BURLINGTON, Mass., August 21, 2000—Cognos^® (Nasdaq:COGN; TSE:CSN), the world's largest and most successful business intelligence company, today further extended its market-leading Cognos enterprise business intelligence solution with new visualization capabilities. Visualization is a critical component of today's business intelligence, presenting complex data in an easy to understand visual context allowing users to quickly scan and gain immediate insights from the information. It allows Cognos business intelligence solutions to fully meet e-businesses' increasingly sophisticated requirements for business performance management.

The new 1.5 version of Cognos Visualizer transforms complex data into actionable information through rich graphics, robust presentation features and powerful scorecarding capabilities, allowing decision-makers to immediately take insight-driven action to improve their business. The unprecedented solution for BI provides organizations with rich and diverse multi-chart display of multiple key performance metrics in a single, powerful presentation.

The announcement of Cognos Visualizer extends the visualization and scorecarding capabilities of the Cognos business intelligence platform, offering a single-vendor solution that completely addresses the full breadth of e-business information needs. As part of the Cognos business intelligence platform, Cognos Visualizer integrates seamlessly with Cognos reporting, query and analysis components, all accessed through a single Web portal and all sharing the platform's common security and metadata management.

Visualizer provides a 'cockpit' effect of managing and monitoring the pulse of the business with at-a-glance view of multiple key business performance metrics. Effective performance management is critical in today's e-business, and Cognos Visualizer delivers clear and intuitive visuals to expose the interrelationships of key performance indicators and the factors driving an organization's growth. Managers and executives can use 2D and 3D charts and maps to see trends in revenue and inventory, patterns in customer adoption, and variance from budget and plan.

The 35,000-person, 209-year-old U.S. Coast Guard uses the Cognos solution as an operational 'cockpit' to quickly respond to the overall readiness of its search and rescue stations. The Coast Guard implemented Cognos Visualizer to let users analyze the causes of boating accidents, access information on the availability of Coast Guard ships and search and rescue equipment, and tap into a key skills repository of U.S. Coast Guard personnel. Using a Web browser, personnel are able to view critical information with Cognos Visualizer across the U.S. Coast Guard's secure extranet.

The bottomline result, according to Lt. Commander Jim Cash, U.S. Coast Guard is the Cognos solution enables the U.S. Coast to gain insight into the overall readiness of its search and rescue stations allowing operational commanders to identify what needs attention to ensure the fleet is capable of performing its duties for the U.S. Public. "We know, at a glance, what equipment, personnel and other resources are available to tackle search and rescue missions. The Cognos solution also lets us know where and when we have to add to the skill sets, staff and resources to better serve our communities. Cognos Visualizer allows us to see this information quickly and enables our entire team to understand the overall needs immediately."

"For many organizations, their business intelligence solution is the way they drive their business. It serves as their window on business progress. By presenting the data in an easy-to-understand and highly graphical way, decision makers are able to transform raw business data into truly actionable intelligence," says Philip Russom, senior analyst, Framingham, MA-based research firm, Hurwitz Group. "In today's highly competitive business environment, solutions such as Cognos Visualizer slashes the time it takes between generating business intelligence reports and that 'ah-a' moment that lets them take positive business action."

"With today's announcement, the Cognos enterprise business intelligence platform addresses the prime issue for today's e-businesses: the need for speed. Cognos visualization allows organizations to accelerate the time it takes between getting the information, understanding that information and most importantly, acting on the information. Cognos Visualizer brings businesses' key issues and hot buttons to life graphically, allowing everyone to see the critical business information they are viewing like never before," said Joanne K. Masingill, Cognos senior vice president of marketing. "Cognos enterprise business intelligence's unprecedented visualization functionality offers our customers a means to generate better decisions faster, and quickly be able to share that information with the entire organization."

Enhancements to Cognos Visualizer 1.5 include:

• Improved Presentation - Allows users to perform one- and two-dimension "gauge charts" for scorecarding; table charts that display multiple dimensions and measures with drillable categories; a cross-tab chart with declarable coloring; TrueType font support; and axis-label formatting
  
  

• Sophisticated Mapping - new geographic maps are available, as well as a "map drill" capability that allows users to drill to more focused maps by simply clicking a mouse.
  
  

• Enhanced Distribution - Users now have a wide range of distribution possibilities for reports as well as publishing to the Upfront portal, saving custom views, or using new print options for enhanced appearance
  
  

• Expanded Web Support - Version 1.5 supports additional Web server platforms on IBM AIX, HP-UX, and Sun Solaris, as well as Windows NT and Windows 2000

Availability
The latest version of Cognos Visualizer will be available late September 2000.