Cognos ships Cognos Series 7

Business intelligence (BI) company, Cognos, has announced availability of Cognos Series 7, the industry`s most comprehensive, enterprise-class business intelligence solution.

The Cognos Series 7 BI framework provides enterprises with scalability, Unix and Windows support, solid performance and reliability, operational event detection and alerting to wireless devices, as well as a `no-compromise` breadth and depth of application choice that reflects the needs of today`s organisations.

With Cognos Series 7, companies benefit from a complete, integrated offering that includes reporting, analysis, ad hoc query, scorecarding, visualisation and data mart creation.

Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Schneider Logistics is a provider of supply chain management services and technology that enable its customers to effectively manage the flow of material, information, and funds through their supply chains.

"Operating in a highly distributed, mission-critical Sun Solaris environment, Cognos Series 7 has performed well during intensive testing for Schneider Logistics," says John Hasenzahl, director, Knowledge Services & Data Management, Schneider Logistics.

"Our customers and users access critical information about their business with Cognos via a large-scale, global extranet. With Cognos Series 7, we have seen the level of performance, scalability, and Unix support that will allow us to continue to deliver new business intelligence solutions to our growing customer base."

"Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation, integrated producer of paperboard and paper-based packaging products has been a long-time customer with Cognos and we expect that Cognos Series 7 will help us further expand our business intelligence deployment throughout the organisation. Cognos Series 7 offers both IT and business users an intuitive, user-friendly experience; tightly integrated applications through the portal; and a solution that is easily and quickly deployed, guaranteeing the fastest time to result,`` says Melissa Woulfe, decision support manager, Smurfit-Stone.

"Cognos Series 7 is a major step forward for both IT and business users of business intelligence. The tight integration of all the business applications through the Cognos BI portal gives business users an incredibly simple way to access business intelligence and will allow us to better support our customers,`` says James Keller, Application Management Practice, Healthcare Information Management, Cigna Healthcare.

A consulting partner to the US Navy and US Air Force, Fuentez Systems Concepts, based in Charleston, South Carolina, delivers large-scale business intelligence solutions to organisations like the US Coast Guard. Today there are 35 000 users of Cognos via nationwide intranet at the US Coast Guard.

"We are planning to upgrade the Coast Guard`s Readiness Management System within the first quarter of the release of Cognos Series 7. There are significant advantages of Cognos Series 7 for business users and administrators alike -- a fact that became readily apparent even at the earliest stages of beta. Rapid deployability, scalability and high performance combined with the business intelligence industry`s best integrated Web-based solutions that drive at-a-glance information into the hands of decision-makers were all key factors for us,`` says Ed Waizenegger, systems engineering and technical services team at the US Coast Guard and a business intelligence consultant with Fuentez Systems Concepts.

"The bar is being raised in the business intelligence marketplace. More and more organisations are recognising the fundamental value of BI, and are demanding more and more from their vendors. The solution that can offer compelling, immediate business value to the user community, while at the same time offering mission-critical performance and ease of IT administration, will rise well above other business intelligence offerings,`` said Dave Folger, vice president, Web and Collaboration Strategies, Meta Group.

Cognos Series 7 offers enterprise environments the lowest total cost of ownership for a business intelligence solution. Through centralised security, administration, and content management, as well as easy application deployment and configuration management, Cognos delivers the BI solution that easily fits into any enterprise environment with a minimum of IT effort.

Cognos Series 7 allows business users to access the industry`s broadest range of BI functionality whether from the Cognos portal environment or integrated with any other third-party portal offering or application. As well, with the addition of Cognos NoticeCast tightly integrated into the Cognos Series 7 BI framework, customers get access to new mission-critical monitoring and alerting on business performance and operational events, providing up-to- the-minute information as key events occur.

Cognos Series 7 supports a wide range of platforms Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX, Windows NT, 2000, 95, 98, ME. As well, Cognos Series 7 provides support for Microsoft SSAS 2000, SAP BW, Essbase and IBM DB2 OLAP, as well as natively supports Teradata, IBM DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase and ODBC relational data stores.

"With Cognos Series 7, Cognos further underlines its commitment to excellence. The unprecedented effort that went into Cognos Series 7 has yielded a business intelligence solution that offers the industry`s best breadth and depth, and provides enterprises with a true foundation for business performance management,`` says Peter Griffiths, vice-president, research and development, Cognos.