IBM Launches Cognos Express to Mid-Market

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Following recent research showing many small to medium-sized enterprises are relying on gut feel, rather than hard data to make decisions (August 2009), IBM has introduced a new all-in-one version of its business intelligence tool. Called Cognos Express, it is specifically designed for use by SMEs, with rapid deployment, analysis and reporting.

“It needed to be simple, intuitive and less sophisticated with rapid implementation,” says Ged Simmons, country manager, UK, IBM Business Intelligence and Performance Management. This follows findings that many companies struggle even with standard technical descriptions for the core activities of business intelligence.

“What we’ve found is that some of the best users of Cognos are in the mid-market, often because one person has got interested in it and seen the potential of BI and performance management for the business,” he says. Cognos Express is shipped with pre-configured business analytics and planning capabilities.

Integration with existing infrastructure is claimed to require only a few hours in order to put data feeds in place. Self-service then allows users to build reports, analyses, dashboards and multi-dimensional plans for themselves, rather than waiting on their IT department.