Introducing: SpotOn CTO and Keeper of the Cognos SDK “Secret Sauce”
Posted by Darren Nelson on Thu, Aug 07, 2008
Hi, I'm Darren Nelson and welcome to my first blog post - Chris badgered me to do it. I'll start off with a little bit about myself. I was fortunate enough to develop the original ReportNet and Cognos 8 SDK and I continue to work with it on a daily basis. Those early ReportNet days were pretty wild. The BI market was primed and ready for a web-based BI platform, and the ReportNet solution hit the mark - almost too well for its own good. Let me explain.
Reporting is effectively a horizontal solution - everybody needs information. Organizations making significant investments in BI want the solution to meet their key VERTICAL requirements. The ReportNet design team recognized that the solution could not be everything to everyone - thus tasked me to provide the keys to the castle in the form of the Software Development Kit (SDK). This was one of my most memorable projects. When I began, I was perfectly fluent in English and French (written and spoken). By the time ReportNet launched, I was also fluent in SOAP (written and spoken)!
I'm not sure anybody could have guessed the velocity that ReportNet would hit the market with. Astounding for what was a V1 solution! I'm not sure if anybody predicted how much these major early adopters would leverage the SDK to build out custom functionality or tightly integrate the solution into existing environments and applications.
After a few years of "assisting" (read: chief cook and bottle washer) with these SDK initiatives, I moved to the Cognos OEM team; where my daily activities finally fell in line with my actual job description.
Now I've managed to somehow surround myself with brilliant BI developers (and Chris) where they take my ideas (code that is usually held together with Duct tape and bubblegum) and turn it into art. I have the extreme pleasure of being able to work with clients on a daily basis, helping them get the most out of their Cognos BI. Maybe I'm starting to believe this "Edge" stuff!
We're really excited about sharing what we're up to with you. We have some really cool stuff coming out of the labs, and we've decided to quit being our own best kept secret.