Cognos Adds Excel Integration To BI Tools

In a nod to Excel's status as a leading business intelligence tool in many companies, Cognos has introduced an add-in for the spreadsheet in the software maker's BI suite.

Cognos 8 BI for Microsoft Excel, which was launched this week, uses Microsoft's ubiquitous software to slice, dice and drill down on OLAP data sources. Those sources could include relational data in a data warehouse, Microsoft's Analysis Services or Cognos' PowerCubes, which are dimensionally modeled data sets generated within Cognos 8.

Excel remains a leading BI tool in corporations, despite its shortcomings. While users enjoy the control in using familiar software for analysis, they often end up with widely different conclusions to the same problem because of the use of inconsistent data. (See this week's In-Depth Analysis: Business Intelligence and Excel: Happily Married?)

With its Excel add-in, Cognos offers business and financial analysts a familiar interface that operates on top of the same Cognos 8 BI data layer, which includes the software maker's tools for generating business plans, budgets and forecasts, as well as managing the close, consolidation and reporting process.

Cognos 8 BI Analysis for Microsoft Excel is available now. Pricing was not disclosed.