Microsoft Office is one of the flagship software products. It is mainly a collection of software applications that are required by ‘an office environment’ in small and medium businesses or in large enterprises. Probably the only software that is most widely known, used and familiar with.
Business Intelligence (BI) is the organised use of data in the business environment. Usually it is used to analyse, predict, and report the performance. Specialised software BI tools are used to do this function. However with right support, spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel ( part of Microsoft Office Suite ) can be a great tool; Excel can be deployed to do certain BI functions with ease.
IBM provides end-to-end technologies, services and solutions for Business Intelligence – including information integration, master data management, data warehousing, industry models, BI tools and industry frameworks.
IBM Cognos 10 is the first major BI release since Cognos 8 was released in 2005. Cognos 10 presents a more integrated user interface along with a broader offering of analytics and technology. The recent acquisitions by IBM of SPSS, TM1 (Applix) and Clarity are now part of the offering. As IBM Cognos is one of the most widely used, proven BI Systems, let us have a look at some of the distinguishing features of this system.