CIO Magazine: Cognizant Named to the CIO 100 for the Second Consecutive Year

IDG’s CIO magazine announced Cognizant as a recipient of the 2013 CIO 100. The annual award program recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology (IT). Cognizant won the honor for the second year in a row.

“Every year we are so impressed by the resourceful, business-savvy use of technology across all of our CIO 100 winning companies,” said Maryfran Johnson, editor in chief of CIO magazine and events.  “This year we saw a much greater emphasis on faster project turnarounds and speed of delivery, use of mobility and social technologies, and smarter use of all sorts of data to engage customers.”

“For 26 years now, the CIO 100 awards have honored the innovative use of technology to deliver genuine business value,” said Johnson. “Our 2013 winners are an outstanding example of the transformative power of IT to drive everything from revenue growth to competitive advantage.”

The recipients of this year’s CIO 100 award were selected through a three-step process. First, companies filled out an online application form detailing their innovative IT and business initiatives. Next, a team of judges reviewed the applications in depth, looking for unique practices and substantial results. Finally, CIO editors reviewed the judges’ recommendations and voted on the final 100.

Cognizant received the recognition for Cognizant Enterprise Analytical App Engine (CEAAE), developed by Cognizant CIO's team. Among the world’s largest enterprise-class Business Intelligence platforms with the lowest per-user cost, CEAAE has enabled comprehensive democratization of information assets across Cognizant.

CIO wrote: “The Cognizant Enterprise Analytical App Engine is a centralized analytics and business intelligence platform used by more than 150,000 Cognizant associates around the globe. It is among the largest enterprise BI deployments in terms of user base. More importantly, it is transforming how people work by offering a complete set of analytical capabilities, real-time data access and predictive analytics. To achieve this, Cognizant brought together information spread across multiple application silos and proprietary vendor databases throughout the company. Cognizant also made report creation a technology-agnostic and speedy process, cutting the time to respond to information requests from months to days. The company used commercial open-source and low-cost technologies in addition to custom-built software, a combination that helped it keep the per-user cost at just $40 while allowing it to massively scale the platform.”