Cognos rebrands Applix technology

Cognos has rebranded the financial performance management software it gained through the acquisition of Applix earlier this year and provided a road map for the product line.

"We're taking the Applix products and supporting them as they are. We rebranded them in Cognos colors," said Doug Barton, vice president of performance management marketing.

The rebranded offerings from Cognos include Cognos TM1 Server, TM1 Excel, TM1 Web and TM1 Executive Viewer. At the heart of the technology is a 64-bit, in-memory OLAP (online analytical processing) server.

The products do not currently integrate with the Cognos 8 BI software. That work will be complete by mid-2008, according to the company.

Other improvements will surface in that time frame, the company said. The potential areas of focus include interactive, Web-based reporting, multilingual implementations and distributed administration, according to a statement.

Meanwhile, Cognos officials have their own acquisition to deal with: IBM recently announced plans to buy the company for US$5 billion.

Barton declined to talk in detail about whether that deal will affect Cognos' performance management offerings. "Those merger and integration plans are being laid right now. ... We can't comment," he said.

"This is a valuable part of the performance management strategy moving forward," he said. "We're as excited to move forward with this as we were before the IBM announcement."

Barton said that although Cognos plans to integrate the software with Cognos 8, it also intends to offer it in stand-alone form. "Among the 3,000 Applix customers, there are probably some that get 100 percent of their needs met. We also know there are customers who can benefit from extending their systems," he said.

David O'Connell, a senior analyst with Nucleus Research in Wellesley, Massachusetts, said it made sense for Cognos to buy Applix. "I think Cognos is pretty good at doing everything it to can to broaden adoption to as many users as possible in an enterprise," he said. "This is a product that gets you to the CFO."

Cognos TM1 is licensed on a named user basis, with pricing starting at US$78,750, including the first year of support, according to a company spokeswoman.

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