IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

BI Architecture

IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is built with a single, modern Web services architecture. It minimizes the resources required for development, deployment, and maintenance for a lower total cost of ownership. It simplifies your BI environment while serving all of your user needs.

Purpose-built Web services architecture


  • Modern, multi-tier architecture built using open, modern Web standards such as XML, SOAP, and WSDL.
  • Single API lets programmers customize, expose, or hide any Business Intelligence capability using a wide variety of programming languages.
  • Peer-to-peer, multi-threaded architecture provides a distributed environment with automatic load balancing, no single point of failure, and server independence.
  • Component-based, with the flexibility to distribute components geographically, across servers, firewalls, etc. according to the needs of the business.
  • Scalable to hundreds of thousands of users to support a globally distributed organization.
  • Reports, dashboards, analysis, scorecards, and business event management rules are written once and deployed globally to reduce reporting backlog.

Web-based development and deployment


  • Common zero-footprint, browser-based environment requires no desktop installs, plug-ins, or applets.
  • Point-and-click, task-based interface improves user adoption, increases user self-service, and reduces user dependence on IT.
  • Administration can be centralized or distributed closer to the point of impact.
  • Enables remote access to the system; log on from anywhere for remote Web-based administration and report authoring.
  • Single point of update; deploy changes to all users simultaneously.

Integrates with your existing infrastructure


  • Leverages your existing IT assets and infrastructure, including security systems, RDBMS, application servers, Web applications, networks, and metadata.
  • Integrates easily with Web portals such as IBM WebSphere, SAP Enterprise Portal, and Plumtree Portal.
  • Supports Windows, Unix, and Linux operating systems in uniform and mixed platform deployments.
  • Supports numerous standards and data sources without coding or data migration.
  • Supports complex mixed application environments.

Supports BI standardization


  • IBM Cognos 8 BI delivers all the capabilities users require in one product, on one architecture. As a standardized BI environment it reduces complexity, provides greater business agility, and lowers your TCO.

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