BURLINGTON, MA, July 26, 2000—Cognos^® (Nasdaq:COGN; TSE:CSN), the world's largest and most successful business intelligence (BI) company, today announced it has been recognized as having one of the "Top Ten Best Web Support Sites of 2000." The prestigious industry award for online customer support excellence is awarded by the Association of Support Professionals (ASP), an international organization dedicated to the advancement of the technical support profession.

Launched earlier this year, the multi-award-winning Cognos EnterpriseServices Portal provides Cognos customers with a complete, integrated set of consulting, training, and support services, offered 24-7, worldwide. The highly flexible and fully customized service helps global customers achieve maximum business impact with their Cognos BI solutions in the shortest time possible.

The annual "Top Ten" award honors customer support Web sites on the basis of quality of site navigation, knowledgebase content, interactive features, personalization, and the overall success overcoming major development challenges.

Cognos shares this year's award with information technology leaders Dell, Hewlett Packard, Iomega, Sybase and Symantec. A panel of customer support experts evaluated 65 different sites worldwide, which provide online support for everything from software, PC hardware, corporate applications, and online services.

"The Cognos EnterpriseServices Portal is a clear example of online customer support innovation and excellence. Our membership recognizes the power and importance of delivering online support to the user community. Cognos and our other winners are driving some of the most sophisticated advances in the Web support field," said Jeffery Tarter, executive director, The Association of Support Professionals.

"Being named by the ASP to the 'Top Ten' Best Web Support Sites is a tremendous honor and a huge credit to Cognos' dedicated and talented staff of customer support professionals. Cognos is an organization dedicated not only to delivering industry-leading solutions but being a total business partner to our customer. The Cognos EnterpriseServices Portal is a powerful extension of that ongoing vision," said Donna Sparks, vice president of global customer support and education services for Cognos.

The "Top Ten" award represents the second Web Support award received by Cognos in the past four months. The Cognos EnterpriseServices Portal was honored in April with the WebStar Service Award for delivering superior online Web site services to its customers. The WebStar award is given annually by the California-based Software Support Professionals Association's Supportgate.com.