Cognos Extends Its Performance Management Offering for the Office of Finance with a Sharp Focus on Compliance.

- Cognos 8 Controller version 8.2 improves the quality, efficiency and control of the close, consolidate and report process -

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced the evolution of its Cognos 8 Controller solution for the Office of Finance. Cognos 8 Controller version 8.2 offers a proven finance-managed application to support the close, consolidate, and report process; to ensure financial statement quality and close efficiency; and to meet modern compliance requirements.

Research by The Hackett Group shows that by reducing process, systems and control complexity, leading companies are able to operate with a more effective internal control environment. By doing do, they spend less on Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance, which has been a cash drain for many companies in recent years. Leading companies also spend less to perform their key control activities on an ongoing basis.

"Cognos really stands apart by allowing financial users to manage the change process effectively," said Andrea Evans, manager, financial accounts and systems, Royal & Sun Alliance. "Our change management process for in-house changes generated a mountain of paperwork and used to take us a minimum of two days to complete. This will be attainable in less than a day with Controller version 8.2, with the new audit log eliminating the need for as many external controls."

A key part of the Cognos performance management platform, Cognos 8 Controller version 8.2 is a comprehensive, web-based solution that enables finance teams to automate the entire close process (from data collection to financial consolidation to output), while reducing the close cycle time and ensuring data integrity. Controller version 8.2 enhancement highlights include:

Audit and compliance capabilities: Data lineage allows users to understand the date and time stamp of the data access and load, and maintain an original unchanged version of source data. This ensures data quality to support financial statements in the consolidation process. Audit trails allow users to track application and data changes, by user, with the date and time stamp - along with the ability to filter, evaluate and analyze their impact. In an age focused on internal controls, audit trails supply a reliable mechanism to support efficient and effective compliance.

"We've identified opportunities for compliance by strengthening the financial control framework with Controller version 8.2," said Raymond Pineda, partner, Deloitte. "Built-in application controls streamline the data validation process by reducing the risk for error and provide the CFO with the confidence to attest to the accuracy and completeness of their financial results."

Support for performance management: The seamless integration with Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 Business Intelligence provides a single view of all operational and financial data, leveraging rich analytics, to support decision-making requirements.

"Our vision is to provide our managers with single-point access to all our business critical data - both financial and operating. We felt that Cognos had the capabilities and desire to make such an integration work," said Curt Petersen, CFO, CSM Corp. "Cognos' unique combination of Controller/BI supporting a performance management platform, ease of use and powerful access tools made them a great fit for our needs."

Advanced consolidation techniques: Different geographies and financial jurisdictions continually evolve their regulatory and financial reporting requirements. Controller version 8.2 includes deep domain capabilities to support these changing regulatory reporting needs.

"Cognos 8 Controller version 8.2 offers world-class capabilities for financial consolidation that deliver on compliance imperatives for financial controls while supporting efficiency in the close process, and reducing the amount of time required to consolidate financial results," said Doug Barton, vice president, performance management, Cognos. "Timely, complete, and accurate performance data is central to both compliance and performance management."

Cognos 8 Controller version 8.2 will be generally available in June 2007.

Product screenshots as well as pricing and licensing information is available to media upon request. For additional Controller version 8.2 features, visit http://www.cognos.com/products/planning_consolidation/controller/ better-consolidation.html (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

ABOUT COGNOS:

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? - and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.

Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on the Cognos Web site at www.cognos.com.