Nexans Switzerland Standardizes on Cognos for Enterprise Reporting

– Integrates data warehouse and SAP BW platform to improve customer service and overall performance –

BOSTON, MA— May 17, 2005 - Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced at SAPPHIRE® ’05 that Nexans, the world leader in the cable industry, is standardizing on Cognos ReportNet™ in the Swiss region.

Sales engineers, project managers and credit control managers at Nexans Switzerland will be able to view and analyze all pertinent sales and customer information via one interface. In addition, they will have access to general information such as overall sales figures or daily sales numbers using a single reporting process. Prior to this, they had to collate this data from two different data sources, which often led to inaccurate information being used to make business decisions.

Through the sales portal, Cognos ReportNet will give staff across the whole group a single view over their operations by gathering data from Nexans’ two main data sources. The data warehouse, which collates data from a variety of software systems including product, customer, supplier, invoice, and stock control information, and SAP BW, which delivers data about financial and debtor accounting, human resource management and other areas.

Nexans selected Cognos ReportNet for two key reasons. As a Web-based tool, it enables users to access reporting information from any location at any time. The solution is also multilingual, so French and German speakers can run or view reports in their own language, avoiding any confusion and saving time in translation.

“During the evaluation phase, we quickly realized that Cognos ReportNet was the most suitable product to help us move forward in our reporting,” said Cédric Zbinden, project manager at Nexans Switzerland. “This was based on its Web-based capabilities and its SAP certification, guaranteeing seamless integration of SAP and non-SAP sources – something that was critical to our business.”

“There are also financial benefits in rolling out Cognos ReportNet. As well as building on our previous investments in SAP and the data warehouse, it helps eliminate duplication. This means existing data can be used more extensively, providing a good return on previous investments. Overall, it supports our philosophy of putting the customer first at all times and in all processes,” he added.

“Delivering on customer needs and efficient company performance are both very important to Nexans, so standardizing on one enterprise reporting solution will really help to achieve this,” said Ad Voogt, senior vice president of Europe at Cognos. “In rolling out Cognos ReportNet, all staff have an up-to-date and comprehensive view of their customer profiles at any time. This means they can be more reactive to customer needs without the risk of losing sight of any aspects of a project, leading to a faster and more successful outcome.”

Based in Paris, Nexans develops, manufactures and distributes cable products to the energy, telecommunications and industrial sectors across 65 countries. Nexans Switzerland already uses Cognos® PowerPlay and Impromptu to analyze data from the data warehouse.

Cognos will be exhibiting at SAPPHIRE® ’05 (booths # 1263 and #1604 B), May 17 – 19, in Boston. Cognos will showcase Cognos ReportNet, a scalable and open Web-based reporting solution to deploy business intelligence across the enterprise, completely leveraging your investment in SAP Business Information Warehouse and non-SAP applications.

About Nexans:

About Cognos:

Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage - Corporate Performance Management (CPM) - achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale. Our integrated CPM solution helps customers drive performance through planning; monitor performance through scorecarding; and understand performance through business intelligence.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence and performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.