Cognos, an IBM company, and the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), the collective bargaining representative for all active Major League Baseball players, has selected IBM Cognos TM1 Executive Viewer to help analyze data.

As one of its key activities in representing players, the MLBPA assists the approximately 1,200 members and their agents with the analysis of player performance statistics. IBM Cognos TM1 Executive Viewer, being implemented with the help of Cognos partner Decision Systems, will now provide hundreds of agents with self-service views and reports. The solution will also enable the agents to perform ad hoc analysis on different scenarios with nearly immediate answers.

IBM Cognos TM1 Executive Viewer provides users real-time Web access to OLAP databases for advanced ad-hoc analysis as well as distributed reporting. Power users and non-power users alike can gain insight into their business by exploring data from any perspective, generating graphs and charts, and reporting results and options immediately.

“Our analysis of player performance is as complex and dynamic as the work of high-powered business analysts in Fortune 500 companies, and we need to use the same robust, flexible interface to achieve reliable results,” said Doyle Pryor, Assistant General Counsel of the MLBPA. “Conducting complex analysis in real-time allows us to improve our planning processes and IBM Cognos TM1 Executive Viewer enables the agents themselves to view reports and perform almost limitless ‘what-if’ scenarios for further analysis of the data.”

“The interface for analysis will provide sophisticated users with the tools they’re familiar with and the ability to quickly modify views and reports with as little effort as possible,” said Doug Barton, vice president, product marketing, Cognos, an IBM Company. “Users of IBM Cognos TM1 Executive Viewer continue to gravitate to its features that provide interactivity, immediacy, and flexibility, which, in turn, enable them to accelerate the management of their business’s performance.”

About The MLBPA:

The Major League Baseball Players Association (www.MLBPLAYERS.com) is the collective bargaining representative for all professional baseball players of the thirty Major League Baseball teams and serves as the exclusive group licensing agent for commercial and licensing activities involving active Major League baseball players. On behalf of its members, it operates the Players Choice licensing program and Players Choice Awards, which benefit the needy through the Major League Baseball Players Trust, a charitable foundation established and run entirely by Major League baseball players.

About Decision Systems:

Decision Systems Inc. is a consulting and technology company specializing in business performance management (BPM), business analytics, data mining and data warehousing.

Decision Systems has established partnerships with Cognos, Microsoft and Oracle to deliver “best-of-breed” solutions to Fortune 1000 clients. The MLBPA is the latest client to benefit from the customized technology solutions the company has been providing since 1989. For more information, visit the Decision Systems Web site at http://www.decisionsystems.com.

About Cognos, an IBM company

Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions. It provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. Cognos was acquired by IBM in January 2008. For more information visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/ and http://www.cognos.com.

Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos ULC, an IBM Company, in the United States and/or other countries. IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, or other countries, or both. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and product information are available on Cognos' Web site at http://www.cognos.com