New York—At an event Jan. 15, here at Gotham Hall, a renovated bank with towering pillars, gilded filigree and Old-World grandeur, Cognos CEO Rob Ashe worked to draw a parallel between the building's structure—solid, impressive—and the company's latest platform release, Cognos 8.3. He also touched on Cognos' imminent merger with IBM, a deal that will only increase Cognos' ability to build on its performance management strategy, he said.

"Shareholders voted [Jan. 14] overwhelmingly, 99.9 percent, in favor of the acquisition and the Cognos team is very excited about what the merger holds for Cognos," Ashe said. "The fact is that between IBM and Cognos there is virtually no overlap. That lets us continue our innovation with performance management. We're not going to be spending our time rationalizing products. We'll focus on continued innovation and a shared vision around performance management."

The acquisition by IBM, expected to close this quarter, has somewhat overshadowed the launch of Cognos 8.3.  But this latest release does drive the company's performance management platform approach. Cognos 8, released in 2006, was really the big bang release for the company in terms of providing a BI platform. What 8.3 brings is the ability to offer reporting capabilities to more people in the enterprise, which has been the goal of BI vendors for years: to move beyond the 15 to 20 percent penetration point largely attained through hard-core data analyst and IT users.