Cognos 8 Business Intelligence Now Generally Available For Customers Worldwide

– Decision makers across the enterprise gain a more consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance –

OTTAWA and BURLINGTON, November 18, 2005- Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced the immediate general availability of Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, the industry’s first solution that delivers complete BI capabilities in a single product, on a single Web Services-based architecture.

Today’s CIOs and business leaders require a BI solution that delivers a complete view of business issues for high value decision-making on a global scale. Cognos 8 BI is a groundbreaking product that addresses this need by providing decision makers at all levels of the enterprise with a consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance. As a single product that easily integrates into existing infrastructures with multiple systems and data sources, Cognos 8 BI is a robust technology foundation for BI standardization and corporate performance management.

BI is a top strategic priority for organizations worldwide. In a recent Gartner EXP CIO survey, BI was listed as No. 2 on the 2005 CIO top 10 technology priority list, up from No. 10 in 2004*. IDC's recent European Market Watch survey also ranks BI as No. 2 on the ‘CIO To-Do List’ for 2006.**

Showcased to more than 20,000 decision makers worldwide, Cognos 8 BI is the only solution to deliver a simplified, zero-footprint interface for all users, authors and administrators. Easy to integrate, deploy and use, Cognos 8 BI delivers a simplified BI environment that drives high user adoption and speeds decision - making with relevant, actionable information in the right language and format. Role-based licensing provides flexibility for customers to quickly implement the capabilities they require as they need them.

Cognos 8 BI has also gained overwhelmingly positive reviews from industry analyst thought leaders since its market introduction:

AMR Research
“The release of Cognos 8 BI continues to raise the stakes for BI standardization…Cognos’ SOA design aids functionality and agility.”¹

Bloor Research
“Cognos 8 has two big advantages over its competitors: it has a unified architecture, which not all of its rivals do; and it has Event Studio, which is a major differentiator.”²

Nucleus Research
“With this new release of its business intelligence platform, Cognos is making it easier for companies to standardize on its tools to handle all aspects of business analytics, reporting, and measurement.” ³

Ventana Research
“We believe the release of Cognos 8 BI strengthens Cognos’ market position. The product is a strong option for organizations seeking to standardize their BI product portfolio. With its broad set of functions, tighter integration and new capabilities, Cognos 8 is a strong competitor.”¹¹

These published reports address BI standardization; competitive differentiators, the product’s Services Oriented Architecture and key new features such as extended open data access, dimensional reporting and dynamic dashboards, comparative analysis against multi-dimensionally modeled relational or OLAP data, event management and process integration, and actionable scorecards.

“The market paradigm shift underscored by the industry research and led by Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is the latest phase in the evolution of BI from a departmental ‘nice-to-have’ to a strategic ‘must-have’ solution,” said Rob Ashe, president and CEO, Cognos. “ Cognos 8 BI delivers a single platform that goes beyond mere ‘suite integration’ by providing the complete spectrum of capabilities enterprises need to achieve their BI goals. It’s a modern BI platform tailored to deliver the proven reliability our customers enjoy and our prospects seek.”

Network Computing Magazine recently awarded Cognos BI its Editor’s Choice in a rigorous competitive review of leading vendors. Featured in the Oct. 13, 2005 cover story of Network Computing, the review cites Cognos BI’s excellence in data presentation and web-based reporting capabilities as key to its selection. See: http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2005/1013.html.

Cognos is positioned in the Gartner “leaders” quadrant for both the CPM Suites, 2005 and Enterprise Business Intelligence Suites and Platforms, 2H04 reports²². See: http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2005/1107.html

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.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted October 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendor’s measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

*Source: Gartner “BI Software Becoming a Top Priority for CIOs,” by Colleen Graham, March 2, 2005.

**Source: IDC European Market Watch Survey Q3 2005.

¹AMR Research Outlook: Cognos 8 BI: Another Example of Why Architecture Matters, Dennis Gaughan, John Hagerty, Ryan Garvey, Sept. 13, 2005.

²Bloor Research: Unification versus integration, Philip Howard, Sept. 23, 2005.

³NUCLEUS RESEARCH, Research Note: Cognos 8, Sept. 2005.

¹¹Cognos Offers a Sneak Peek at Version 8: September BI Suite Release Tightens Integration and Unifies UI, by Eric Rogge, Ventana Research, July 15, 2005.

²² Source: "Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2005” N. Rayner, F. Buytendijk, L. Geishecker November 4, 2005 and Magic Quadrant for Enterprise BI Suites and Platforms, 2H04 H. Dresner, B. Hostmann, F. Buytendijk 29 November 2004. To read the full reports visit:

http://www.cognos.com/news/analyst_reviews.html