Cognos Ranked As A Leading Vendor For Performance Management by Ventana Research

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) announced today that an independent research report by Ventana Research has ranked Cognos as a top vendor in performance management.In the newly updated Ventana Research 2007 Performance Management Scorecard TM (Ventana Research Scorecard), Cognos scored 94% overall for Cognos 8 BI, the company’s flagship business intelligence platform which includes capabilities for query, reporting, analysis, scorecarding and dashboarding, and event management.

Cognos’ overall score increased by 4.3% over last year’s study, with Cognos 8 BI scoring highest for its ability to “align the business, and coordinate and drive individual actions based on information and performance targets.”

The Ventana Research Scorecard covers more than 11 vendors and is representative of independent analysis conducted over the past five years. Each participating company’s products were scored for functional requirements and capabilities to determine the level of compliance against Ventana Research’s PerformanceCycle™ across three categories – Align, Optimize and Understand.

According to the report, “the research assesses the maturity of software vendors and packages designed specifically for enabling Performance Management. It provides a baseline of knowledge that organizations can use to improve their understanding of how well different software and solutions may meet their business and IT requirements for performance management.”

“Building a robust performance management system is a modern executive imperative,” said Mark Smith, CEO and EVP Research, Ventana Research. “A solution’s ability to align the business involves leveraging historical benchmarks as a reference for driving change in the organization and individually. This capability enables goal setting, scoring, notifying and automating the performance management process.”

Cognos 8 BI is a groundbreaking product that provides decision makers at all levels of the enterprise with a consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance. As a single product that easily integrates into existing infrastructures with multiple systems and data sources, Cognos 8 BI is a robust technology foundation for BI standardization and performance management.

“Cognos 8 BI helps align and connect people and processes across the organization for more effective decision-making,” said Dave Laverty, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer, Cognos. “The solution aligns all stakeholders with one reliable version of business issues, timely, actionable reports, and detailed analysis of business results for performance improvement.”

Cognos has been consistently ranked a performance management leader in both market share and leadership reports by leading independent analyst firms.