Cognos Recognized for Outstanding
Customer Service

– Global Customer Service Organization to Receive Finalist Recognition Certificate at 2005 International Business Awards –

Ottawa, Ontario and Burlington Massachusetts, May 18, 2005— Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced The International Business Awards, also known as the Stevie Awards, named Cognos a finalist in the Best Customer Service Organization category. Cognos Global Customer Service will receive a Finalist Recognition certificate for Best Customer Service Organization at this year's International Business Awards in New York City.

This year, The International Business Awards received over 600 nominations from organizations all over the globe. The Stevies are the only global, all-encompassing business awards program honoring great performances in the workplace and are hailed as “the business world’s own Oscars” by the New York Post.

The mission of the Cognos Global Services organization is to “Help our Customers achieve the Next Level of Business Performance by deploying Cognos Solutions.” Cognos has embarked on an ongoing strategy to provide intimate, customized support, consulting and training to over 23,000 global customers. As part of its Customer Service strategy, Cognos has put in place a number of initiatives in the following areas: Global Customer Support (including Cognos Support Accelerator (CSA)), Global Consulting Services, and Global Education Services (GES).

“Providing global enterprises with visibility into their organization to make more informed decisions requires a world class customer service organization,” said David Achtemichuk, Vice-President, Global Customer Services, Cognos. “We have put in place these valuable initiatives to help our customers in every way we can. We are dedicated to helping them succeed.”

Global Customer Support
Cognos’ customer support Web site (http://support.cognos.com/support) has garnered nine awards in six years for excellence in Web-based Support. It was recently recognized as one of the Ten Best Web Support Sites of 2005 by the Association of Support Professionals (ASP), an international organization dedicated to the advancement of the technical support profession. Extensive knowledge base and documentation resources deflect over 30% of cases and provide customers with access to solutions and other documents for self-service support. Moreover, 60% of Cognos’ support cases now come through the Web. This is now our customer’s preferred method for case logging - a testament to the value of this site.

Cognos Support Accelerator
Cognos Support Accelerator (CSA) is a transparent and secure web-based service that automates the timely and accurate collection of diagnostic information for support cases. This unique diagnostic tool greatly reduces a support case lifecycle by shortening the time required for the discovery phase, where information about a customer’s complex environments is collected. With CSA, customers realize up to 40% faster case resolution and receive more personalized service from Cognos Global Customer Support.

Global Consulting Services
Cognos Consulting Services strive to provide customers with global, certified, experienced consultants. Cognos provides certification and training courses for its consultants and authorized partners. Customers can be assured certified Consultants have successfully completed exams that measure their expertise of Cognos products and applications. Cognos offers standard Methodologies to guide customers through the processes of their various Cognos projects. These Delivery Methods, published as Implementation Guides for Enterprise Business Intelligence, Enterprise Planning, Scorecarding and Performance Foundation, explain the process, steps and tools the consultants use when defining, planning, designing, building and deploying customer’s performance management solutions.

Global Education Services (GES)
Global Education Services is responsible for developing high quality classroom and self-study courses for their customers. Based on an independent study, research has shown that Cognos courses receive over a 90% satisfaction rating from their customers. Cognos e-Learning has won numerous awards over the years including Excellence last month in an international competition. In addition to their standard offerings, Cognos provides customers with customization options to meet individual needs and a SCORM compliant CBT that runs on the customer’s Learning Management System.

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.