While Blink Logic knows it is no longer a Cognos technology partner, the Mill Valley, Calif.-based collaborative on-demand business intelligence (BI) solution provider is unclear as to exactly why that is.
Cognos spokesperson Connie Costigan told CDN that Blink Logic was no longer a member of the Ottawa-based BI vendor’s partner program. This followed a Dec. 18th press release from Blink Logic, in which the company identified itself as a Cognos Technology Partner.
The release promoted Blink Logic’s BI solution, which allows current Cognos 7 users to obtain feature-rich and collaborative elements for dashboards, analysis, annotation, scorecards, and Web reports similar to those found in Cognos 8, without having to upgrade. The release also questioned the market acceptance of Cognos 8.
“The BI market is volatile,” said the Blink Logic release. “With market consolidation and IBM’s announcement to acquire Cognos, customers are questioning whether upgrading to Cognos 8 is a viable long-term solution.”
It’s unclear whether the comments in the release led to Blink Logic’s leaving the Cognos partner program. Blink Logic CEO David Morris confirmed his company is no longer a Cognos partner, although he’s unclear as to why that is.
“I’m not exactly sure what Cognos is thinking,” Morris said. “They haven’t told us when our partnership will end and we’re not sure why they decided to do this. Our founders are former Cognos employees.”
On the Cognos end, Costigan declined to discuss specifics beyond confirming Blink Logic’s partner status was over as of this month. Costigan did insist, however, that Cognos’ acquisition by IBM last year was not a factor in the decision.
The Cognos spokesperson also disputed the contention customers are questioning Cognos 8 as a viable long-term solution, saying demand is more prevalent for Cognos 8 now than ever before. She added Cognos did not see or approve the Blink Logic press release before it was issued.
While Blink Logic will no longer be an official Cognos partner, Morris says he doesn’t see this as a threat to his business in any way.
“I don’t know what Cognos’ strategy is,” Morris said. “Consolidation with the enterprise BI world has been nothing but positive for us. Any time a customer questions what they’re doing, this is an opportunity for us to have a conversation with them. We don’t see this (void partnership) as a threat.”
The Blink Logic solution is an on-demand offering that layers on top of a user’s already existing Cognos infrastructure. By offering many of the benefits of Cognos 8 to users of the Cognos 7 platform, Blink Logic is seeking to capitalize on perceived uncertainties around the Cognos platform post-IBM acquisition, says Morris.
“From our perspective, BI players, or any other player in the enterprise world, is almost forced to make things more complicated in order to justify their upgrade cycles,” Morris said. “We want to keep it simple because we think the threshold now is going to be passed up for a simpler solution for the problem.”
With everything that has transpired between Blink Logic and Cognos, Morris said Blink Logic partners have nothing to worry about because demand for their software solution is still there.
“We’ll have approximately 65 to 60 ISVs up and running with significant market reach in North America this year,” Morris said. “We’re going to continue to build a product that can be worked with easily. We’re also going to continue to invest and double the size of the company by increasing our market awareness.”
