Blog: Shawn Rogers

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October 30, 2007

IBM On Demand Coverage

I attended the IBM On Demand event earlier this month at the Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas. The turn out was great over 6,500 attendees. I did several interviews that will appear here in the next day or so the first is with Mel Zeledon Senior Vice President of Global Alliances for Cognos. We covered a wide range of topics including the importance of vertical business intelligence solutions, Business intelligence challenges to companies outside the US, solutions and focus on the SMB markets, the Cognos business intelligence appliance, the Applix acquisition and of course the recent consolidation in the BI market.

Listen to the Podcast

Download the interview here:

Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence, Data Integration, IBM, Information on Demand, Cognos

Posted by Shawn Rogers at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 31, 2007

Gartner Business Intelligence Summit UK

I thought I'd do a bit of a recap on the event so far. Its my first visit to London so everything here is a bit new. I can saw however that there is a certain element of comfort in that I have gotten to see many of my friends at the event. The attendance is great over 600+ and the content is reasonably solid as well. I say reasonably only because they are forced to span the advanced to the elementary in many of the talks so its difficult to keep all of us happy all the time.

Andreas Bitterer kicked things off yesterday and shared his latest research: Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 1Q07. The leaders quadrant continues to contain Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, Oracle and SAS. New comer to the report is Spotfire who was included due to it's "innovative analysis capabilities and positioning".

Microsoft's Alex Payne spoke in a session yesterday to a standing room only audience as he presented the importance of pervasive business intelligence. An interesting point was discussed during the session concerning pricing. The bottom line being that low cost or "cheap pricing" doesn't always mean that a product isn't enterprise quality or feature rich. Alex drove the point home by unveiling the new pricing options available and it caused a few gasps in the room. In short, enterprise ready business intelligence at extremely aggressive pricing has officially arrived.

Several people left the room in a rush after the slide went up, its possible not everyone in the space is pleased with the new pricing?

I hope to have more on the Microsoft piece today.

Posted by at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2007

Cognos Acquires Celequest

This one is a solid match. The technology that Diaz Nesamoney, CEO of Celequest and his team have developed over the past year is fantastic. Celequest has been really thinking outside the box or perhaps I should say "in the box", I blogged about the Celequest Lava Appliance last year in October in Software as a Service - On Demand Dashboards as well as in April with LAVA is a hot new appliance for BI.

The news on the acquisition is that the "Celequest's appliance-based offering will strengthen Cognos' channel opportunities, while Celequests' SaaS and appliance models will boost Cognos' mid-market and departmental offerings."

Congratulations to Celequest and to Cognos for spotting a winner and moving on it.

Posted by at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 28, 2006

Cognos for Dummies

We talk a lot about getting business intelligence into the hands of everyone who needs it. Over the past year or two the vendor community has recognized this need and seems to be tracking toward that goal. But once a technology has been selected who is truly responsible for the adoption? Companies that are successful generally have passionate, creative team leaders who "get it". I had the pleasure of meeting Susan Dean at a Cognos User Conference this year and was struck by her out of the box thinking and attitude. Susan is the Business Intelligence Director at Mölnlycke Health Care US, LLC and she and her team have taken the challenge of business intelligence adoption head on.

Perhaps her best tool is the book her team created titled "Cognos 4 Dummies, The complete guide for using Cognos to make reports, presentations and targeting easier". A 90+ page guide for users to discover Cognos Cheat Sheets, The stuff We Always Forget, Whats Available and Where is it and a bunch more. Its an incredible resource and one that according to Susan was developed out of necessity, her team is small. They needed a way to service the users (100+) without sacrificing their ability to evolve and grow.

From an ROI standpoint Susan's efforts have been rewarded, monthly forecasting has taken huge leaps in time savings up to 75% reduction, they have grown the business intelligence reach into the marketing department and other critical areas of the business. Susan has partnered with Cognos to create a culture that services her business users like clients and Cognos has worked with Susan to match service needs to the business in order to continue the fostering and adoption.

Susan would be mad if I finished this post without sharing the spotlight, she will tell you that this can't be done without a solid and dedicated team and and executive group that gets it as well. Susan also gives credit to Cognos for taking the standard vendor relationship outside the box.

Susan has been known to wear t-shirts promoting BI use at her company and she attends every user group so keep an eye out for her at the next Cognos function.

Keep up the good work Susan!!

UPDATE: 07/24/07 As of today I have sent out 100 copies of the Cognos for Dummies PDF. I am glad you all are enjoying the resource. Again, my thanks to Susan Dean and her team for creating it.

UPDATE: 09/02/07 Follow this link to see an update about distribution - Keep those requests coming!!

UPDATE 11/04/07 Susan Dean the Author of Cognos 4 Dummies stopped by the blog this past week and was stunned to see how many of you are enjoying the resource. She hopes to update it in the near future and will add Cognos 8 information as well. Thanks Susan!!!

UPDATE 1/29/08 File alert the PDF is 5 Meg so if you have requested it and not received it it was probably rejected by your mail server. Feel free to re-request it using a Gmail or Hotmail type account. I've lost track of how many have gone out but as you can see I get 2 -4 requests almost every day.

Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence, Cognos, Susan Dean, Cognos for Dummies

Posted by at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (637)

September 18, 2006

Cognos Goes Mobile with Business Intelligence

Next week Cognos will announce the launch of Cognos 8 Go! Mobile a new product to help mobile business intelligence professionals. I got a sneak peak today and I really liked what I saw. They have stayed away from PDF, HTML and excel based content and actually made the interface similar to desktop interaction complete with drill down and other functions.
The system has 4 main features that will help set it apart:

1. No need to author reports from the device - you can access anything on the fly
   
2. The client is custom designed to allow the interaction I mentioned above (drill down etc)
   
3. It's pretty secure - all content is encrypted and the IT department can even shut access down remotely if the device is lost or stolen.
   
4. Offline functionality - you can use it on a plane and still access the reports that are stored in your device.
   

Posted by at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2006

Business Intelligence should be like a dial tone

Now that's an interesting statement. When we pick up a phone we have an expectation that we can connect to what/who we need. Peter Griffiths Senior Vice President of Cognos believes that BI should be much the same. It should be supported by a single tool/solution, be extremely easy to use and enable collaboration and exchange of information. I have to admit I agree. Cognos is working hard to be the dial tone of business performance and business intelligence. According to Peter over 5 years ago Cognos recognized the need to move toward this level of business service, ReportNet was the cornerstone Cognos 8 now offers a single platform along with a single tool for enterprise wide "pervasive business intelligence".

Our next step is wrap BI around a person....Peter Griffiths, Cognos

Cognos intends to continue their focus in the Global 3500. I asked Peter about the impact of open source and other solutions entering the performance market space and if they will have an effect on Cognos. While these solutions might fit the needs of smaller companies it won't have an effect on who Cognos is serving. Cognos will continue it's dedication to the enterprise and to scalability, along with delivering self service BI to that reaches across the enterprise offering power and simplicity.

Posted by at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

More from Cognos Forum

The expo portion of the event is going great! Over 50 partners are present along with a Demo lounge and access to the Cognos team and products.

Posted by at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Live from Cognos Forum

I'm blogging from the road again and wow its hot in Las Vegas 112 degrees is the latest temperature update. I'd hate to see the air conditioning bill here at the Venetian. However based on my terrible gambling skills I guess I'm contributing to the bill. :)

Anyway, I'm here at the Cognos Forum along with 3000+ IT and business users of Cognos solutions. The event got off to a great start with opening remarks from Rob Ashe President and CEO who focused on pervasive business intelligence and Cognos's ability to deliver performance management accross the enterprise. He also spent sometime showing attendees his desktop and how he uses Cognos to manage the company.

Les Rechan, Chief Operating Officer who joined Cognos about 30 days ago. Changed his title on the fly and declared he's now the Chief Customer Officer and pledged his support to insure the success of Cognos clients.

I've seen some friends already Composite Software, Teradata, TekSouth, Wayne Eckerson form TDWI and of course a bunch of folks from Cognos. This should be a fun event.

Posted by at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)