Software AG, a global leader in business infrastructure software, today announced a new strategic partnership and OEM licensing agreement with Cognos, a world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Software AG will embed Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (Cognos 8 BI) as the reporting and analysis standard for future editions of the webMethods product suite. Inclusion of these additional features reinforces the webMethods product suite's position as the industry's most comprehensive and advanced product portfolio for service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance, business process management (BPM), business integration and legacy modernization.
The availability of industry-leading business reporting, scorecarding and analytics as a standard feature across all components of the webMethods product suite will deliver significant customer value. As an out-of-the-box component of the product suite, enterprises can now combine their business intelligence initiatives with their BPM and business activity monitoring efforts to more quickly realize process optimization and business improvements. It will also enable closer and more productive collaboration between stakeholders, including developers, IT management, business analysts, process owners, corporate executives and end-users.
"The marriage of BI and BPM is designed to deliver more actionable insight. By combining real-time and historical data on a single dashboard, users can more readily respond to business changes and more quickly optimize process performance," said Dr. Peter Kürpick, President and Chief Product Officer for the webMethods business division of Software AG. "This is important as many talk about delivering an integrated product suite and a seamless user experience, but few actually deliver. The inclusion of best-in-class BI and reporting is one key element. Others include a shared metadata model and lifecycle governance for all assets, real-time monitoring and process-based collaboration. By bringing all of these pieces together within webMethods, we are equipping our customers to more effectively manage their real-time businesses."
Employed by enterprises worldwide, Cognos 8 BI is the global BI standard for performance management. It is the only product in its class that provides the full range of BI capabilities - reporting, analysis, scorecarding, dashboards, business event management, and data integration - within a single, proven architecture. Its flexible management and visualization of data helps users transform information into insight with output options including advanced personalization and customized distribution. It also boasts out-of-the box support for over 25 languages.
"This integrated offering will deliver business intelligence in the context of a process task, ensuring that insight is readily available when it's of most value to knowledge workers and business managers," said Matt Green, Product Line Director for Process Applications, Software AG. "By bringing business intelligence together with business rules and BPM, we're empowering users to make changes and enhancements right at the point of interaction instead of weeks or months later."
As a more powerful reporting tool shared across all components of the webMethods product suite, it will simplify day-to-day management of operations while helping users collaborate more effectively on subsequent process improvements. Enterprises can leverage this richer and more interactive reporting to:
- Streamline change management - The requirements and implications of proposed changes can be more clearly illustrated and better understood prior to implementation.
- Accelerate process improvements - Users can more easily drill-down on operational data in order to pinpoint areas for immediate or subsequent improvements.
- Enhance business agility - With the unification of BI, business rules management and BPM, operational changes can be more quickly and confidently implemented.
- Achieve closer alignment with line-of-business objectives - By utilizing the same platform for business planning and performance monitoring, operational results can be more directly and quickly mapped to business goals, ensuring more consistent and better business results.
- Make smarter, faster business decisions - The combination of industry-leading BI, BPM and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) enable advanced scenario planning, simulation, and real-time business analysis.
- Improve accountability - The embedded use of scorecarding and analytics can enable more precise accounting of IT and business resources and utilization, and more equitable cost allocations.
"Pairing our industry-leading BI reporting, analytics and scorecarding capabilities with the business process and business activity monitoring features of the webMethods product suite helps enterprises quickly narrow the gap between information capture and decision-making," said Ted Jandl, Vice President, OEM Partner Channels, Cognos. "The integrated offer will help enterprises move closer towards the total solution required to get a complete, actionable and timely picture of their customers and their business to improve decision-making and overall performance."
Current users of the webMethods product suite may add Cognos 8 BI as a supported feature immediately. Pricing is available from an authorized Software AG representative. Additional information on subsequent product releases will be made available at a later date.
Software AG
Software AG's 4,000 global customers achieve measurable business results by modernizing and automating their IT systems and rapidly building new systems to meet growing business demands. The company's industry-leading product portfolio includes best-in-class solutions for managing data, enabling service oriented architecture, and improving business processes. By combining proven technology with industry expertise and best practices, our customers improve and differentiate their businesses - faster. Software AG has more than 37 years of global IT experience and approx. 3,800 employees serving customers in 70 countries. The company is headquartered in Germany and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE 0003304002 / SOW). Software AG posted total revenues of €483 million in 2006.
