IBM Cognos

Reporting requirements have changed dramatically in organizations. Organizations today are much more streamlined and the business world is much more competitive than before. An organization’s business changes rapidly and frequently and, as a result, everyone must operate at business speed. In order to respond effectively and produce relevant reports, businesses have to engage a large number of people across the organization to create, collaborate on, and deploy reports.

Reporting with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence offers organizations a single, Web-based, complete solution for all components of the reporting lifecycle: collaborative reporting; enterprise-wide report types; reports that can be authored once and consumed anywhere; and a solution that is adaptable to any data source.

Collaborative reporting
As a comprehensive reporting solution, IBM Cognos BI removes the limitations on report development normally found with different products and interfaces for various report requirements or users. IBM Cognos reporting reduces IT bottlenecks and allows for a more timely distribution of information; all of which gives report users and authors the opportunity to respond quickly and effectively and allows managers to get answers themselves.

IBM Cognos BI reporting has the following collaborative reporting features to help report authors

• Create and modify reports with flexible zone-based layout that automatically adjusts to fit different elements and objects.
• Author and work with all report types and expand the base of potential users for each report.
• Create and deploy a single report that can be executed across multiple languages and output formats such as HTML, PDF, and Microsoft® Excel®.
• Build report templates that include standard report objects, queries, and layouts.

Report annotations
Business users and report authors can create and save notes on HTML reports that other user can then reference, making it much easier for users to share information and capture their thoughts.

Web-based deployment
To work at business speed and ensure that you can access critical information at any given time, you need a Web based solution. The reach of the Web means users can easily access, administer, and distribute their BI data from anywhere providing continuous availability. IBM Cognos BI uses a zero-footprint, Web-based deployment model. This open, Web standards-based environment is built on the proven IBM Cognos architecture.

Self-service reporting
Collaborative reporting means that anyone in an organization needs to be able to create reports quickly, to ensure the timely creation and distribution of information, and to ensure wise decision making at every level of the organization. IBM Cognos BI Reporting allows you to share information faster through the reuse of queries and report objects created by others. You can share responsibility for report creation with other parts of the organization, which eases the reporting workload for IT.

Even if you’re not a professional report author, the self service reporting capabilities allow you to

• Build ad hoc reports on multiple, heterogeneous data sources.
• Distribute reports widely, with the right content distributed to the right recipient by executing a single report.
• Create personal alerts based on custom data conditions to control when and how you receive critical information.
• Schedule simultaneous or sequential batch reporting jobs for multiple output formats, destinations and views.
• Distribute reports on-demand or on schedules based on time, calendar, events, or an external trigger.
• Choose viewing preferences for the reporting interface, language, and other geographic sensitivities such as time, currency, and data formats.
• Save, schedule, and burst briefing book reports as a single item.

Full range of enterprise reports
The type of report you create depends on who the information is for, what their business needs are and how you want to best deliver the information. Built on the proven IBM Cognos architecture, reporting with IBM Cognos BI offers a single authoring solution for all types of enterprise reporting for every user in the organization.

With IBM Cognos BI, you can author and use reports that contain a wide range of drag-and-drop report elements and layout options

• Out-of-the-box, customizable report objects: lists, cross-tabs, gauges, maps, prompt controls, calculations, HTML objects, images, and other chart types.
• HTML objects, images, and other chart types.
• Embedded linkable objects in authored reports.
• Discrete control over presentation and query layers.
• Conditional, data-driven formatting and layout.
• Tabbed portlet pages to view multi-style, multi-page reports in one briefing book report.
• Customized page orientation and pagination.

Author once, publish anywhere
Building reports can be done without concern for end use; no need for special versions whether it’s going to be read on a BlackBerry or converted to PDF.

As information is communicated within an organization to different audiences and for different users, format and presentation of the content must change to ensure effective communication and information delivery. With IBM Cognos BI, you can

• Create multi-page, multi-query reports.
• Deliver reports by email or portals.
• Deliver reports to your mobile device.
• Create output in Microsoft Excel, Adobe® PDF, XML, HTML, and CSV.

Reporting with IBM Cognos BI also supports multiple languages from a single metadata layer, directly from the box. Report authors can define which report elements they want to adapt to each user’s working language, including the user interface and report content. These are automatically detected by IBM Cognos BI and displayed across appropriate languages.

Architecture and data sources
Designed for enterprise-level deployment, IBM Cognos BI offers proven scalability to hundreds of thousands of users through an N-tiered, multi-server, multi-threaded architecture. This design provides full failover recovery and dynamic load balancing. IBM Cognos BI gives you access to a wide range of heterogeneous data sources, reducing the complexity of your reporting environment and giving you an opportunity to get a complete and consistent view of the business. A streamlined IT environment also lowers your total cost of ownership for reporting. In addition to relational data, you can also report against OLAP sources such as IBM Cognos OLAP cubes and other OLAP sources including IBM DB2 OLAP, Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, and Oracle Essbase.

Reports can draw on any combination of data sources to give users the complete view of the business issue

• Relational databases from IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Teradata, and Sybase, various sources accessible via ODBC, and dimensionally aware sources like SAP BW.
• Widely deployed ERP systems, including mySAP (R/3), PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle eBusiness Suite, and Siebel CRM.
• Enterprise data warehouses and marts, with both 3NF and star schemas.
• All widely used OLAP sources, including IBM DB2 OLAP Server, IBM® Cognos® PowerPlay PowerCubes, Microsoft Analysis Services, Oracle 10G and Essbase.
• modern data sources, such as XML, LDAP, and WSDL
• planning and budgeting data
• Satellite data sources, including Microsoft Excel files, Microsoft PowerPoint files, Microsoft Access files, flat files, and more.
• Mainframe sources, including VSAM, IMS, IDMS, COBOL® copybooks, and others.
• Content management data, including IBM FileNet, Documentum, OpenSoft, and others.

Single metadata layer for all reporting
Regardless of the variety of reporting your organization performs, all reporting data passes through a single metadata layer common to IBM Cognos Business Intelligence. The metadata layer manages translation from the data you need to the information you see. This presents a single, business friendly view of information to the user while modeling data from different sources. With IBM Cognos BI you can report, analyze, scorecard, and monitor your performance with a single view of all data sources.

Better performance management
Reporting is a key capability within IBM Cognos Business Intelligence. IBM Cognos BI is the only solution that provides complete BI functionality in one product, on a single, proven architecture. It delivers seamless reporting, analysis, score carding, dashboards, and event management. This simplifies your IT environment and the way everyone works with information. A variety of access modes let users interact with BI content using familiar applications or devices, such as a BlackBerry, search engine, or Microsoft® Office® application. The result is high user adoption, better decisions, and greater agility across the organization. IBM Cognos BI is the clear choice for BI standardization and a cornerstone of better performance management.

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