ORLANDO, Fla., June 24, 2005 -- COGNOS GLOBAL PARTNER SUMMIT at COGNOS FORUM -- Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced it is enhancing its Cognos Solutions Professional Certification Program, which provides comprehensive certification opportunities to Cognos' software and business consulting partners. The program allows Cognos partners to benchmark and verify their teams' skills and abilities in delivering Cognos solutions and results to customers. The Cognos Solutions Professional Certification Program now offers two distinct offerings -- Business Intelligence (BI) and with today's launch, Performance Management (PM).

"The Cognos Solutions Professional Certification Program enables partners to build and capitalize on their expertise in selling and implementing Cognos solutions," said Dave Achtemichuk, Cognos vice president of worldwide customer services. "This program ensures customers that the partners they select to provide Cognos solutions have the knowledge, skills, and expertise to deliver high-value results -- fast. The program also opens the door to financial, business, and marketing opportunities for our partners."

The BI Solutions Professional Certification has been designed to provide a foundation for technical, product, management, and customer relations skills for individuals expected to lead implementations. It also includes a certification process to test a candidate's ability to deliver a high value Cognos BI Solution. This is accomplished through a combination of Cognos tools, effective and consistent project methodologies, and customer relations management.

The Performance Management Solutions Certification is an advanced program in which candidates further develop and improve their Planning skills. This includes the completion of a case study varying in complexity and based on realistic workplace scenarios, to deliver a solution using the Cognos Planning products.

In addition to building and testing product knowledge and skills through training courses and certification exams, the Cognos Solution Professional Certification Program also offers certified partners competitive differentiation and additional program benefits such as preferred partnering on targeted client opportunities and marketing tools.

"Simpson Associates is committed to delivering the very highest standard of solutions to our customers and have always invested in a continuing development of our project methodology to support this aim. We unhesitatingly embraced the Cognos Global Partner Certification Program because we immediately recognized that it allowed us to open our methodology to independent, expert verification and, as importantly, allowed us to demonstrate our commitment to excellence to our customers," said Mark White Professional Services Director, Simpson Associates. "We are now sharing 'best practice' ideas and techniques with Cognos globally and our customers can be confident that we do provide the essential level of knowledge, skills and support that they require. We can differentiate our practice and this will present new revenue opportunities."

Cognos' comprehensive training is the cornerstone of the Cognos Solutions Professional Certification Program. Industry-leading training courses incorporate an in-depth, hands-on curriculum, and best practices to help ensure partners receive the optimum experience, skills, and product knowledge to deliver ongoing value to customers.

For information on specific Cognos Partner Certification programs and associated training opportunities, please consult the Education area on PartnerNetwork (https://partnernetwork.cognos.com) or contact partnercertification@cognos.com.

ABOUT COGNOS:

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management, delivers software and services that helps companies drive, monitor and understand corporate performance.

Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage -- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) -- achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale. Our integrated CPM solution helps customers drive performance through planning; monitor performance through scorecarding; and understand performance through business intelligence.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence 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.

Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com and at PR Newswire's site at http://www.prnewswire.com.

Media Contact:
Antonietta Iafrate
Cognos, 781-313-2454
antonietta.iafrate@cognos.com