Cognos
Encyclopedia
Cognos was an Ottawa
, Ontario
-based company making business intelligence
(BI) and performance management
(PM) software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries.
Originally Quasar Systems Limited, it adopted the Cognos name in 1982. On January 31, 2008, Cognos was officially acquired by IBM
. The Cognos name continues to be applied to IBM's line of business intelligence and performance management products.
In January 2010, as part of a reorganization of IBM Software Group, Cognos software and software from recently acquired SPSS
were brought together to create the Business Analytics division.
company for the Canadian federal government and offered its first software product, QUIZ, in 1979. During the Canadian recession in the 1980s, Cognos shifted its focus from consulting to software sales.
In 1995, Ron Zambonini was named CEO and brought new marketing strategies. Cognos grew successful with its business intelligence products for local area network
s (LAN), but new Internet technologies had come into the BI industry faster than the company had anticipated. After Cognos issued a notice informing shareholders of a slowdown in growth, many sold their shares, causing prices to fall quickly.
This prompted Cognos to build its web technology through the acquisition
of other companies rather than internal research and development
. In September 2007, Cognos announced that it would be acquiring Applix
. It had previously acquired 4Thought, Relational Matters, LEX2000
, Interweave, DecisionStream, NoticeCast, Adaytum, Frango, Databeacon and Celequest, an operational intelligence
company.
of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Salvatore DiMasi
and his accountant Richard Vitale came to light.
In the course of these investigations, a payoff from former Cognos sales executive Joseph Lally in the amount of $600,000 was found to have been made to Vitale's company WN Advisors. Vitale and WN Advisors were not registered as state lobbyists and did not disclose the payments, the bulk of which were apparently made on the same day that the state wired funds for the multimillion dollar contracts to Cognos. The disposition of the funds has not been disclosed and the State has rescinded the contracts. IBM, who now owns Cognos, has refunded the improperly awarded $13 million paid to Cognos. A second close associate of DiMasi's, lawyer Steven Topazio, was placed on a two year $5,000 a month retainer for unspecified purposes. This retainer stopped the same month as the second Cognos contract was awarded.
In addition to the payoffs made to close associates of DiMasi, it is known that Vitale helped arrange a below-market mortgage for DiMasi, which violated state Ethics laws.
On December 17, 2008, the Boston Globe confirmed that the State investigations were being joined by a Federal Grand Jury
probe investigating the allegations and potential violations of Federal law. On June 2, 2009, DiMasi, Vitale, Lally, and Cognos lobbyist Richard McDonough were indicted "on a battery of...corruption charges" as a result of that probe.
’s acquisition of Business Objects and Oracle
’s acquisition of Hyperion, IBM announced its acquisition of Cognos in November for $4.9 billion. It continued to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary (Cognos, an IBM company) until January 1, 2009, when it was absorbed into IBM's Information Management brand within the company's Software Group. The software is now called "Cognos Business Intelligence and Financial Performance Management" or Cognos BI and FPM.
interprets the lower ratings given in "customer experience" for IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects as a result of post-acquisition issues. Due to many consolidations in the BI industry, there are only a few independent "pure-play" vendors remaining (SAS and MicroStrategy
being the largest).
, IBM General Manager for Business Analytics and former Cognos CEO Rob Ashe announced IBM Cognos 10. A significant upgrade to IBM Cognos 8 BI, this new software brings together social collaboration and analytics for business users to gain real-time intelligence in a single, user-friendly interface — online or through mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone and BlackBerry devices.
IBM Cognos 8 BI, initially launched in September 2005, combined the features of several previous products, including ReportNet
, PowerPlay, Metrics Manager, NoticeCast, and DecisionStream. There are also Express and Extended versions of Cognos 8 BI. Full features:
IBM Cognos Express, launched in September 2009, is an integrated business intelligence and planning solution purpose-built to meet the needs of midsize companies. The features of Express are:
IBM Cognos also offers several Application
Development Tools:
In 2007, Cognos was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers
, as published in Maclean's
magazine, one of only a handful of software development companies to receive this honour.
Prior to being acquired, Cognos had been named to the InformationWeek 500, chosen as one of START-IT Magazine's "Hottest Companies of 2006" and won "Best of Information On Demand Showcase" as part of the IBM Information Management Awards.
Cognos, now as IBM Cognos Software, continues to rank in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner
's Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence.
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
-based company making business intelligence
Business intelligence
Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....
(BI) and performance management
Performance management
Performance management includes activities that ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, employee, or even the processes to build a product or service, as well as many...
(PM) software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries.
Originally Quasar Systems Limited, it adopted the Cognos name in 1982. On January 31, 2008, Cognos was officially acquired by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. The Cognos name continues to be applied to IBM's line of business intelligence and performance management products.
In January 2010, as part of a reorganization of IBM Software Group, Cognos software and software from recently acquired SPSS
SPSS
SPSS is a computer program used for survey authoring and deployment , data mining , text analytics, statistical analysis, and collaboration and deployment ....
were brought together to create the Business Analytics division.
History
Cognos was founded in 1969 by Alan Rushforth and Peter Glenister. Michael Potter joined Cognos in 1972. It began as a consultingConsultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
company for the Canadian federal government and offered its first software product, QUIZ, in 1979. During the Canadian recession in the 1980s, Cognos shifted its focus from consulting to software sales.
In 1995, Ron Zambonini was named CEO and brought new marketing strategies. Cognos grew successful with its business intelligence products for local area network
Local area network
A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
s (LAN), but new Internet technologies had come into the BI industry faster than the company had anticipated. After Cognos issued a notice informing shareholders of a slowdown in growth, many sold their shares, causing prices to fall quickly.
This prompted Cognos to build its web technology through the acquisition
Takeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company by another . In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company.- Friendly takeovers :Before a bidder makes an offer for another...
of other companies rather than internal research and development
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
. In September 2007, Cognos announced that it would be acquiring Applix
Applix
Applix Inc. was a software company founded in 1983 based in Westborough, Massachusetts that published Applix TM1, a MOLAP database server, and related presentation tools, including Applix Web and Applix Executive Viewer. Together, Applix TM1, Applix Web and Applix Executive Viewer were the three...
. It had previously acquired 4Thought, Relational Matters, LEX2000
Scientific Time Sharing Corporation
Scientific Time Sharing Corporation was a pioneering timesharing and consulting service company which offered APL from its datacenter in Bethesda, MD to users in the United States and Europe.-History:...
, Interweave, DecisionStream, NoticeCast, Adaytum, Frango, Databeacon and Celequest, an operational intelligence
Operational Intelligence
Operational intelligence is a form of real-time dynamic, business analytics that delivers visibility and insight into business operations. Operational intelligence solutions run query analysis against live feeds and event data to deliver real-time, actionable information...
company.
Federal investigation
In August 2007, the Massachusetts state Information Technology Division awarded Cognos a $13 million dollar contract for performance management software. This followed a 2006 $4.5 million state contract awarded to Cognos by the Massachusetts Department of Education. These contracts came under scrutiny from the State Ethics Commission and the office of state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan when several conflicts of interest surrounding SpeakerSpeaker (politics)
The term speaker is a title often given to the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body. The speaker's official role is to moderate debate, make rulings on procedure, announce the results of votes, and the like. The speaker decides who may speak and has the...
of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Massachusetts House of Representatives
The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from single-member electoral districts across the Commonwealth. Representatives serve two-year terms...
Salvatore DiMasi
Salvatore DiMasi
Salvatore F. "Sal" DiMasi is a former Democratic state representative in Massachusetts. The former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives originally joined the state legislature in 1979, as a member of the Democratic Party...
and his accountant Richard Vitale came to light.
In the course of these investigations, a payoff from former Cognos sales executive Joseph Lally in the amount of $600,000 was found to have been made to Vitale's company WN Advisors. Vitale and WN Advisors were not registered as state lobbyists and did not disclose the payments, the bulk of which were apparently made on the same day that the state wired funds for the multimillion dollar contracts to Cognos. The disposition of the funds has not been disclosed and the State has rescinded the contracts. IBM, who now owns Cognos, has refunded the improperly awarded $13 million paid to Cognos. A second close associate of DiMasi's, lawyer Steven Topazio, was placed on a two year $5,000 a month retainer for unspecified purposes. This retainer stopped the same month as the second Cognos contract was awarded.
In addition to the payoffs made to close associates of DiMasi, it is known that Vitale helped arrange a below-market mortgage for DiMasi, which violated state Ethics laws.
On December 17, 2008, the Boston Globe confirmed that the State investigations were being joined by a Federal Grand Jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
probe investigating the allegations and potential violations of Federal law. On June 2, 2009, DiMasi, Vitale, Lally, and Cognos lobbyist Richard McDonough were indicted "on a battery of...corruption charges" as a result of that probe.
Acquisition of Cognos by IBM
In 2007, following SAPSAP AG
SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...
’s acquisition of Business Objects and Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
’s acquisition of Hyperion, IBM announced its acquisition of Cognos in November for $4.9 billion. It continued to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary (Cognos, an IBM company) until January 1, 2009, when it was absorbed into IBM's Information Management brand within the company's Software Group. The software is now called "Cognos Business Intelligence and Financial Performance Management" or Cognos BI and FPM.
BI market
IBM's purchase of Cognos and other business intelligence software vendors was a step in establishing IBM as a BI "megavendor" (along with Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP). This consolidation may prove beneficial for customers to have fewer vendors to deal with, but this raises concerns about integration of the software as more vendors are bought out by the big four. Another challenge is maintaining the same level of customer service. GartnerGartner
Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, United States. It was known as GartnerGroup until 2001....
interprets the lower ratings given in "customer experience" for IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects as a result of post-acquisition issues. Due to many consolidations in the BI industry, there are only a few independent "pure-play" vendors remaining (SAS and MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy, Inc. , is a business intelligence software vendor. MicroStrategy's software enables leading organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make more strategic business decisions...
being the largest).
Products
On October 25, 2010, at the Business Analytics Forum in Las VegasLas Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, IBM General Manager for Business Analytics and former Cognos CEO Rob Ashe announced IBM Cognos 10. A significant upgrade to IBM Cognos 8 BI, this new software brings together social collaboration and analytics for business users to gain real-time intelligence in a single, user-friendly interface — online or through mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone and BlackBerry devices.
IBM Cognos 8 BI, initially launched in September 2005, combined the features of several previous products, including ReportNet
Cognos Reportnet
Cognos ReportNet is a web-based software product for creating and managing ad-hoc and custom-made reports. ReportNet is developed by Canada’s Ottawa based business intelligence and performance management solutions company Cognos , an IBM company. The web-based reporting tool was launched in...
, PowerPlay, Metrics Manager, NoticeCast, and DecisionStream. There are also Express and Extended versions of Cognos 8 BI. Full features:
- Report Studio (Professional report authoring tool formatted for the web)
- Query Studio (Ad hoc report authoring tool with instant data preview)
- Analysis Studio (Explore multi-dimensional cube data to answer business questions)
- Metric Studio (Monitor, analyze, and report on KPIs)
- Metric Designer (Define, load, and maintain metrics to be available in Metric Studio)
- Event Studio (Action based agents to notify decision makers as events happen)
- Framework Manager (Semantic metadata layer tool which creates models or packages)
- PowerPlay Studio (formerly PowerPlay Web)
- Analytic Applications (Packaged BI Applications, built on an adaptable platform and extensible into Business Analytics)
IBM Cognos Express, launched in September 2009, is an integrated business intelligence and planning solution purpose-built to meet the needs of midsize companies. The features of Express are:
- Cognos Express Reporter (Self-service reporting and ad hoc query)
- Cognos Express Advisor (Freeform analysis and visualization)
- Cognos Express Xcelerator (Microsoft Excel-based planning and business analysis)
IBM Cognos also offers several Application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
Development Tools:
- IBM Cognos PowerHouse 4GL
- IBM Cognos PowerHouse Web
- IBM Cognos Axiant 4GL
Recognition
IBM Cognos 8 BI has won numerous awards including the eWEEK Excellence Award in Analytics and Reporting, the LOTUS ADVISOR "Editor's Choice" Award, and TechTarget's SearchCRM.com 2005 Product of the Year.In 2007, Cognos was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers
Canada's Top 100 Employers
Canada's Top 100 Employers is an annual competition that recognizes the best places in Canada to work. First held in 1999, the project aims to single out the employers that lead their industries in offering exceptional working conditions and progressive human resources policies. Winners are...
, as published in Maclean's
Maclean's
Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.-History:Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist/entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house...
magazine, one of only a handful of software development companies to receive this honour.
Prior to being acquired, Cognos had been named to the InformationWeek 500, chosen as one of START-IT Magazine's "Hottest Companies of 2006" and won "Best of Information On Demand Showcase" as part of the IBM Information Management Awards.
Cognos, now as IBM Cognos Software, continues to rank in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner
Gartner
Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, United States. It was known as GartnerGroup until 2001....
's Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence.