BI on the move with Cognos 8 Go! Mobile

By Jane Farquhar, Product Marketing, Cognos Inc.

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile is the latest addition to the Cognos 8 Go! family of consumer modes that enable users to easily view and consume BI information using the application or device most convenient to them. Cognos 8 Go! Mobile was built on and fully leverages the Cognos 8 BI platform - providing users with access to timely, secure, and personalized information on their BlackBerry® wireless devices.

Executives and mobile workers who have become dependent on mobile devices like a Blackberry to access email can now also view and consume strategic business intelligence information with Cognos 8 Go! Mobile.

Before, Cognos reports could be viewed in HTML but were too small to see on a Blackberry screen and required an internet connection to work. Although some people used email with PDF or Microsoft Office attachments, they were often hard to navigate or view on the small screen. Cognos 8 Go! Mobile optimizes how Cognos BI information is displayed on a small screen, while maintaining the intuitive interactivity that users are familiar with in their regular BI environment.

Users need access to reports quickly and easily when they aren’t in the office. Go! Mobile fully leverages Cognos 8 BI functionality such as single security and single authoring, so users can only access information they are authorized to see - the very same reports that they are used to accessing in the office. The ability to author a report once that can be consumed by users through the Web, portal, Microsoft Office or BlackBerry devices, reduces the strain and workload on IT. Reports are delivered automatically using the latest in secure trickle-sync technology, ensuring mobile users never have to wait and information can be viewed both on and offline.

Simple Administration

 

Cognos 8 Go! Mobile is administered centrally and installed remotely – allowing easy distribution of functionality and upgrades. It compresses data to deliver a small report footprint and leverages your existing Cognos 8 investment to lighten server requirements. Reports consumed on mobile devices will also leverage existing metadata, roles, workflows used in Cognos 8 Business Intelligence.

Highly Secure

In addition to leveraging existing Cognos 8 security, administrators have the ability to issue a command to remotely wipe content from the device. For offline use Cognos 8 Go! Mobile uses “Lease Key” technology. This technology encrypts the data that is stored on the device for offline/disconnected. For example, a Cognos administrator may set the access to local content in a disconnected situation to 24 hours. After 24 hours of disconnected use, data that is stored locally is locked and becomes inaccessible until the user connects to the Cognos environment and re-authenticates.