations and management functions with right-time, actionable information. It brings together technology, best practices and a partner ecosystem - all elements that customers need to be successful.
Leading organizations worldwide continue to improve visibility and control of enterprise performance with their Cognos solutions. See: http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2006/0627_2.html. Cognos customers and partners including Tyson Foods, Freightliner, DirecTV, Constar, Red Robin, Regent Medical, HP, Onyx, BearingPoint, and the Palladium Group will discuss their successful solutions and share their performance management initiatives with conference attendees.
Long-Term Investments in Customer Success
Building on existing innovative customer service offerings, Cognos continues to increase its investment in professional services to better support enterprise customers with their deployments and help drive customer success. Cognos also unveiled new professional services initiatives for customers to help maximize value, improve performance, and drive user adoption. See: http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2006/0626_2.html. The new Cognos professional services initiatives further address the growing demand for large-scale Cognos standardization and performance management deployments among enterprise customers.
The Cognos Innovation Center(TM) for Performance Management has expanded to include BI competency expertise. See: http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2006/0626_3.html. This expansion is designed to help customers drive increased usage of BI by binding their deployments to business objectives, technology and departmental priorities, and stakeholder needs in a standard manner across the enterprise.
Expanding the Cognos Ecosystem
Cognos will also announce an enhanced "Powered by Cognos" partner program, with new partner solutions now available to help customers advance performance management. The program is designed to empower and showcase partners that develop, market, and sell solutions based on the Cognos Platform for Performance Management. Partners that enlist in the "Powered by Cognos" program will be able to market and deliver solutions in one of the industry's high-growth areas.
At the Cognos Global Partner Summit, Cognos honored BearingPoint as its Global Systems Integrator of the year and the first global SI consultants to gain Cognos BI certification. BearingPoint has invested significant time in gaining Cognos certification, and its BI practice consultants are the first global SI consultants to achieve this high level of proficiency. Cognos certification allows Cognos partners to benchmark and verify their skills and abilities in delivering Cognos solutions and results to customers.
IBM and Deloitte are the two platinum sponsors of Cognos Forum 2006. Gold sponsors include Cognos partners Appfluent, Envisn, HP and Niteo.
"Cognos Forum 2006 will give attendees insight into key technology solutions that are shaping the future of the performance-driven enterprise, and we're happy to sponsor this event in the business intelligence and performance management area that is showing tremendous year-to-year growth," said Jay Ennesser, Vice President, IBM Global Solutions. "IBM and Cognos have a long-standing relationship with a focus on customer success. We are expanding our relationship through the Strategic Alliance with Cognos by extending the value of business intelligence and performance management joint solutions to our customers."
"As a charter member of Cognos' Global Partner program, Deloitte is pleased to be a Platinum sponsor of Cognos Forum 2006," said Raymond Pineda, Principal at Deloitte. "Through our alliance with Cognos and support of its initiatives, we work together to enable solutions for clients that drive better and faster decisions, greater accountability, more transparency and stronger alignment between strategy and execution."
Cognos Forum 2006 caters to all levels of Cognos users, delivering nearly 100 breakout presentations with the largest pool of sessions in Cognos Forum's history.
ABOUT COGNOS
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 organization'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/.
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.
Media Contacts:
Steve Milmore
Cognos, 781-313-2403
