Cognos(R) Unveils Advanced Enterprise Server
7 December 1998
Cognos(R) Unveils Advanced Enterprise Server as Foundation For OLAP Applications Powerplay(R) Enterprise Server Centralizes and Unifies Deployment;
Supports All Users, With Multiple Interfaces, Multiple OLAP Sources, From a
Single Platform
BURLINGTON, Mass., Dec 7 -- Cognos
, the leading strategic vendor of enterprise
business intelligence solutions, today unveiled the PowerPlay(R) Enterprise
Server, which delivers unprecedented ease-of-deployment for enterprise OLAP
(online analytical processing) applications. Available for customer testing
now, it is the only OLAP server that can support and deploy Web, Windows and
mobile users from a single, centrally administered server. PowerPlay
Enterprise Server is unique in its ability to use OLAP data produced by
PowerPlay and by a comprehensive range of third-party products, including
Microsoft, Arbor/Hyperion, IBM, NCR, and others through OLE DB for OLAP. The
PowerPlay Enterprise Server architecture is the foundation for a new Web-based
managed OLAP reporting module, to be delivered in 1999.
"With PowerPlay Enterprise Server, Cognos introduces the first
architecture that makes it straightforward and cost-effective to support all
types of OLAP users from a single server," said Rob Rose, Cognos' vice
president of product marketing. "This is true whether they are casual or
power users; Windows users in Finance or Web-browser users in Marketing;
whether they are 'road warriors,' or users that never unplug their machines
from the corporate network. For the first time, all of these users can be
served from the same centralized implementation of PowerPlay, offering the
widest reach of any OLAP offering. The impact in terms of reducing the cost
of deployment is tremendous."
The IT requirement that no OLAP product has handled well, until now, is
for a product that offers one-step deployment and that still meets a complete
range of user needs. With PowerPlay Enterprise Server, all users can connect
to the same centrally deployed application, using the self-administered,
downloadable client options suited to their requirements. Well suited to WAN
deployments, PowerPlay Enterprise Server is designed to minimize network
traffic. PowerPlay Enterprise Server can be installed out of one box, pointed
at one or more multidimensional OLAP cubes, and it delivers instant OLAP
reporting for mainstream business users.
The PowerPlay Enterprise Server architecture is built on the strengths of
PowerPlay Server Web Edition, already proven in large-scale deployments. The
product provides a distributed, "n-tier" architecture, and supports NT and
UNIX, for unlimited scalability. A Java console allows administrators to
optimize load-balancing settings to best support all of their users with the
available servers. For enterprise deployments, PowerPlay's cubes of
multidimensional data can contain up to 50 million consolidated rows and
500,000 categories of data. PowerPlay re-asserts its status as the "universal
OLAP client" with an ability to serve all users - Windows, Web and mobile -
and multiple data sources.
Phase Three of a Four-Phase Strategy
Phase one in Cognos' PowerPlay Enterprise strategy was the delivery (July
1998) of a scaleable server architecture with PowerPlay Server Web Edition
6.0, for mass deployment of OLAP exploration and analysis across the Web. It
introduced load balancing and fail-over as part of a distributed architecture.
Phase two (September 1998) was the introduction of features in PowerPlay 6.0
geared to enterprise OLAP reporting and report authoring. Phase three,
announced today, consists of PowerPlay Enterprise Server, and introduces a
server-based architecture as the foundation of future releases of PowerPlay.
The server supports several deployment options for maximum flexibility. The
final phase in Cognos' enterprise strategy for PowerPlay is still to come and
slated for customer testing by mid-1999. It will introduce a Web-based
managed reporting solution for OLAP-style performance reports, which will
complement Cognos' recently introduced managed reporting solution for status-
style reports, Cognos Impromptu(R) Web Reports.
PowerPlay Enterprise, in customer testing now, includes the PowerPlay
Enterprise Server and several deployment options, including:
-- Zero-footprint browser-based access to PowerPlay Enterprise Server, for
maximum deployability and an unprecedented degree of interactivity
within a pure HTML OLAP solution;
-- a thin-client for Windows, geared to business analysts, report authors
and report consumers, that leverages the value of centralized server
deployment and processing for lower total cost of ownership; and,
-- a personal server option that works with the Windows client, so that
mobile users can access cubes and get the OLAP functionality they have
come to expect from PowerPlay while disconnected from the network.
To facilitate deployment, PowerPlay Enterprise Server provides centralized
management for updates of client software and automated cube synchronization
for mobile users. To protect previous investments and experience, PowerPlay
Enterprise Server uses existing PowerPlay reports and multidimensional data
cubes, including third-party cubes, and the user experience of the Windows
PowerPlay client will remain the same.
Drill-Though Services
OLAP's multidimensional data is formatted to allow business managers to
slice-and-dice and analyze data according to factors that affect their
businesses. OLAP and relational data are complementary, and Cognos' PowerPlay
is tightly integrated with Cognos Impromptu servers to allow users to drill
through to additional and related data, seamlessly, using Cognos' acclaimed
Analyze-then-Query(TM) approach.
Pricing and Availability
PowerPlay Enterprise and the modular client options are in customer
testing now, and scheduled to be generally available by February 1999.
Pricing will be announced closer to general availability.
Cognos
Cognos is the leading strategic supplier of enterprise business
intelligence tools and the first company to announce the sale of one million
seats of business intelligence software (November 6, 1998). Cognos business
intelligence solutions allow users to easily extract critical information
through data access, reporting, analysis and forecasting. Cognos products
consistently deliver the highest productivity gains to the user, the most
manageable solution to the administrator, and the fastest return on investment
(ROI) to the enterprise.
Cognos also develops, markets and supports software tools for enterprise
application development.
Founded in 1969, Cognos is a publicly-traded company with offices around
the world. U.S. operations for the company are headquartered in Burlington,
Massachusetts. For more information, visit Cognos' World Wide Web site at
http://www.cognos.com.
COGNOS, POWERPLAY and IMPROMPTU are registered trademarks of Cognos Inc.
Analyze-then-Query is a trademark of Cognos. Other products mentioned in this
document are registered, trademarked, or service marked by their respective
owners.
Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate
and product information are available on Cognos' World Wide Web (WWW) site at
http://www.cognos.com, and at PR Newswire's site at http://www.prnewswire.com.