Cognos Inc. CEO Renato “Ron” Zambonini happily kept his clothes on during his companys fiscal third quarter earnings call Wednesday as Cognos new ReportNet enterprise-reporting product exceeded its revenue targets in the quarter.
ReportNet, launched in September, generated $16 million for Cognos in the quarter ended Nov. 30. Zambonini had vowed during his companys fiscal first quarter earnings call in June to do the third quarter earnings call naked if ReportNet didnt hit $10 million in revenue in its initial quarter.
“We were safe, we all breathed a big sigh of relief here,” joked Rob Ashe, president and COO of Ottawa, Ontario-based Cognos. “The product was very well received in the market. It made a big difference for us competitively and was the key to a lot of new deals.”
In all, business intelligence vendor Cognos had a record 10 multi-million dollar deals in the quarter as it banked $172.2 million in total revenues, up from $138 million in the same period a year ago.
“Thats a good indication of the underlying trend in the market towards companies standardizing on one BI vendor,” said Ashe.
License revenue jumped from $62.2 million to $72.6 million year-to-year.
Ashe said the companys focus on corporate performance management, particularly with metrics management and planning and budgeting applications, was also driving revenues. Cognos turned a $24.2 million profit in the quarter, up from $19.9 million in the same period a year ago.