Cognos and Plumtree to deliver dashboard and scorecarding Web applications

September 30, 2003 - Plumtree Software and Cognos have announced an alliance to deliver comprehensive dashboard and scorecarding applications for Web-based applications.

The Cognos-Plumtree applications are designed to help organisations actively monitor performance, respond more quickly to new opportunities and gain competitive advantage.

Powered by Cognos Metrics Manager, Cognos’ industry-leading scorecarding solution, and Plumtree’s Enterprise Web Suite, the planned applications give organisations a unified, contextual view of key performance and financial indicators from across the business.

Plumtree and Cognos are presently co-developing the solution and hope to release it as a product offering by early 2004. Karen Williams, vice-president of product marketing at Cognos, recently unveiled a prototype of the application at Plumtree’s user conference, Odyssey 2003 as part of Plumtree’s Enterprise Applications launch.

"Our campaign against the empty portal has culminated in a programme to fill up the Enterprise Web with applications, data and services from all over an organisation to give business audiences everything they need to do their jobs in one place," said John Kunze, CEO at Plumtree. "To do that, we’re aligning with leading application vendors such as Cognos. The executive dashboard idea gives managers and executives a bird’s-eye view of their business, with the ability to drill down into problem areas."

"The true value of scorecards is having the entire workforce focused on what the leaders have determined is strategic," said Graham Walter, managing director of Cognos UK. "We believe that dashboards are one of many business intelligence-driven applications being deployed within the enterprise and that Plumtree’s Web-based software provides a framework for delivering these applications to large audiences quickly, and at low cost."

The anticipated Plumtree-Cognos applications combine the performance management capabilities of Cognos Metrics Manager with other information, data and services available through the Enterprise Web. The goal is to enable an executive to log-in to one enterprise website and access not just an executive dashboard or scorecard, but all the other Web applications needed to run the business, avoiding the cost and hassle of separate sites with separate security.

To incorporate services from Cognos products into the Enterprise Web, Plumtree relies on a set of industry-standard portlets and an entire range of integration Web services that Plumtree has created for federating searches, synchronising with user and group security, identifying and indexing content, and creating a common user profile. The executive dashboard and scorecarding applications will be designed to take advantage of the new capabilities of the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite for supporting a volume and variety of Web applications, each with its own brand, security and administration.

For further press information about Cognos, please visit LEWIS’ Virtual Press Room at http://www.lewisvpr.com.

About Plumtree Software

Plumtree Software is the Enterprise Web leader. Plumtree’s mission is to create a comprehensive Web environment for employees, customers and partners across the enterprise to interact with a wide range of Web applications.

Plumtree’s Enterprise Web solution consists of integration products for bringing resources from traditional systems together on the Web, shared services such as collaboration, content management and search for building new Web applications and an application management framework for delivering these Web applications to broad audiences.

Plumtree’s independence and its Web services architecture allow this solution to span rival application servers, helping to maximise customers’ return on their existing technology investments. With offices in more than a dozen countries, Plumtree has licensed over 550 customers, including Boeing, Ford Motor Company, Procter & Gamble and the US Navy.

About Enterprise Web Applications

Enterprise Web applications are applications hosted on different application servers, but managed within one framework. Enterprise Web applications differ from traditional applications in three ways. First Enterprise Web applications combine existing data and processes from diverse enterprise systems with new shared services, providing greater efficiencies from assets.

Second, Enterprise Web applications are assembled dynamically, incorporating new capabilities on the fly, allowing for greater agility in solving business problems. Finally, Enterprise Web applications are designed to be integrated into an enterprise-wide environment, providing greater economies of scale: users can easily navigate between or search across applications, and Web services developed for one Enterprise Web application can be re-used as-is in other applications. Prospective partners interested in building these applications can register for Plumtree’s applications partner program, at www.plumtree.com/partners.

About Cognos, an IBM Company
Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions.

It provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos was acquired by IBM in January 2008.

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/ and http://www.cognos.com/uk/

For further information about Cognos, please contact:
Katy Lyons or Farimah Saadat at LEWIS, the PR agency

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7802 2626
Fax: +44 (0)20 7802 2627
www.lewispr.com

For sales enquiries call:
Tel: +44 (0) 1344 486 668
www.cognos.com/uk