Cognos Customer Blue Cross Blue Shield Of Massachusetts Wins A 2006 Mass Technology Leadership Award


– Recognized for outstanding technology development, implementation, and leadership –

BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 18, 2006— Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that one of its customers, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Inc. (BCBSMA), has received a 2006 Technology Leadership Award from the Mass Technology Leadership Council in the “Outstanding Technology Users” category. BCBSMA and other winners were recognized at a Council event held at the Boston Marriott Copley on Oct. 11, 2006.

The only awards program to recognize outstanding achievement in both the development and implementation of information technology, the Mass Technology Leadership Awards honor Massachusetts companies and individuals who best exemplify leadership and excellence in business and technology.

BCBSMA was recognized for its work implementing a business intelligence and dashboarding solution from Cognos. BCBSMA was looking for a solution to evolve its business performance reporting solution from a manual spreadsheet report to a sophisticated solution that could track critical metrics driving corporate performance. Dubbed the “Blue Dash,” the dashboarding solution allows senior management to refine and improve the accessibility of key corporate performance metrics and to insure that these metrics are updated continuously throughout the year. The Cognos solution is used by more than 2,500 corporate decision makers to view key performance metrics in a way that delivers immediate insight.

“The Mass Technology Leadership Council is committed to fostering entrepreneurship and promoting the success of companies that develop and deploy technology across industry sectors. These awards are an important part of this effort,” said Joyce L. Plotkin, president of the Mass Technology Leadership Council. “The winners of this year’s honors represent the spirit of innovation, the history of accomplishment and the future promise that define the Massachusetts technology community.”

“We’re thrilled to be recognized by the Mass Technology Leadership Council for our use of Cognos business intelligence solutions,” said Norm Costin, vice president, Information and Knowledge Management, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts. “Cognos allows us to track metrics such as customer satisfaction, sales, and expenses in order to continuously evaluate BCBSMA’s performance and make the necessary adjustments to run an efficient and cost-effective operation.”

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Inc.:
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (www.bluecrossma.com) was founded 68 years ago by a group of community-minded business leaders. Today, headquartered in Boston, BCBSMA provides coverage to 2.9 million members. Consistently recognized for standards of service that are among the highest in the nation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is the choice for health care consumers seeking reliable and high quality health care coverage. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

About Cognos:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.

Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Note to Editors:
Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.