The article, “IBM boosts BI offering with Cognos 10”, looks at the release of IBM’s newest update to it’s Cognos business intelligence platform. Cognos is a business intelligence (BI) and performance management software line that is produced by IBM. IBM recently acquired Congnos in 2007 as a heightened effort to become a top producer of BI products alongside such companies as Oracle, Microsoft and SAP[1]. IBM’s newest release of the Cognos software is just a part of their continuing effort over the past few years to become a leader in business intelligence.
The Cognos 10 software became available on October 30 and its release is a major upgrade to the Cognos BI line of products. Cognos 10 will include features for collaboration, statistical analysis, and support for mobile devices like the iPhone or Apple iPads. In addition to these features, there will be something known as ‘BI workspaces’. These workspaces will allow users and companies to “access a variety of BI tools from a united interface that can be tweaked to their liking”[2]. This will allow the users to transition from completing easier tasks to more complicated ones without have to change applications. It appears that Cognos is more of an ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning system where all the software programs will be available through one application, but the beauty of Cognos 10 is in how customizable it is.
On top of all the BI functions in Cognos 10, IBM is also introducing a social networking feature to the product. This collaboration tool will allow people to communicate and ask questions about business information, and overall allow the program to be of more value than its competitors. Another new interesting feature is the feature called “active reports”, which “allows users to receive interactive reports through email” [2]. But overall, the newest and in my mind, the coolest feature, is the accessibility of the program through the iPhone or other mobile devices. Basically, there are an overwhelming amount of new features in the Cognos 10 software and it is “impressive for its sheer breadth of offerings” [2].
The Cognos software is meant to help a company make the decisions that should drive better performance. According to their website, “Cognos 10 helps your organization make smarter decisions, achieve better results, and gain a deeper understanding of trends, opportunities, weaknesses and threats. Cognos 10 lets you explore any data, in any combination and over any time period with a broad range of analytical capabilities”[3]. Features include queries and reporting, data analysis, scorecarding, dashboarding, real-time monitoring, statistics, planning and budgeting, and many other BI features, which combined offer an ERP that should provide success for a company looking to capitalize on business intelligence.
This new product has been referred to as “a step in the right direction”, but IBM also has “room to evolve the concept further”[2]. I believe that because of the continuing efforts seen present over the past few years by IBM, and the release of their newest BI product, Cognos 10, that we may see IBM to be named among top big business software producers like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft for BI, DSS, and ERP products. A video below shows a company that is putting Cognos 10 to use and the benefits that the software provides.
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