Cognos PowerPlay®
The world's best-selling OLAP software lets users analyse huge volumes of data with sub-second response

With Cognos PowerPlay, you can perform your own multidimensional analysis, create reports, and share them to make better decisions. Anyone at any business or technical skill level across your company can explore large volumes of summarized data with sub-second response times.

Cognos PowerPlay draws information from relational databases to model and build PowerCubes ("Cubes"). Cubes are optimised data sets that enable users to perform analysis with quick response times. They can be small or large, containing more than a billion rows of data and 2 million categories. With such rich and fast-response data sources, you can analyse multiple aspects of your particular interest—to see how a value changes over time; how it compares across geography; how it changes against any other dimension.

PowerPlay reports and Cubes can be accessed by Web clients, or from Windows and Excel clients, all using the same application server.

Cognos PowerPlay delivers:

Easy-to-use analysis. Explore information from multiple dimensions by pointing, clicking, and dragging the information into dynamic, interactive reports.

Flexibility. The zero-footprint Web interface simplifies deployment to employees, and stakeholders outside your organisation.

Speed. PowerPlay delivers summarised results to users, reducing the volume of information sent and optimising network performance. Ease of use means quick time to results.

Enterprise capacity. PowerPlay's architecture scales to thousands of users, automatically load-balancing incoming requests across multiple servers and processors.


EASY-TO-USE ANALYSIS
Explore information from multiple dimensions by pointing, clicking, and dragging the information into dynamic, interactive reports.

Three simple but powerful capabilities allow users to analyse business data from any point of view:

Drill down. Gain fast answers to critical business questions by easily moving from one level of information to the next.
Slice-and-dice. Interactively explore corporate data in any combination, from every conceivable angle.
Graphical analysis. Choose from a wide range of graphical displays, making it easier to spot trends and understand the key factors driving the business.

In addition to these benefits, PowerPlay offers the broadest range of features for data exploration, including:

Ranking, sorting, and filtering. Quickly rank or sort data to determine your top-to-bottom, best-to-worst performers. The 80/20 filter automatically groups all categories that amount to less than 20% of a row total or column into an "Other" category.
Drill through. Drill through to other related reports and PowerCubes easily by clicking a link. Additionally, drill through from summary PowerPlay OLAP reports to view underlying transactional detail in Cognos ReportNet™.
Projections. Forecast a trend by extending current time-based data forward any number of designated periods.
Exception highlighting. Automatic exception highlighting clearly shows values in a report that are above or below a value range.
Event Detection and Notification : Define your own custom agents so that you are automatically informed via email whenever a key value exceeds a threshold of your choosing.
Scenario Dimensions: Explore alternative scenarios, like Actual, Plan, and Forecast, using scenario dimensions.
Find. Search for specific categories within cubes and reports.
Subsets. Create the logical groupings of information that you require, like “Top Products”, based on criteria like pattern matches and value thresholds.
Nested crosstabs and charts. Easily nest rows and columns both within dimensions and across multiple dimensions.
Flexible, built-in Time Series Analysis . Compare period over period results and growth, for any time period.
Excel Output: Output the results of any report in formatted Excel format.

FLEXIBILITY
Browser and platform independence. Any user running version 4 or later browser use PowerPlay Web, and the server is supported on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows 2003, SUN Solaris, HP/UX, and IBM AIX platforms.

Zero-footprint Web interface. Use drag and drop, right-click, flyouts and row/column selection to simplify tasks such as exception highlighting, alert creation or calculations. View a cube's dimensions and measures in a tree structure to understand the data structure and find items you need. (Available with IE 5.5 and above.)

SPEED
Network efficiency. Data is processed and summarized in the application layer by the PowerPlay Enterprise Server—only summarized results are returned, with or without HTTP-compatible compression applied. This reduces the volume of information sent to the user, preserving bandwidth and optimising network performance.

Minimal training. PowerPlay Web uses a standard Web browser interface and its functionality is aimed at the knowledge worker/information consumer.

ENTERPRISE CAPACITY
Scalability. PowerPlay's multi-tier architecture scales to thousands of users, automatically load-balancing incoming requests across multiple servers and processors. If any server fails, incoming requests are sent to other servers on the system. Cached query results reduce the time users spend waiting for results.

Integrated with the Cognos Business Intelligence Series. PowerPlay is integrated with the Cognos Business Intelligence Series, so you can create whatever kind of report you need. Publish reports to a common, open portal. Drill through from PowerPlay to ad hoc or production reports in Cognos ReportNet. Define agents directly within PowerPlay using Cognos NoticeCast. Or deliver enterprise scorecards based on PowerPlay data using Cognos Metrics Manager.

Multilingual. A common, multilingual application server handles requests from Web, Windows, and Excel users, significantly simplifying administration and reducing cost of ownership. Users can choose which language to use when viewing and analysing corporate data. Additionally, users can view reports in any local currency with a simple display change.

Multi-vendor. Use PowerPlay with leading OLAP solutions. The PowerPlay server can access Cognos OLAP structures, as well as cubes in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Hyperion Essbase, SAP BW, and IBM OLAP for DB2.