ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 16, 2006 -- At IBM Information On Demand 2006, Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), a world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that Dubai Municipality has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) to provide the reporting and analysis capabilities for its centralized statistical information project called EHSA. BSG, one of the leading information technology solutions companies in the Middle East and regional partner for Cognos, will lead the Cognos 8 BI deployment.

"EHSA, our centralized statistical information system, is regarded as the largest project of its type in the region," said Saeed Ibrahim AbdulRahman, head of database and data processing section, Dubai Municipality Statistics Centre. "With this project, we hope to bring the right information to help our executive management, analysts, and operations staff make decisions for our organization, and keep our general public informed on key issues and trends."

Dubai Municipality will use IBM's Information Integration solutions and Websphere products to extract, transform, and integrate large amounts of disparate data at different levels of granularity into a centralized Oracle data warehouse. BSG and Dubai Municipality will then deploy Cognos 8 BI so government workers can gain access to a wide variety of standardized reports as well as ad-hoc reporting, dashboarding, and analysis on municipal metrics. Executive management will gain easy access to high-level summarized data for policy decisions, analysts will be able to drill into detailed information to study trends and build forecasts, and operations staff and the general public will be able to access statistical indicators and other focused information. With this solution, Dubai Municipality will gain one single, trusted, and secure view of information across all of its data sources in the EHSA to power faster, more effective decisions.

"We are extremely delighted that Dubai Municipality has reposed their trust in BSG and the Cognos products," said Nasser Tufail, managing director, BSG. "We look forward to working closely with Dubai Municipality to address its BI needs, as well as to forge a long-term, strategic partnership for our mutual benefit. In addition, both BSG and Dubai Municipality are benefiting from the strategic alliance between Cognos and IBM, as the technology interoperability and support will help speed the deployment of the EHSA system."

"The strategic alliance between IBM and Cognos has been extremely effective in enabling customer success across the globe," said Pete Fiore, vice president, IBM Information Integration Solutions. "Dubai Municipality's infrastructure and BI deployment is a perfect example of how we are helping customers maximize investments in technology and drive more efficient and productive business decisions."

"Cognos' zero-footprint Web architecture is easy to use, deploy and administer, and is highly scalable to support thousands of users," said Dave Laverty, chief marketing officer and senior vice president. "Dubai Municipality's investment in Cognos will deliver faster access to enterprise information at all levels in and beyond the organization. In addition, by integrating with existing technologies, Cognos and BSG are helping Dubai Municipality maximize value out of its technology investments."

Cognos 8 BI is a groundbreaking product that provides decision makers at all levels of the enterprise with a consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance. As a single product that easily integrates into existing infrastructures with multiple systems and data sources, Cognos 8 BI is a robust technology foundation for BI standardization and corporate performance management.

Cognos is a leading provider of performance management solutions for state and local governments, helping them deliver timely, high-quality programs and services to their citizens. In addition to Dubai Municipality, other leading customers include State of Utah, State of Mississippi, City of Albuquerque, City of New York Police Department, and State of New York. For more information about Cognos solutions for state and local governments, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/government/state-local.html.

Cognos is a diamond sponsor of IBM Information On Demand 2006 this week in Anaheim, Calif., exhibiting at Booth D501. For more information on Cognos and IBM joint solutions, visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/data/ibm/index.html.

About BSG:

BSG is one of the leading information technology solutions company operating in the Middle East markets since 1995. Since inception, BSG's primary focus has been the delivery of Business Intelligence solutions and services to customers in the region.

Backed by the requisite technical assets and extensive domain expertise, BSG has helped hundreds of customers gain strategic business advantage by deploying solutions encompassing query, reporting, OLAP, data mining, data integration/warehousing and corporate performance management/analytics. The team behind BSG has extensive experience in providing Project Management, Training and Consultancy services in the areas of Business Intelligence to clients around the Middle East. Currently, the team has over 100 consolidated person year's experience of delivering enterprise-class information management and BI solutions.

BSG's large installed base of customers include some of the top Banks, Oil & Gas companies, Airlines, Telcos, Manufacturing & Retail companies, Large Corporates and Government & Ministries in the Middle East. More information at http://www.bsgme.com

About Cognos:

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? -- and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.

Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contacts:
    Amy Shanler
    Cognos, Inc., 781-313-2464
    amy.shanler@cognos.com