BURLINGTON, MA, June 17, 2002—Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSE: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI), today announced that Cognos® DecisionStream®, one of the industry's leading data integration solutions, is today at work in some of the world's largest and most innovative companies. Among the many companies worldwide using Cognos DecisionStream are travel organization, AAA; children's programming icon, Sesame Workshop; North American healthcare company, Aspect Medical; and international courier company, DHL Worldwide Express. They rely on Cognos DecisionStream to integrate their disparate information sources into one consistent view of their organization.

Today with 900 global customers after less than three years on the market, Cognos DecisionStream allows the rapid integration of data from ERP systems, relational databases, web-based transactional systems and other operational data stores, creating a rich, dependable information platform for delivering business intelligence solutions. The powerful extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) solution gives decision makers a reliable view of corporate data and business measurements, enabling more collaborative decision-making and providing a solid foundation for Corporate Performance Management (CPM).

Delivering a complete reporting data foundation based on a dimensional framework, Cognos DecisionStream allows organizations to automate fundamental requirements for a dimensional reporting environment, such as being the first data integration tool to completely automate dimensional management, including slowly changing dimensions. Capabilities such as these make Cognos DecisionStream a true leader in delivering enterprise data warehouse solutions.

Leading global organizations using Cognos DecisionStream to drive competitive advantage include:

Aspect Medical
Aspect Medical (NASDAQ: ASPM) is recognized as a pioneer and global market leader in brain monitoring, having led the way to develop proprietary technologies that directly measure these effects and ultimately improve the quality and cost effectiveness of patient care. Before implementing Cognos DecisionStream, critical data was stored on different servers or in Access databases and Excel spreadsheets. Each report quantified key metrics such as shipments in a different way, resulting in different answers to important questions depending on the report used.

"We needed to consolidate our data in one place and validate and report on it using a uniform corporate reporting tool," explains George Papamitrou, director of information services, Aspect Medical Systems. "Using Cognos DecisionStream to unite disparate data sources across the organization, including complaint, financial and manufacturing databases, as well as a Siebel CRM application, we have created a consistent and unified data infrastructure that allows us to see across all operations improve the decision-making process."

AAA
Since it began nearly a century ago, AAA and its Canadian affiliate, CAA, have grown into North America's largest motoring and leisure travel organization. To stay on top in an increasingly competitive industry, AAA Travel, one of the association's four business lines, has deployed an extranet business intelligence solution from Cognos to consolidate, analyze, and report on critical business data collected from more than 1,200 retail travel locations throughout the United States and Canada.

AAA Travel is using Cognos DecisionStream® to extract data from existing disparate data sources. "Our previous data consolidation process didn't offer the kind of analysis capabilities that we required," said Glen Mac Donell, Manager, Data Management and Analysis, AAA National Office. "Since implementing this solution, the savings in staff time is almost the equivalent of adding an additional staff person." With less time spent consolidating, Mac Donell's staff has more time to focus on business analysis and forecasting.

Sesame Workshop
"We needed a solution that would deliver immediate information about the global performance of our brands. With Cognos DecisionStream we have built a series of integrated data marts that allow us to look at our whole company and see the relationships between the different areas," said Sherra Pierre, vice president of information systems, Sesame Workshop. "EIA Inc. implemented a Cognos solution that gives us the ability to look at every aspect of a character like Elmo — from production to marketing to license revenues — and determine the global viability of that character. You can't put a price on our ability to understand the strength of our brand and hasten our time to market."

DHL Worldwide Express
DHL Worldwide Express, the market leader of the global air and ground express industry, uses Cognos DecisionStream in its Nordic operations to extract logistical data from a central database containing details of transactions involving over 250,000 customers worldwide. Previously, DHL Nordic employed a number of different methods to obtain this data, resulting in inconsistencies and inaccuracies in reports. DHL Nordic expects the deployment of the Cognos solution to radically transform business processes by creating a unified, international data infrastructure and to help achieve the consistency needed for fast, effective decision-making.

"DHL Nordic uses Cognos DecisionStream to extract logistical data from a central database containing details of transactions involving over 250,000 customers worldwide. Previously, DHL Nordic employed a number of different methods to obtain this data, resulting in inconsistencies and inaccuracies in reports," said Carsten Bjaaland, IT Director at DHL Nordic. "DHL Nordic expects the deployment of the Cognos solution to radically transform business processes by creating a unified, international data infrastructure and to help achieve the consistency needed for fast, effective decision-making."

"Cognos is committed to delivering success to our customers. Today's organizations demand a low total cost of ownership solution that can integrate and unit disparate data sources. As this leading companies have discovered, Cognos DecisionStream delivers," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president, Cognos.