PC WEEK TAPS COGNOS' POWERPLAY FOR CORPORATE IT EXCELLENCE AWARD

WORLD'S MOST POPULAR OLAP TOOL CONQUERS DATA ANALYSIS/DECISION SUPPORT
CATEGORY

BURLINGTON, MA, APRIL 3, 1996 -- Cognos (NASDAQ:COGNF;TSE:CSN) today
announced that PowerPlay has won the first annual PC Week Corporate IT
Excellence Award for Data Analysis/Decision Support. PowerPlay is Cognos'
industry-leading multidimensional analysis, or Online Analytical
Processing (OLAP), tool. The PC Week award complements the recent
InfoWorld Product of the Year Award for Query/Reporting tools captured by
Impromptu, Cognos' high-performance interactive tool for database query
and reporting in the enterprise. Together, Impromptu and PowerPlay provide
a complete, best-of-breed toolset for front-ending data warehouses and
delivering enterprise business intelligence.

"PowerPlay provides fast decision-support capabilities that let users slice
and dice their data to get meaningful results," explains PC Week in its
April 1, 1996 issue. "(PowerPlay) faced the challenges of PC Week Labs'
tests and proved to meet the enterprise- wide needs of corporate IT
professionals through excellence in product design and implementation." PC
Week's ZD Labs is the largest independent testing lab in the world and
considered over 1,000 products in their search for the products which best
define their standard of enterprise excellence.

"These awards prove that PowerPlay and Impromptu are the best-of-breed
desktop tools for decision makers at all levels of an enterprise," said
Alan Rottenberg, senior vice president, Business Intelligence products.
"After rigorous testing and examination on behalf of their demanding
readers, PC Week and Infoworld recognize the proven technology of these
two tools.

"PowerPlay and Impromptu are unparalleled in their ease-of-use,
performance, manageability, scalability and low cost of ownership,"
Rottenberg said. "In fact, we expect Impromptu and PowerPlay to bring home
even more awards as we continue to enhance the tools and their feature
sets."

PRICING, AVAILABILITY

PowerPlay 4.1 is currently available for $695, with discounts available for
volume purchases. It requires Windows 3.1 or higher, 4MB RAM, 5 MB hard
drive space, and a 386 or higher PC. Impromptu 3.0 is available in a user
version for $595 and an administrative version for $695, with discounts
available for volume purchases. It requires Windows 3.1 or higher, 8MB
RAM, 20 MB hard drive space, and a 386 or higher PC. Call 1-800-4COGNOS,
ext. 2070 for more information.

PC WEEK

Headquartered in Medford, Mass., PC Week is published by Ziff-Davis
Publishing Company. PC Week reaches a controlled subscriber base that
includes more than 300,000 qualified buyers who purchase desktop,
networking and other enterprise computing products in volume.

COGNOS

Cognos is the global leader in providing business intelligence software to
satisfy enterprise-wide data access and analysis needs. With over 250,000
seats in thousands of companies worldwide, PowerPlay and Impromptu
consistently service the widest range of users across corporate,
departmental, workgroup, personal and mobile applications. The products
support over 100 relational and OLAP data sources and are available in
seven major languages. Cognos Business Intelligence products are sold
through the company's 40 sales offices and over 450 resellers around the
globe.

Cognos develops, markets and supports -- both directly and through
resellers worldwide -- advanced client/server tools for data access, data
analysis and application development on a wide range of open and
proprietary computing platforms. Cognos is a publicly held company with
dual headquarters in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, MA. Cognos' World Wide
Web address is http://www.cognos.com.

Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and
product information are available on Cognos' World Wide Web (WWW) site, at
http://www.cognos.com and at PR Newswire's site at
http://www.prnewswire.com. Product and company information can also be
found at the Cognos CompuServe forum (GO COGNOS).
 
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