IBM Cognos Now! Operational Business Intelligence

Architecture

The IBM Cognos Now! architecture combines high-speed data streaming with dynamic analysis and modeling to provide continuous delivery of relevant enterprise information to thousands of users.

The architecture is based on a patent-pending streaming data flow engine that turns incoming data, combined with contextual information, into views that are temporally aware.

These aggregated views reside in a highly tuned in-memory data store and deliver information and alerts to end-user performance dashboards. As new data or events enter the system, all views and dashboards are automatically updated.

The IBM Cognos Now! architecture was designed to be:

• Highly scalable: The in-memory data store supports thousands of concurrent users with no latency of information.



• Flexible: System administrators can easily create or modify data views, define business rules, edit dashboard views, and add data sources, all without programming and without having to bring the system down.



• Dynamic: Event-driven data from a variety of sources including operational systems, data warehouses, data marts, and messaging systems is continuously integrated, analyzed, and presented in a user-friendly dashboard.



• Self-service: Users can quickly modify or create new metrics, drill down to detailed data, set alert thresholds and assign tasks, without assistance from IT.

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Elements of the IBM Cognos Now! architecture include:

Data sources: Connectivity agents capture data from both operational and historical data sources. Connectivity agents are available for flat files, web services, XML, JMS, JDBC for relational databases, and enterprise applications from Oracle, SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, and others.

Streaming Server: The IBM Cognos Now! Streaming Server houses a patent-pending streaming data store for continuous data integration, as well as engines for multi-dimensional analysis, dynamic modeling, business-rules execution, and exception and alert reporting.

Application Workbench: System administrators use the Application Workbench to specify the data sources and applications to monitor as well as the baseline business views to be modeled by the system.

Operational Dashboards: Operational Dashboards are the graphical end-user interface for information and alerts generated by the Streaming Server. These self-service dashboards can be personalized to contain the up-to-the-second metrics, graphs, and indicators that are vital to each user's job.

Additional Resources:

IBM Cognos Now! Demo

Online Demo

See how users build and edit their own dashboards quickly and easily.

'Operational BI: Getting Real-time About Performance' by Aberdeen research

Research Report

Companies are trying to improve efficiencies and performance of may day-to-day and real-time activities, such as customer interactions, finance and accounting processes, transportation/shipping, sales activity, manufacturing, inventory management Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), and marketing. This research report from Aberdeen Group provides a roadmap for the strategies and capabilities that Best-in-Class companies are employing to improve operational performance.

Operational Business Intelligence: Providing decision-makers with up-to-date visibility into operations

White Paper

Learn: Use cases for operational BI; The difference between enterprise BI and operational BI; Criteria for a successful operational BI deployment.

Manufacturing Quality Assurance with IBM Cognos Now! Monitor White Paper

White Paper

Find out how operational performance management with Cognos can improve efficiency, quality, and profitability in your organization.

Operational Business Intelligence: Assessing Market Treands and the Use of BI in Operations

White Paper

An issue paper by Ventana Research substantiates the view that operational BI is an important tool for performance management; companies that adopt it can expect to become more effective in key areas of operations.

Business Intelligence for Midsize Organizations featuring Gartner research

Analyst Report

Case studies of midsize organizations using Cognos software as a foundation for Performance Management. Featuring research from Gartner and Cognos into what midsize organizations needs are to make better business decisions with limited resources and budget.

Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership for Business Intelligence in Mid-Size Companies

Analyst Report

A Ventana Research white paper

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