BURLINGTON, MA, September 20, 2000 —Cognos^® (Nasdaq: COGN; TSE:CSN), the world's largest and most successful business intelligence company, today announced the purchase of NoticeCast Software Ltd., based in Twickenham, United Kingdom, for US $15 million in a mixture of cash and stock. NoticeCast's Enterprise Event Management software monitors business processes and delivers real-time business intelligence notifications to business users across the enterprise via e-mail on their personal computer, hand-held or wireless device.

While other notification technology delivers consumer-related information such as weather, traffic, and static business reports, the Cognos and NoticeCast^TM team will provide automatic notifications of business performance and events. This solution will automatically notify business users of key events and performance issues wherever they may be. Cognos customers across the "extended enterprise", including customers, suppliers and business partners, will be able to react in seconds to key business events and changes in business performance. Furthermore, users will be able to understand the impact of these events to the overall performance of the business enterprise through Cognos business intelligence.

"Cognos has the vision and approach to true, real-time enterprise business intelligence that makes them the ideal partner to acquire our technology," said Richard Turner, co-founder of NoticeCast. "The integration of our enterprise event management technology into the Cognos business intelligence platform will have a profound impact on customers' ability to manage business performance with greater results in less time than ever before."

"We are committed to making our customers the best decision-makers in the world, and the NoticeCast acquisition accelerates our time to market to integrate event management and notification technology into our business intelligence platform," said Ron Zambonini, Cognos president and chief executive officer. "Only Cognos has the breadth and depth of technology required by large, global enterprises to work at 'e-speed'.

"The new Cognos solution will keep thousands of business users across the enterprise, as well as the organization's customers, suppliers and business partners, aware of real-time business activities. They will be empowered to take immediate action at the point of decision, regardless of whether they are sitting at their desk, the airport, or a lounge chair on the beach."

Cognos will account for this acquisition as a purchase. Upon closing, this acquisition is expected to result in a charge against after-tax income of approximately US $3 million, or 3 cents per share, as a write-off of in-process research and development under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Certain statements made in this press release that are not based on historical information are forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to our expectations concerning future benefits to be derived from this acquisition. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. There can be no guarantee that future results will turn out as expected. Factors that may cause such differences include, but are not limited to: our ability to identify selective acquisition candidates of other products or businesses that we believe are complementary to ours; successful integration of the acquired product or business into our operations; retention of key acquired personnel; development of new technologies and the commercialization of those technologies in a highly competitive marketplace which is subject to rapid technological change; loss of rights to, or unauthorized use by others of, the intellectual property; unanticipated expenses, events or circumstances; and the ability to appropriately value the acquired in-process research and development. A detailed discussion of each of these risk factors is contained under the heading "Certain Factors That May Affect Future Results" in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.