November 18, 2011 by Rick Ryan - Envisn, Inc.
It would be easy to talk about what’s new in Cognos 10 from the recent IBM Information on Demand (IOD) 2011 event in Las Vegas only in terms of new user capabilities but that would miss a big part of what’s going on here. There are new user capabilities that matter but it’s important to focus on the major trends here as well. This article will attempt to do both.
When it was first announced a year ago Cognos 10 raised the bar on Business Intelligence and at the same time BI began to be positioned by IBM as part of the larger umbrella of Business Analytics. BA is a broader offering of analytical capabilities than traditional BI and encompasses things like workforce performance analysis, sales performance analytics, predictive analytics, governance, and risk and compliance management. That said, it’s clear that at least within IBM, BI is the point of the spear.
The major trends within Business Analytics that are driving IBM are:
- Demand for agile analytics – Pushing down and out within the organization. People need it now and mobile devices make this a physical reality.
- Broad spectrum of analytics required – A platform needs to be there to deliver it all and to manage it all.
- The Wild West of data – It’s both big and personal, not just internally generated but the flood of external data as well. Big Data is the tsunami of data that companies need to deal with today and most of them are not prepared for it. A statistic presented by IBM said that 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the past two years. Staggering!
In terms of BI IBM sees it in terms of three levels that all need to be worked at the same time. These are:
- Solutions – Finance, risk management, industry specific applications, etc.
- Capabilities – Reporting & analysis, scorecard/dashboards, in-memory, planning & budgeting
- Platform – Access – model – manage – deploy
The specifics of what’s new in Cognos 10 for IOD 2011 include the following:
- Cognos on the cloud – you can now create a C10 on the cloud in 45 minutes.
- Faster performance – 6X faster query performance, 40% faster on cubes, and 90% faster on TM1.
- Mobility – Native iPad application allows you to work offline via Active Reports. You can leverage the existing C10 infrastructure and reports on your iPad.
- Business Insight Workspace – This is 2X faster than last year. Plus you now have:
• Geospatial reporting – highly interactive graphics.
• Real-time widgets – Ability to stream live data (example: customer feedback/complaints).
• User customizable charts for standardized dashboards.
• Live drill down by dashboard users.
• Tighter use of the workspace available – 30% more on the desk view. - Integrated collaboration – The ability to use different capabilities across a common platform(s) and create collective intelligence within the organization.
- Real time updates to a multi-dimensional plan – widgets are available to change assumptions instantly.
Summary
IBM Cognos BI is morphing more right now that at any time in its history. Better products, better platforms, seamless integration and greater ease of use make it essential at all levels and across all functions within the organization. But while it’s changing in some ways the important thing to notice is the prominence it has finally achieved in terms of the transformational capability it has for continuous improvement in results. For those that have been around this space for a while it’s really impressive to see the capabilities match the marketing.
For more discussion on the most recent IBM IOD and what's new in Cognos 10, please refer to IOD 2012.
Image by Woodleywonderworks
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