Highlights

- The center, called the Business Analytics Center of Competency
- Located in Bangalore, India
- Will have over 200 employees
- The new center will focus on a number of areas including Web 2.0 analytics, risk and fraud analytics, financial analytics, customer analytics and enterprise business analytics strategy

[Via Computerworld]

Posted by Doug Henschen:
Copyright: http://intelligent-enterprise.informationweek.com

Cognos stands out by offering in-memory based analysis software TM1 database for now until Microsoft and others catch up.

Can IBM compete against Microsoft's "built-in for free" when organization uses the combination of Microsoft Office, SQL Server and SharePoint. Yet to be seen.

[via InformationWeek]

1. Product is targeted to companies with 100 to 999 users (less than 100 concurrent users)
2. Product uses, existing easy to drag and drop style and Excel for analysis and reporting
3. Easy to install and configure
4. Pricing for Cognos Express starts as low as US$12,000 for one module and five users.
5. Restaurant company Wood Ranch is one of the first users of Cognos Express says that Excel interface to Cognos Xcelerator is a plus
6. Cognos Express products helps the Restaurant chain to pull all the data and conduct modeling and forecasting.

Read more about the IBM Cognos Express
[via Techworld]

Cognos Express is an integrated solution for Reporting, Planning, Dashboarding and Scorecarding studio for small to mid-sized businesses (less than 100 concurrent users).

Cognos Express targes self service business users who can create reports using Web or Microsoft Excel environment.

Express consists of 4 main products

1. IBM Cognos Express Advisor - enables users to create data for analysis, visualizations and conduct 'what if' scenario modeling.
2. IBM Congos Express Xcelerator - transforms Excel spreadsheets for Performance Planning and multidimensional analysis
3. IBM Cognos Express Reporter - empowers business users to modify and author reprots. It allows to access any type of data, Relational, OLAP, or desktop files and deliver reports via Web, Portal, Email, Excel, or pdf.
4. IBM Cognos Express Manager - Configure and administer Express product lineup. Choose data source, add users, view logs in once central location.

Web Interfaces
1. Cognos Express Manager
2. Cognos Connection
3. Cognos Administration
4. Query Studio
5. Report Studio
6. Advisor
7. Xcelerator

Windows Interfaces
1. Framework Manager
2. Data Advisor
3. Xcelerator

Click here for Demo of IBM Cognos Express products
[via DataClarity]

Cognos Connection
Cognos Connection is a Web portal, provides single access point of entry for querying (Query Studio), analyzing (Analysis Studio), and for creating reports (Report Studio), scorecards, managing events (Event Studio), and administering users (Cognos Administration).

Cognos Connection includes portlets to create simple dashboard to include your company URL, link to Report Studio reports and RSS feeds. Cognos Connection integrates with your company’s existing portal services like SAP Enterprise, and IBM Websphere portals.



Oracle EPM Workspace
EPM Workspace is a Web-based DHTML zero-footprint client that provides the user interface for viewing and interacting with content created using Reporting and Analysis Authoring studios, and enables users to create queries against relational and multidimensional data sources.

Can publish, view and access Reports, Webforms created from Financial Reporting, Interactive Reporting, Production Reporting, Web Analysis, Performance Scorecard, Financial Management and Planning, Profitability and Cost Management, BI Answers, BI Dashboards, Siebel Marketing and more. Schedule enables you to manage jobs and schedule batches and events for automated processing.

Workspace Page, is a page made up of content from multiple sources including documents, URL's, and other content types. Workspace can be integrated to import Microsoft Reporting Services Reports.



Bottomline
Oracle EPM Workspace provides much more integration with Oracle's Business Intelligence and Analytics suites than Cognos Connection. EPM workspace matches all the functionality of Cognos connection like authentication service, Event and Job service, Session Manager service, Usage tracking, Managing calendars, Job Queuing and more.