Make the Most of Your BI Investment with Cognos 8 Go! Family

At the end of February Cognos will announce the availability of Cognos 8 Go! Mobile for Blackberry to provide yet another access mode for Cognos 8. Cognos 8 Go! access modes (Search, Mobile & Microsoft Office) allow users to easily view and interact with highly relevant BI information using the application or device most convenient to them.

BusinessWeek's Market Advisory Board has said that business intelligence is on the cusp of proliferation throughout organizations with one obstacle left to overcome — getting employees to use new technologies. Fortunately, resistance to new technology is reduced when software is accessed through familiar environments. Technologies like Cognos 8 Go! Search and Cognos 8 Go! Mobile are enabling a work place evolution with easy to use and convenient access to information. These access mode options help to overcome technology resistance and enable average workers to make faster, accurate and more consistent decisions.

The Cognos 8 Go! family including web portal, search, Microsoft Office and mobile device access modes enables users to make informed business decisions anytime, anywhere.

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile is the latest addition to Cognos Go! family and is perfect for executives and mobile workers who want immediate access to and interaction with important information on their wireless device. According to a recent analyst report, the mobile worker population will increase from more than 650 million worldwide in 2004 to more than 850 million in 2009. That's more than one-quarter of the global professional workforce!

Available now on Blackberry (Windows Mobile devices, such as Treo or Motorola, and Symbian devices, such as Nokia, Sony and Ericsson, will be introduced in the second half of calendar 2007). Cognos 8 Go! Mobile offers a rich client interface with a user-friendly, intuitive format. It allows users to access all Cognos 8 content including analysis, reports, dashboards and metrics information by browsing folders, using Cognos 8 Go! Search direct from the device or simply receiving scheduled report updates.

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile leverages the investment in the Cognos 8 platform by providing:

• A Single Authoring Environment: BI report authors can write a report once and know that every user can access it regardless of language, locale, or access mode (Web, search, mobile, Microsoft Office, etc.). The Cognos 8 Go! Mobile client formats the data for mobile devices, eliminating the need for a separate mobile authoring environment.
• Optimized Viewing and Interactivity: Users use a rich client to navigate through reports and leverage native mobile device functionality to perform drill-through, row and column focus and zooming.
• Offline Use: Cognos 8 Go! Mobile allows users to access their reports while they are offline, making it easier to continue to work while traveling or when the device is not within connectivity range.
• Security: Cognos Go! Mobile leverages the security used in the Cognos 8 Platform to ensure users only see information they are entitled to see and augments this security with full encryption of communications to and from the wireless device, as well as encryption of information stored on the device. This includes the instant ability to prevent decryption of information on the mobile device and full administrative control over user authentication requirements.
• Effective Data Compression: Cognos 8 Go! Mobile compresses data before transmission and again once the report is saved on the device to maximize performance of mobile devices and the network.

Cognos Go! Mobile is the result of a strategic alliance partnership with RIM, the maker of the Blackberry. Our partnership with RIM provided insight into how people interact with mobile devices and visibility into future products to help us future proof our solution, so we could produce the most effective and long-term Blackberry solution.

Cognos 8 Go! Search

Cognos 8 Go! Search is a significant innovation in the BI industry, opening a world of information to knowledge workers through a simple keyword search. Cognos 8 Go! Search searches the full data content of reports, not merely titles, descriptions, or metadata, and returns the most relevant BI information. This results in:

• Faster access to more relevant BI for users.
• Reduced report duplication and a decrease in authoring requirements by reusing existing reports.
• Improved efficiency and user satisfaction.
• Improved system performance.

Cognos 8 Go! Search can search all BI information including report data from relational data sources supported by Cognos 8 BI, all ERP data sources including SAP BW, SAP R/3 and Siebel CRM, and all modern data sources available through the Composite Information Server. Cognos 8 Go! Search also searches report data from OLAP data cubes including Cognos PowerCubes, DB2 OLAP/Essbase, Microsoft Analysis Services, and Cognos Enterprise Planning Cubes.

Cognos 8 Go! Search provides many key benefits to users including:

• Most Relevant Results: Cognos 8 Go! Search examines not only frequency of occurrence of search terms but where the search terms occur in the report (column or row headings, prompts, data points etc.) Cognos 8 Go! Search also leverages the single metadata store under Cognos 8 BI so BI users can refine how search terms are interpreted. BI users can also find "related" BI information using a find related feature, allowing them to navigate from report to report without being confined to pre-defined drill paths.
• Fast Results: Cognos 8 Go! Search has an administrator-controlled indexing solution, so it delivers results quickly to end users regardless of the number of reports.

Compatibility with Enterprise Search Solutions

Cognos Go! Search also integrates easily with major Enterprise Search solutions such as Google OneBox for Enterprise and IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind so end users can access unstructured information, such as documents, images, audio and video files, and e-mails that today lie scattered across their enterprise, together with the structured and trusted information from Cognos 8 BI. The result: unprecedented insight into business performance!

Google OneBox for Enterprise in combination with Cognos 8 Go! Search enables rapid and efficient return of Cognos reports, dashboards, analyses, and key metrics, as well as relevant, unstructured corporate content. This puts information at the fingertips of enterprise customers and drives better decisions more quickly than ever before.

Cognos 8 Go! Search delivers search results through Google OneBox in three ways.

1. Instant answers to common business questions, shown above the search results as graphical charts, tables, and maps to provide an at-a-glance understanding of a business issue.
2. A visual representation of a related key performance metric and its status.
3. Finally, to give users additional context, a list of relevant links to other BI information, such as related alerts, dashboards, reports, or analyses.

Equally compelling, as a result of our Global Strategic Alliance with IBM, Cognos is collaborating on support for Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA)-based solutions through the integration of Cognos 8 BI, Cognos Go! Search Service, and the IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition.

The combined solution will enable users to discover and analyze information on demand by searching business intelligence information managed by Cognos 8 Business Intelligence and other content stored across the enterprise. Cognos 8 Go! Search will allow reports, analyses, dashboards, metric information, and events to be published and indexed by IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition, the IBM enterprise search platform and the first commercially available software for processing content based on UIMA.

Getting employees to use new technologies has a lot to do with ease of use, convenience and timeliness of information. Being able to deliver the right information into an interface or device already familiar to an end user and when they need it is the key. Cognos 8 Go! Search and Cognos 8 Go! Mobile both drive broad user adoption of BI technologies and thus, improved organizational performance.