03/18/2004

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the enterprise business intelligence (EBI) and corporate performance management solutions provider, announced its support of SAP NetWeaver '04, “further extending its commitment to SAP solutions and its global partnership with SAP.”

Cognos chose SAP NetWeaver as a strategic platform for its enterprise reporting product Cognos ReportNet and says Cognos ReportNet is one of the first enterprise applications to be certified as "Powered by SAP NetWeaver."

"SAP NetWeaver reduces the total cost of ownership across the entire IT landscape, for both SAP and non-SAP solutions. 'Powered by SAP NetWeaver' Cognos ReportNet allows users across the extended enterprise to leverage the rich value of information available from SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) and deploy via an SAP Enterprise Portal," said Pat O'Leary, vice president, strategic alliances, Cognos. "Cognos continues to extend our commitment to our joint customer base, today announcing our support for SAP NetWeaver '04. SAP NetWeaver '04 powers ready-to-go, innovative industry- specific software products."

Cognos notes that, “Customers are selecting Cognos ReportNet for enterprise reporting in conjunction with SAP(R) Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW), a core product within SAP(TM) Business Intelligence (SAP BI). Companies that have selected Cognos ReportNet for enterprise reporting in their SAP environments include Mold-Masters(R) Limited, the global leader in hot runner technology. Companies throughout the plastics industry use Mold-Masters products to produce high-quality plastic parts.”

"At Mold-Masters, SAP and SAP-BW are our key strategic data sources, augmented by other niche corporate systems. With Cognos ReportNet we can access the critical information from the rich data housed in SAP BW as well as our non-SAP systems, providing us with a single view of our business performance. We looked at a number of competitive solutions, and discovered through a proof of concept that Cognos ReportNet demonstrated superior integration and time to deployment with SAP-BW," said Val Swift, IT manager, Mold-Masters. "By taking advantage of its next-generation Web Services architecture and effortless integration with SAP BW, Cognos ReportNet will allow us to streamline the entire reporting infrastructure at Mold-Masters."

Cognos is a member of the SAP Software Partner program. Today, more than 100 global Cognos consultants and partners are trained on SAP BI integration to help ensure customers get the highest degree of support and success.

Cognos points out that, “ReportNet is fully integrated within Cognos Enterprise BI solution, including flexible scorecards, dashboards, powerful industry-leading OLAP analysis, event management, and data integration.”