Service-Oriented Architecture

Service-oriented architecture is critical to business intelligence applications

Many business intelligence applications today do not provide the functionality or capabilities that users require in order to do their jobs. Some applications suffer from lock-in to existing technology or platforms that are no longer the best choice. Other solutions are not oriented for change – they do not allow organizations to adapt quickly enough to evolving market conditions. Scalability is also an issue: as organizations grow, their business intelligence technology must scale quickly as well. The service oriented architecture offers a solution. By moving away from client server architecture and deploying a service-based model, organizations can more effectively leverage information assets and existing technology to build better strategy, improve compliance, and increase operational productivity. For a comprehensive business intelligence solution built on a service-oriented architecture, Cognos offers the industry's leading solution.

Cognos provides BI applications built on a service-oriented architecture

Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is a complete BI solution. With Cognos, organizations can integrate powerful capabilities in business event management, analysis, reporting, scorecarding, data integration, dashboards, and more, all within a service-oriented architecture. This innovative architecture reduces the resources needed for developing, deploying and maintaining a BI application, and reduces the total cost of ownership. Cognos uses Web services to leverage and integrate a number of technologies, improving performance and the speed with which data can be accessed. This future-oriented model also allows organizations to maximize their investment in such infrastructure as application servers, security, RDBMS, operating systems, and metadata. The result is an open, extensible platform for gleaning and communicating business intelligence in a distributed and dynamic enterprise.

The benefits of a service-oriented business intelligence architecture

The Cognos 8 service-oriented architecture model for business intelligence provides a number of distinct advantages. Because it uses a browser-based environment with no footprint, Cognos 8 BI needs no desktop installation, applets, or plug-ins. The administration of the application may be centralized or distributed so users closer to the point of impact have more control. The application is scalable to hundreds of thousands of users within a globally distributed enterprise. Cognos 8 leverages existing IT assets and infrastructure, integrating easily with legacy systems and mixed application environments. By providing a standardized BI environment, Cognos 8 BI minimizes complexity, delivers increased business agility, and increases ROI.

Cognos also provides tools for financial reporting, performance based management, data mining, drill down report production, talent management, decision support software, and more.

Learn more about service-oriented architecture and Cognos