QualChoice of Arkansas Standardizes on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

– Leading healthcare insurance provider taps Cognos partner Amitech Solutions for business expertise and technology implementation –

BURLINGTON, MA, February 6, 2006- Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced that QualChoice of Arkansas, the state’s premier healthcare insurance provider, has standardized on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for its BI platform and data warehouse.

QualChoice of Arkansas needed a robust and standard approach for managing the vast amount of information required to run the health insurance company. The company selected Cognos 8 BI, the only BI product to deliver the complete range of BI capabilities on a single, proven architecture. QualChoice will use Cognos 8 BI as the platform to build an enterprise-wide data warehouse to hold all information relating to medical claims, provider contracts, financials, and business operations. With Cognos 8 BI, QualChoice of Arkansas can replace the numerous and siloed Excel spreadsheets and SQL queries with one single product that can provide an accurate, consolidated view of the company’s performance.

“Having Cognos 8 BI as our standard BI platform in place will help us better serve our members, brokers, providers, and employers,” said Michael Stock, COO and CFO, QualChoice/QCA Health Plan, Inc.
“Maintaining all of our information in one warehouse will preserve data quality and increase efficiency of processes. Once deployed, we will be able to monitor our ongoing business operations, make informed decisions, and respond even more quickly to any issues or changes.”

Amitech Solutions, a Cognos Silver Technology Partner with deep expertise in the healthcare industry, is working with QualChoice of Arkansas on its business intelligence strategy and the Cognos 8 BI implementation.

“The healthcare business is extremely complex and involves integrating multiple sources of information related to many stakeholders,” said Amit Bhagat, Principal Consultant, Amitech Solutions. “We bring a positive track record helping healthcare organizations quickly capture their business knowledge into a technology environment that is easy to use. Cognos 8 BI’s proven, flexible, and scalable environment is an ideal product for QualChoice because it will quickly meet its current data warehouse needs today, and provide a platform to manage the company’s performance as it continues to grow in the future.”

Cognos 8 BI is a groundbreaking product that provides 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.

“Cognos 8 BI puts the power of knowledge into the hands of any business user, enabling smarter and more informed business decisions,” said Dave Laverty, senior vice president of marketing, Cognos. “Leading organizations like QualChoice of Arkansas recognize the value of having all enterprise information readily available to businesses in a simple, flexible environment. In addition, collaborating with Amitech Solutions on the product implementation will ensure QualChoice of Arkansas receives the utmost in healthcare experience combined with the industry’s leading BI product.”

Cognos is a recognized leader in delivering business intelligence and corporate performance management solutions for the insurance industry. Over 1,000 financial services institutions worldwide use Cognos, including 4 of the top 5 global insurance companies. In addition to QualChoice of Arkansas, other insurance customers include AAA Life, PMI Mortgage Insurance, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) – Insurance division, and Prudential UK. For more information about Cognos solutions for the insurance industry, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/insurance/index.html.

About QualChoice of Arkansas:
QualChoice of Arkansas, Inc. is a not-for-profit Arkansas-based health services company that offers a variety of managed care products and benefit administration services to its members. With over 80,000 members, QualChoice is the second largest managed care company in Arkansas. QualChoice offers a comprehensive line of HMO and POS plans as well as certain third party administrative ("TPA"), dental, vision and pharmacy products. Membership includes large and small group commercial members and state employees. Members are located across the entire state with concentrated membership in large metropolitan markets. We believe our competitive advantage is, and will continue to be, our ability to offer competitively priced managed care products with superior customer service. For more information on QualChoice, visit http://www.qcark.com.

About Amitech Solutions:
Amitech Solutions is a leading provider of data warehousing, data integration, business intelligence, IT consulting, and IT outsourcing services to medium and large corporations in healthcare, finance, and insurance industries.

Amitech Solutions collaborates with its clients to increase business performance and operational efficiency by developing and deploying customized IT solutions to meet their unique needs. Amitech Solutions’ highly skilled technical consultants in leading edge technologies enable our customers to create a more responsive business, while leveraging existing technologies and assets, and lowering total cost of ownership. With deep knowledge in Cognos business intelligence platform Amitech Solutions enables its customers to access consistent, accurate information at the right time by combining the best of OLAP and traditional business intelligence tools to provide an integrated set of technologies that unlocks valuable information trapped in operational systems and turns them into actionable strategies. For more information, visit the Amitech Solutions Web site at http://www.amitechsolutions.com.

About Cognos:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management, delivers software and services that help companies drive, monitor and understand corporate performance.

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.