Al Esayi Electronics Standardizes On
Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

– Cognos partner BSG accelerates deployment to
Matsushita brands distributor –

BURLINGTON, Mass., May 15, 2006— Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that Al Esayi Electronics Co. has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence as its standard BI platform. Al Esayi Electronics Co. is the sole agent/distributor for Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited of Japan, the world renowned manufacturer of Panasonic brands.

Al Esayi Electronics is a global organization operating among several business units in diverse geographies. In a competitive, changing environment, the company needed to be able to spot trends, measure performance, evaluate alternatives, and make decisions quickly. Al Esayi’s disparate reporting applications and spreadsheets contributed to significant data definition and integrity issues, as well as a lack of confidence in the numbers among its user community. The company recently completed a complex ERP migration to the Movex ERP system and wanted to increase its return on IT investment by providing better visibility for decision making and financial and operational performance management.

“Cognos allows us to answer our most important business questions with up-to-the-minute information, and offers a framework for enabling a complete performance management process across Al Esayi,” said Samir Alwani, IT Director and Group IT Committee Chief, Al Esayi Electronics. “With Cognos 8 BI, we can leverage our existing technology investments while providing managers across the organization with both the high-level view of the operations and the ability to drill down into the details to analyze underlying problems. By standardizing on Cognos, we can benefit from an advanced technical architecture, endorsed by leading analyst organizations, and deliver a simplified BI environment that improves user adoption and enables better decision making.”

Originally, the company attempted to achieve these objectives with competitive offerings. However, Al Esayi was frustrated by too many non-integrated products that were difficult to administer and complex to use. As a result, Al Esayi turned to BSG, one of the leading information technology solutions companies in the Middle East and regional partner for Cognos, for help in achieving its vision for a complete BI solution. Al Esayi chose to work with BSG because of the company’s dedicated focus on BI, strong and lasting presence in the region, and deep expertise in the retail segment.

Working with BSG, Al Esayi deployed Cognos 8 BI to help employees monitor store operations, inventory and item movement, sales, supply chain operations, vendor management, customer loyalty, advertising spend analysis, transaction analysis, finance, and human resources. In addition, BSG also helped build Cognos 8 BI scorecards for tracking store operations KPIs, profit and loss, merchandise margin analysis, and vendor performance. As a result, Al Esayi has been able to improve the collaboration and efficiency of its reporting processes, and track and analyze the factors behind its KPIs to maximize sales opportunities while controlling expenses. The company plans to continue its Cognos standardization with budgeting and planning deployments later this year, and a data warehouse consolidation in 2007.

“The power and ease of Cognos 8 BI made the Al Esayi Electronics’ deployment fast and smooth,” said Nasser Tufail, Managing Director, BSG. “With our experience in BI, we were able to quickly help Al Esayi establish a single version of the truth and focus attention to the actions required to drive the business forward. In addition, we have established a strong technology foundation for future Cognos implementations which will help the company look ahead and capitalize on future business opportunities.”

“Leading global organizations such as Al Esayi Electronics are standardizing on Cognos 8 BI as the platform for gaining better business insights and foundation for performance management,” said Dave Laverty, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Cognos. “In the competitive electronics market, the combination of Cognos BI and BSG’s industry experience will help Al Esayi leverage existing technology investments while capitalizing on new business opportunities.”

Cognos is a recognized leader in delivering performance management solutions for the retail industry. In fact, 25 % of the world's top 250 retailers, and over 300 retail chains worldwide, use Cognos. In addition to Al Esayi Electronics, other retail customers include amazon.com, American Eagle Outfitters, and 7-Eleven. For more information about Cognos solutions for retail, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/retail/index.html.

About Al Esayi Electronics Co.:
Al Esayi Electronics Co. is the sole agent/distributor for Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited of Japan, the world renowned manufacturer of National-Panasonic-Technics brands. National-Panasonic-Technics is synonymous with superior quality consumer electronics, backed by the best warranty support in the industry. Apart from conveying a cool image the prestigious brands are associated with durability. The products are sold in more than 200 countries/territories around the world. Al Esayi Electronics has the best Sales and Service infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, with offices and distribution warehouses located in all major/minor towns in the Kingdom. The Panasonic Service Centers are some of the best equipped in the region, and set new benchmarks of the service to the customers. Al Esayi Electronics currently employs about 500 persons. In-house training programs are design to update the knowledge of Technical and Sales Force personnel, keeping pace with the rapid developments in the consumer electronics. A substantial number of factory trained personnel, lead by Japanese Managers, ensure a constant quality. For more information, visit http://www.aecksa.com/company.html.

About BSG:
BSG is one of the leading information technology solutions company operating in the Middle East markets since 1995. Since inception, BSG's primary focus has been the delivery of Business Intelligence solutions and services to customers in the region. Backed by the requisite technical assets and extensive domain expertise, BSG have helped hundreds of customers gain strategic business advantage by deploying solutions encompassing query, reporting, OLAP, data mining, data integration/warehousing and enterprise performance management/analytics. BSG's large installed base of customers include some of the top banks, oil and gas companies, airlines, telecos, manufacturing and retail companies, large corporations, and government and ministries in the Middle East. For more information, visit http://www.bsgme.com/index.aspx.

About Cognos:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.