First, I was not commenting on whether other companies’ product sets were integrated or unintegrated by comparison. That said, I tend to give BOBJ benefit of the doubt in that regard — at least pre-SAP — because of the good job they did integrating BOBJ classic with Crystal.

Second, Report.Net was billed as integrated from the getgo. It wasn’t. More precisely, Cognos’ product line wasn’t magically integrated when Report.Net came out.

Third, the last time I looked planning wasn’t well integrated into the rest of the product line at all. Now, I haven’t looked for a while. But that’s not for lack of trying. Cognos has been evading my questions for several years now. It is my understanding that they duck most other analysts as well. Nor, from the distance, have I noticed much compelling bubbling up in the way of integration proof points.

Now, I’m not saying Cognos’ whole analyst relations department should be taken out and fired. Stonewalling can be a perfectly viable marketing strategy, and Cognos’ overall reputation is probably a lot better than the regard in which it’s held in the independent analyst community. But if there’s a strong counterargument to my views, I’ll admit to not having heard it.

Anyhow — just what HAVE you done to replace the original engine underneath PowerPlay?

Thanks,

CAM

Maybe it was once true years ago after a few acquisitions but Cognos is now the most integrated of all the major BI/PM vendors. Not only have they spent a lot of time putting everthing onto a standard platform, but all the other major vendors such as SAP+BO and Oracle+Hyperion are only starting their integration process with a lot more pieces and different architectures to sort
out.