Cognos has announced its support for Web services through Cognos Web Services, a universal platform for extending its Cognos Series 7 business intelligence platform into other applications and environments.
Using standards-based technologies such as eXtensible markup language (XML), simple object access protocol (SOAP) and Web services description language (WSDL) to build connections between Cognos software and multiple applications, the new solution allows customers and industry partners rapidly to integrate Cognos into Web, vertical market and wireless applications.
"Cognos Web Services allows organisations to bring the power of Cognos into a broad range of applications including CRM, ERP, SCM, collaborative computing, specialised vertical applications, a full range of mobile devices, and to extend Cognos capabilities into areas such as .NET and J2EE," says David McWilliam, MD of Cognos South Africa.
IDC predicts the total Web services software, services and hardware market will rise from $1.6 billion in 2004 to $34 billion by 2007.
"The effective exploitation of Web services to enable integration of online analytical processing, analysis, reporting and performance scorecarding into applications, and across business boundaries, will become one of the key success factors in the business intelligence market," says Dave Folger, VP, Web and Collaboration Strategies, Meta Group.
The new product offers Cognos users the ability to flexibly extend their business intelligence solutions. Examples include:
Integrating Cognos business intelligence functionality into other applications rapidly and easily. Rather than developing reporting functionality from the ground up into an existing application, most organisations prefer to integrate capabilities from a leading vendor. Customising Cognos to fit unique needs. Cognos Web Services is designed to provide developers with the flexibility to customise software and create new, one-of-a-kind capabilities to meet an organisation`s unique requirements.
Integrating Cognos applications into portal environments. Cognos Web Services allows for content from a Cognos application to be displayed in a custom fashion, within an existing user interface, with less effort than ever before. Business intelligence functionality can then be seamlessly added to existing portals such as Plumtree, IBM WebSphere, SAP Enterprise Portal and other enterprise information portals.
Cognos is a member of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an open, industry organisation chartered to promote Web services interoperability across platforms, operating systems and programming languages.
"The active participation and contributions of industry leaders such as Cognos are critical to our efforts to promote universal Web service interoperability," says Tom Glover, chairman of WS-I.
Cognos Web Services is available on Microsoft and Unix platforms.
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