Cognos Expands Business Partners Program

Cognos, one of the world's largest and most successful business intelligence companies, announced an expanded Business Partners Program that delivers a wealth of discounted services and partner-only resources for participating Enterprise Integrators and Solutions Providers. Building on its success with large Enterprise Integrators, such as the "Big 5", Cognos is now delivering these benefits to a broader base of partners, enabling them to expand practices, increase revenue opportunities and leverage engagements with Cognos customers.

The Cognos Business Partners Program focuses on the rapid delivery of enterprise-wide business intelligence (BI) solutions to customers worldwide. The Business Partners Program for Enterprise Integrators is designed to meet the needs of large, multi-national management and technology consulting firms that assist Global 2000 corporations in developing and reengineering their business processes. The expanded Cognos Business Partners Program includes:

• Tiered membership structure with increasing benefits;
• Added incentives, education, support and practice development programs;
• Restructured education and multi-level certification process using advanced Web-based technologies for 24x7 availability;
• Opportunity to deliver specialized consulting services to Cognos customers.

Recent additions to the Cognos Business Partners Program for Enterprise Integrators include Answerthink Inc, CIBER Inc, Complete Business Solutions Inc, Kanbay Inc, Mummert + Partners Management Consulting Inc, Neovation Inc and Technology Solutions Corporation. These partners join the vast network of Cognos partners who resell Cognos' industry-leading business intelligence solutions, allowing customers to increase productivity and competitiveness, and speed up time to results.

"Cognos' Business Partners Program provides the education, services and industry-leading solutions needed to quickly enable our customers to create competitive advantage using business intelligence," said Dr. Khalid Mansour, CIBER Inc vice president and National Practice Leader for Business Intelligence. "Our partnership with Cognos establishes our commitment to provide specialized business intelligence solutions that enable faster, coordinated decision making and stronger relationships with customers, employees and suppliers."

"As the recognized leader in business intelligence, Cognos has aligned itself with top professional services organizations to deliver improved customer relationships and better business decisions through enabling technologies and best practices," said David Marmer, Cognos director of strategic business initiatives. "The Cognos Business Partners Program allows our partners to leverage our relationship through exclusive access to our technologies, education, support and methodologies."

The Cognos Business Partners Program for Solution Providers, a companion program to the Enterprise Integrator Program, supports regionally focused partners that provide expert enterprise BI planning and implementation services to both traditional brick-and-mortar and today's click-and mortar businesses. With an emphasis on small-to-medium sized enterprises, these firms are self-sufficient Cognos representatives who are capable of delivering both Cognos products and services to their respective clients. Additionally, Cognos worldwide network of more than 2,900 partners includes OEMs and ASP partners that integrate Cognos' BI solutions with leading Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management and e-commerce applications.

Cognos

Cognos is one of the world's largest and most successful business intelligence companies. Founded in 1969, Cognos does business with 16,000 customers in more than 100 countries around the world. Cognos business intelligence solutions and services are also available from more than 2,900 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at www.cognos.com.

Contact Isabelle Des Chenes, Cognos, 613-738-1440.