Cognos has become became the latest business intelligence (BI) specialist to extend its support for hosted software by joining Salesforce.com's AppExchange initiative. However, Cognos said the partnership will not see it emulate Salesforce.com's model and offer its software as a service (SaaS).

Graham Walter, vice president of Cognos in the UK, Middle East and South Africa, said that joining AppExchange would allow joint Cognos and Salesforce customers to access and report on data held in Salesforce's CRM applications. " Salesforce.com is increasingly popular, but it sits outside the infrastructure of an organisation, " he said. "If you want to have standardised enterprise-wide BI you need to be able to access the Salesforce data along with internal data."

He added that joining AppExchange, coupled with the launch of a new Data Adaptor integration tool, would give customers the ability to easily report on Salesforce.com data in conjunction with historical data and information from other parts of the enterprise.

However, Walter said that although Cognos had a SaaS programme in place, it would not be offering Cognos apps as a fully hosted offering through AppExchange. He argued that offering hosted BI functionality alongside Salesforce.com would not resolve the problem of ensuring firms' standardised BI systems can report on data held in both hosted and proprietary apps.

This approach differs from that of BI rival Business Objects, which joined forces with Salesforce.com last year and is providing some fully hosted BI functionality through the AppExchange platform.