COGNOS FORMS INDUSTRY'S FIRST BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PARTNER PROGRAM

INSIGHT PARTNER PROGRAM GAINS RAPID ACCEPTANCE, OVER 20 PARTNERS JOIN
IMMEDIATELY INCLUDING IBM, DIGITAL EQUIPMENT, HP, ORACLE, INFORMIX,
SYBASE

BURLINGTON, MASS., APRIL 16, 1996 -- Cognos today introduced the Business
Intelligence Insight Partner Program, the industry's first program
specifically designed to address the needs of customers planning to
implement strategic, enterprise-wide decision support systems. In
recognition of the fact that such systems today are almost invariably
provided by several vendors, with widely differing product architectures
and support structures, Insight members and Cognos are committed to
sharing strategic product directions for the purposes of product planning,
release synchronization, product compatibility and cooperative customer
support. Over 20 vendors joined the Insight Partner Program immediately as
Charter members.

As defined by the Gartner Group, "business intelligence" systems have
competitive advantage as their primary goal. This is achieved by putting a
full set of software tools directly into the hands of every knowledge
worker and manager in an organization, and by putting all relevant data
resources within reach of these "self-service" tools. Decision-making
within the business is thus much faster and far more accurate.

"The reality of today's market is that increased competition,
globalization, and shrinking markets have created a tremendous demand for
companies to better understand their business. To do so, they must make
their entire business 'intelligent,' turning their data into information,
and information into insight," said Jean-Pierre Jauvin, director, Business
Development and Strategic Alliances. "Data warehousing alone is a critical
element of this, of course. But it's only part of the answer."

"To truly reach every knowledge worker in a large organization, customers
are beginning to realize that they also must include in their planning
such areas as, data warehousing, enterprise application software, on-line
analytical processing (OLAP), Connectivity, and the World Wide Web. And
this necessarily means a multi-vendor solution. It's only through an
organization like the Business Intelligence Insight Partner Program that
customers can feel confident that they are receiving the best and most
competitive solution for their business," Jauvin concluded.

"The Cognos Insight Program presents Digital and our customers with a real
opportunity to deliver swift and open business intelligence solutions,"
said Marion Dancy, director, Digital Equipment Software
Technologies/Industry Applications, Software Partner Group. "We look
forward to working even more closely with Cognos."

"Hewlett-Packard joined the Insight Partner Program because our clients
require an integrated approach such as this to remain competitive," said
Jon Kragness, alliance manager, HP OpenWarehouse Program. "Together with
Cognos, we can continue to provide users with data warehouse systems that
capitalize on increasingly valuable corporate information."

"We are pleased to reciprocate Cognos' participation in our Cooperative
Applications Initiative with membership in Cognos' Insight Partner
Program. This solidifies an already productive relationship that many
customers benefit from today," said Marc Hebert, vice president, Oracle
Design & Migration Services.

"The Cognos Business Intelligence Insight Partner Program addresses the
same trends in data warehousing and data mining that prompted us to
develop Sybase IQ," said Josh Bersin, group director of Sybase Data
Warehouse Solutions. "The result of our participation will be an even
finer integration of our tools, which will provide our customers with a
faster time to result."

The Business Intelligence Insight Partner program is designed to address
three major areas:

* product direction through advance product briefing and shared
  beta products;
* cooperative support and problem-solving for mutual customers; and
* Business Intelligence market education, including joint messaging,
  trade shows, and user conference appearances.

The Cognos Business Intelligence Insight Partner Program is open to all
leading vendors. The program will address such themes as data warehousing,
OLAP, Enterprise Application Software, Connectivity, and the WWW. Cognos
has initiated the process behind the sharing of technology by providing
each Charter member with copies of its market-leading PowerPlay and
Impromptu tools for multidimensional analysis and database reporting for
compatibility testing and support training. In addition, Cognos is making
booth space available for its Charter members at selected industry trade
shows and at Cognos World, a new exciting showcase of partner technology
being held at Cognoss North American User Conference (San Diego, November
11-13).

The Charter members of the Insight Partner program include: Arbor Software,
AT&T, Btrieve Technologies, Bull HN Information Systems, Carleton , Cray
Research, DataGeneral, Dharma Systems, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Informix Software, Intersolv, NCR, Oracle, Prism Solutions, Pyramid
Technology, Red Brick Systems, Sequent Computer Systems, Sybase, and
Tandem. (EDITOR'S NOTE: See related press releases available on PR
Newswire.)

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 - client/server tools for data access, data analysis
and application development on a wide range of open and proprietary
computer 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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