Cognos Software Helps Create Award-Winning Data Warehousing Application for Browning-Ferris Industries
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Cognos announced at the 4th Annual Internet/Intranet Application Development Conference and Expo that an implementation using its business intelligence tools, PowerPlay and Impromptu, by Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (BFI) has been chosen as the winner of the 1998 ADT Innovator's Award in the data warehousing category. The ADT Innovator Awards, established in 1994 and presented today, honor organizations who demonstrate unique and innovative concepts for enhancing productivity through the use of technology.

"This is a perfect example of how Cognos' market-leading business intelligence software consistently helps our customers achieve the highest return on their data warehouse investment, by providing their users simple-to-use tools that allow them to make better business decisions," said Alan Rottenberg, Cognos' senior vice president, marketing and business strategies. "Every day thousands of Cognos customers achieve success by enhancing productivity across the enterprise and gaining competitive advantage through innovative use of our business intelligence tools."

"When we created our data warehouse, we invested time and energy to ensure we did it in a way that would allow us to get maximum ongoing value from the information it contains," said Mike Perroni, BFI's divisional vice president, Systems Development and Support. "We could not have built an application that derives as much value as we do from our data warehouse without the help of Cognos' software and world-class support organization. Cognos' tools enable us to produce reports in hours instead of weeks and months, increasing our productivity and saving time and resources."

ADT Magazine, which focuses on development solutions for corporate software managers, examines hundreds of case studies each year to select its coveted awards. "BFI created an exceptional example worthy of this year's Innovator Award," said Mike Bucken, editor of ADT. "BFI saw a challenge and was able to overcome it using innovative technology. This is a textbook illustration of how companies can efficiently manage and utilize their complex data warehouses."

BFI named its data warehouse InfoMART to reflect its new Multi-dimensional Analysis, Reporting and Trending capabilities. Cognos' PowerPlay and Impromptu (for multidimensional analysis, and query and reporting, respectively) were deployed in an environment including Cognos' Axiant and PowerHouse (for visual application development of client/server systems, and application development for midrange systems, respectively), LBMS's System Engineer CASE tool for data modeling, Prism's tool set for storing metadata, Cobol for extraction programs on the MVS platform, C for loading programs on AIX, Oracle for DBMS, IBM RS6000 hardware and Vality's data cleansing tools.

Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. is a leading North American waste service company, provides collection, recycling and disposal services for residential, commercial, industrial and medical waste.

For more information, visit Cognos' World Wide Web site at http://www.cognos.com.