Cognos Inc reported second quarter revenues up 30% to $46.1m, but predicted sales of its application development tools would continue to decline throught the end of the year. Sales of the Ottawa, Canada-based firm’s PowerHouse tools, which have an installed base of about 26,000, have been declining 10% to 15%. Not terribly surprising; they run on VAX, AS/400 and HP 3000. Cognos CEO Ron Zamobonini said yesterday he expects Axiant 2.0, the migration tool to Windows 95 and NT, to help ease that downward spiral. Cognos also announced it would report its figures in US dollars beginning with its third quarter. The tools company ended the second quarter with net income up 121.6% to $7.5m on revenues up 30.1% to $46.1m compared to the same quarter last year. Earnings per share rose 118% to $0.17. Cognos is betting on the new version of Axiant to pull up revenues; the December-shipping product will enable PowerHouse users to migrate to Windows platforms for the first time. As the firm’s revenues shift toward its business intelligence product unit, which includes its PowerPlay and Impromptu tools, so has its staff. Cognos said it’s undergone a migration under the covers and now has about two thirds of its employees working within the business intelligence group. That unit has seen revenues increase from $11.7m in 1993 to $67.2m in 1995, and they’re expected to reach $116.8m this year. Cognos also broke open the crystal ball for us and said this time next year they’ll have a tool, Real Objects 2.0, to build complex, component-based applications that can be deployed across networks as well as the Internet. Cognos said it’ll have more functionality than low end Internet development tools, but be a more cost effective option than PowerSoft PowerBuilder and Forte Software’s Forte, and have Internet capability those two do not.
