Cognos Go! Extends Enterprise BI Search to mySAP

Companies using Cognos Go! can search BI content that sources mySAP (including mySAP applications and data warehouses) and non-SAP systems, making it easy for employees to gain a more complete view of corporate performance through an intuitive search interface.

"The convergence of BI and enterprise/Internet search technologies is changing the way organizations access and share information across the enterprise," said Mark Smith, CEO and executive vice president of research, Ventana Research.

"Companies like Cognos have advanced search and BI to the next level providing broader reach and relevance of search for business. IT can drive larger deployments of BI and leverage existing deployments in enterprise applications like Oracle and SAP, along with data warehouse investments, for gaining larger business value."

Cognos Go! brings relevant, strategic enterprise information to more enterprise users through a convenient, browser-based search. By extending search to include SAP data sources, companies are able to combine SAP and non-SAP transactional and unstructured data in a single consolidated view of performance information including dashboards, reports, analysis, metrics information, and events.

As a result, companies can reduce the amount of time and effort employees spend looking for information and building redundant reports, while increasing reuse of existing BI investments. In addition, Cognos Go! provides SAP customers with easy and fast access to the most relevant data through:

• Fast, complete, and relevant results - with Cognos' ability to fully index BI content and search key data fields, not just titles or report descriptions, users receive instant results, and with just a single click, are more likely to find the right answers to their questions.

• Flexible access - SAP customers can access Cognos Go! through SAP Certified iViews in the SAP NetWeaver® Portal, and third-party enterprise search solutions including Autonomy, FAST, Google, and IBM, allowing all employees, regardless of BI expertise levels, one-click access to enterprise information including BI from a single familiar location.

• Increased self-service - SAP users no longer need to rely on IT to create, find, and distribute reports and can gain instant answers to questions across the broad spectrum of enterprise information and data in an intuitive way.

• Consistent security - Cognos Go! leverages the Cognos 8 Business Intelligence security model, which means SAP users will only see reports, metrics, and analyses that they have been given permission to view.

• Independent and adaptable ERP support - Cognos Go! can access SAP data across multiple versions and instances of SAP R/3® and SAP NetWeaver, independent of a company's SAP upgrade plans. In addition, Cognos, with its support for heterogeneous IT investments, is adaptable to both current and future IT environments, and provides a seamless end-user experience during back-end changes and evolutions.

"This announcement extends Cognos' leadership and commitment to customers who use SAP by providing an innovative approach to exposing valuable BI content to more users," said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East and Africa (MEA).

"Cognos Go! helps SAP customers overcome the challenge of gaining one complete view of company performance. With support for SAP data sources, companies have easy access to SAP and non-SAP BI information, and gain greater depth and insight into SAP data through search capabilities not natively available in SAP applications."