Cognos builds on Web-based analysis with PowerPlay 7.3

Cognos, the enterprise business intelligence (EBI) and corporate performance management solutions company, has extended its Cognos EBI Series with PowerPlay 7.3.

Building on its Web-based analysis capability, Cognos PowerPlay offers user flexibility to navigate data from any data source, including third-party online analytical processing (OLAP) solutions. With new analysis features, all delivered through a zero footprint user interface, business users can understand the performance of their organisation.

"We have an enterprise-proven OLAP solution used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide that offers unmatched performance," says Karen Williams, VP, product marketing, Cognos.

Cognos PowerPlay 7.3 delivers new features and functionalities, such as:

* Analysis over the Web: By creating subsets of categories by rule and pick list, users can focus their analysis on a subset of categories rather than having to view the entire dimension.

* Govern drill-through targets by dimension level: Administrators can design dimensional models that combine data from multiple data sources; and users can prevent others from drilling through at higher levels in the cube. By restricting drill-through to lower levels, the volume of information sent is reduced and network performance is optimised.

* Support for planning: Scenario-based planning capabilities are critical when users are analysing financial data. Instead of calculating just one set of figures, users may want to calculate several sets of figures, or scenarios. Each scenario is based on different assumptions, such as planned, budget and actual values or best case and worst case.

* High-performance data cache: Cognos PowerPlay cubes can contain more than a billion rows of data and 2 million categories. With such rich and fast response data sources, users can analyse multiple aspects of their business - to see how a value changes over time; how it compares across geography; and how it changes against any other business dimension.

* Enhanced Microsoft Office integration: Cognos PowerPlay provides formatted Microsoft Excel report output, offering consistent integration with Excel, including native Excel charting, formatting, and multi-sheet support.

* Full scorecard and report integration: Cognos PowerPlay is tightly integrated with and is part of the Cognos EBI Series, including Cognos ReportNet and Cognos Metrics Manager. This provides business and production reporting, dashboarding, scorecarding, analysis, event detection and notification and data integration - delivering critical business data to the broadest range of users.

"With Cognos, we have given our users real-time visibility into business operations. The powerful analytical capabilities in Cognos PowerPlay create a unified view of the business, facilitating the delivery of the right information, to the right people, at the right time - providing the consistent information our business demands," says Rick Lowrey, executive VP, Deltek.

"Using Cognos for our business intelligence needs, Deltek managers have ready access to information on which to base their decisions, and take actions that have an impact on the company`s overall success. They are plugged in to the direction of the company and reflect this direction in how they do their jobs."

Cognos has strengthened the Cognos EBI Series by offering centralised information distribution, and access for all BI. Users have one place to go for all their business intelligence needs and administrators have one environment to manage. With centralised metadata across metrics, OLAP, and relational data sources, thousands of users have instant access to goal-driven metrics, in-depth analysis, and robust business and production reports - all from a single interface. It also features a Cognos Application Firewall and a fully documented application programming interface (API) for third-party security integration.

This updated version includes new product enhancements in Cognos PowerPlay such as superior analysis, sophisticated governors, and enhanced Microsoft Office support and complete enterprise management capabilities across the suite.