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IBM Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics

Overview

What is IBM Cognos Analytics?

IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.

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Learn from top reviewers

Cognos Visualizing Statistical Innovation

Rating: 9 out of 10
April 15, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Indeed, our organizing work with this platform has increased the possibilities of risk assessment. It does not have variations in calculations when making various reports. Sch...
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Astrid Ortega
Analyst - Finance and Accounting
Data Analyst and Risk Assessor
Banco Bci
IBM Cognos Analytics1 year of experience

represents a significant advance compared to previous versions

Rating: 8 out of 10
April 11, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
It has allowed me to create interactive reports and dashboards that convert complex data into intuitive visualizations. This has helped me quickly understand trends and patter...
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Josepe Bonfante
Professional - Social Media
Social Media Strategist
Barzza 
IBM Cognos Analytics2 years of experience

Fantastic Enterprise Reporting Platform

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 30, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Our team works across all industry verticals implementing IBM Cognos Analytics solutions for other companies. Working with our clients, we design and implement Cognos into th...
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David Shadbolt
Director - Information Technology
Technical Architect | Data Engineer | Director
DataVisual Ltd
IBM Cognos Analytics16 years of experience

Give me a 60th of an hour and I’ll give you sales!!

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 28, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Cognos is used company wide to analyze sales. The convenience it provides for drilling down into different metrics is terrific. It can be used to send out last year sales by d...
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Byron Conner
Manager - Other
Assistant General Manager
Bass Pro Shops
IBM Cognos Analytics4 years of experience

IBM Congnos Analytics tool

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 25, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
It addresses problems related to data warehousers, help with poor decision making, and difficulties in identifying trends and other potential opportunities. We utilize the too...
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Tony Higgins
Consultant - Information Technology
System operations
DP Wagner
IBM Cognos Analytics5 years of experience
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How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors

Self-Service

The main reporting tools (reports and dashboard) are intuitive and allow users with minimal experience to create their own ad-hoc reports, slice and dice the company's data, and find answers to questions they have. The ability to then share those same reports with colleagues (so they can do their …
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Data Security and Quality

Data governance is very important to our company. Especially with new laws like the CCPA and others, protection of data is very important and critical for sensitive data. With IBM Cognos Analytics we have been able to secure this data at different levels and across the different tools that IBM …
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Self-Service

Yes it did and if the code was simplified also with integration of multiple UI then it would be a great product that users can use in their businesses
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Data Security and Quality

In enables better data governance structure by having regulated access to reports and dashboards of who can access the data with better row level security enabled. Quality of data is highly dependent on how we get the data and make relationships with different tables and databases so it is …
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Data Security and Quality

This does increase throughput so that we can deploy content to a wider audience utilizing security to make sure people see only what they are supposed to see. The overall model is flexible and powerful so we can deliver data securely no matter the security need.
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Self-Service

These features have streamlined some manual work and further advanced automation, but validation and further accuracy-checking is still needed as we gain confidence in the platform and want to ensure confidence.
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Self-Service

I believe the features before mentioned such as AI assistant have allow the tool to become more effective and helpful, suggestions and options are more customer related and tailored to specific situations.
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Data Security and Quality

In times like that that data and information security has become so critical, having IBM Cognos support that capabilities brings much peace of mind to the administrator, not to be confused to delegated the security to Cognos, the company must always be accountable for the security but in case of a …
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Self-Service

Not really. Because our users stick to Cognos OLAP-Cubes. No interest in using fancy dashboards. Management not interested in dashboards (just in numbers). The real enablement was, many many years ago, cubes over standard-reports.
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Self-Service

It provides practical data analysis to all departments of the company and provides the ability to access, understand and analyze data faster. What's more, it provides an analytics solution that is very easy to customize, integrate, and deploy.
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Self-Service

They've helped our middle office and back office non technical users to be able to probe data and come up with informed analysis on past trades. This has dramatically reduced the number of support requests for ad-hoc reporting raised with our technical teams. The reporting tool has helped …
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Data Security and Quality

In a bank, these controls are critical as we need row and column level data protection. In addition, we need to prove to compliance on a regular basis that our controls are working correctly and this tool helps us provide the data in accordance with user permissions.
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Most Valuable Capabilities

One powerful feature not really talked about is Event Studio. It is a bit awkward to use, but it has some extremely powerful features. As the name implies, Event Studio operates on events. So certain tasks can be automatically run when defined conditions are met. For example, you can create …
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Achievements Enabled

Completely transparent to me, IBM Cognos Analytics would use the product type that I clicked on to filter the detailed report. Other tools have equivalent functionality, but I feel the parameter passing is more customizable and robust on IBM Cognos Analytics. I provided a simple example, but in …
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Self-Service

The AI assistant is still fairly new. My current clients have evaluated it but have not yet implemented it. The big issue is their primary data source is based on a complicated TM1 cube, and the AI ontology cannot accurately match requests to specific tuples.

Once IBM implements it, we'll …
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Data Security and Quality

Governance is extremely important to my client. The reports are grouped into different sections, access to which is defined through the users' AD groups. Individual reports are designed to filter differently based on who the user is and even present different aggregation levels based on user …
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Self-Service

AI assisted data cleansing and connecting data have helped in the process of preparing and transforming data for analysis. Automated dashboard creation supports users to quickly generate interactive dashboard without the need of technical support. Self service feature in cognos analytics helped …
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Data Security and Quality

It helps in defining and imposing security policies for different levels, be it groups or individual levels. It implements data governance controls which helps in data quality management and also helps in improving accuracy, and consistency of data. When user know their data is secured and their …
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Self-Service

80% of the reporting needs are covered by reporting from existing framework manager models. These new features work really well when we need to ingest new data and run the AI assistant to identify connections. Since 11.1.R7 with the improvements to datasets, the options to work with data are …
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Data Security and Quality

Having a governed source of data is key to the success of any analytics initiative. There is complete confidence in the quality of the data generated from Cognos. The only issues with accuracy are generated by data entry in the source system and Cognos helps to correct them by automating data …
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Self-Service

It provides effective solutions, including being able to easily consult and process analytical data. Being able to work through compelling, fully visual charts and dashboards is exceptional.
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Self-Service

While there are claims for the AI integration and other aspects, the implementation of these are not easy and I have seen few success stories of the same. Data cleansing in a reporting tool is rather not recommended and should be done at data source or in data quality tools.
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Data Security and Quality

Security and access control based on department, role and user types is one of the key requirements for me. This is something IBM Cognos Analytics does quite well and easyly integrates with windows AD.
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Self-Service

Its advanced AI capabilities help us immensely in data analysis as its very fast in analyzing large amounts of data in lower time frame. and as its running with the help of ai it means we can deploy our resources somewhere else.
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Data Security and Quality

By data governance IBM Cognos Analytics ensures our data remains safe. It only allow authorized individuals with access of confidential data. with its accurate data analytics capabilities we are ensured that our data received from it is consistent and accurate. and because of that we are really …
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Self-Service

Self service capabilties help end user to create their own report depend on the their requirement, which does not require burden for developer to create one for them & attending meeting
Help them to run their own job with schedule and automate it, not supported by IT anymore. they own [it] …
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Data Security and Quality

Data governance is very important to our company.
Quality of the data depends on the data sources we use in [IBM Cognos Analytics], we have data governance department which help them to manage the purchase order, list of licensed users, it helps them to develop the process to maintain.
We always …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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On Demand - Standard

USD 10.00

Cloud
per month per user

On Demand - Premium

USD 42.40

On Premise
per month per user

On Demand - Standard

USD 10.60

On Premise
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://ibm.biz/Cognos_Analytics_Pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $10 per month per user
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Product Demos

How to get started with IBM Cognos Analytics

www.ibm.com

IBM Cognos Analytics Product Tour

Walnut.io
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

7.5
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

7.6
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8
Avg 8.3

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

7.5
Avg 7.9

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

7.9
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.1
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7.6
Avg 7.7
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Product Details

What is IBM Cognos Analytics?

Cognos Analytics is an AI-fueled business intelligence (BI) platform that helps users create reports, dashboards, visualize, analyze, integrating reporting, modeling, dashboards, data exploration and share actionable insights.

Cognos Analytics supports the entire analytics cycle, from discovery to operationalization. Cognos Analytics gives users — whether data scientist, business analyst or non-specialist — more power to perform relevant analysis in a way that ties back to organizational objectives. It aims to shorten each user’s journey from simple to sophisticated analytics, allowing them to harness data to explore the unknown, identify new relationships, get a deeper understanding of outcomes and challenge the status quo. Users can visualize, analyze and share actionable insights about data with anyone in the organization.





IBM Cognos Analytics Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: ETL Capability
  • Supported: ETL Scheduler

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: REST API
  • Supported: Javascript API

IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of a natural language query, used in IBM Cognos Analytics to get AI-powered insights from data.Screenshot of AI-generated insights and forecasts that can be added with just a click of a button.Screenshot of a dashboard that can be generated automatically using IBM Cognos Analytics by uploading or selecting data.Screenshot of an AI-generated dashboard from a spreadsheet that was just uploaded. This offers a great starting point for the creative process.Screenshot of where to import data to IBM Cognos Analytics from CSV files and spreadsheets. Users can connect to cloud or on-premises data sources, including SQL databases, Google BigQuery, Amazon, and Redshift.Screenshot of a sample operational dashboard of a coffee shop created using IBM Cognos Analytics.

IBM Cognos Analytics Video

IBM Cognos Analytics Integrations

IBM Cognos Analytics Competitors

IBM Cognos Analytics Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Urdu, Farsi

Frequently Asked Questions

IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.

IBM Cognos Analytics starts at $10.

Tableau Public, Tableau Server, and Microsoft Power BI are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics.

Reviewers rate Report Versioning highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of IBM Cognos Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 28)

Meghdeep

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 16, 2015
Pros
  • Framework Manager (metadata modeling tool) is a pretty flexible tool for any complex data modeling.
  • With use of Report Studio you can handle any business logic for reporting.
  • Event studio is used for event based scheduling.
  • Business Insight advanced is used for ad-hoc reporting.
Cons
  • Query studio out-of-the-box is a bit primitive. It is used for ad-hoc reporting, but if something is changed in Query Studio by and end user, it's not possible to see what exactly was changed without going into Report Studio. This is problematic as it means that end users need licenses for Report Studio which is not feasible.
  • Metric studio we have not used at all, and don't know exact purpose of it.
Likelihood to Recommend
Cognos needs to reduce the number of studios and try to consolidate everything into one or two studios. It's currently very confusing from a licensing standpoint, but it's also a training issue: It's quite difficult to explain which Studio does what and which one people should be using for which task.

Need better performance monitoring tool.

Cognos feedback

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
February 19, 2016
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos Analytics
10 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Cognos was used as a BI tool for intelligence reports.
Pros
  • You can develop a very nice report in a short time frame.
  • Cognos Query is a very powerful tool for ad-hoc reports.
  • Dimensional model can replace cube building - less steps in development process.
Cons
  • Query Studio can be improved further, so users can create a nice printable version.
  • Analysis Studio is a great tool for ad-hoc analysis, but it doesn't allow you to create a report with a header and footer and can't be used for aa printable version.
  • I don't like Cognos graphs very much. It is difficult to control the graph's appearance.
Likelihood to Recommend
For small companies IBM Cognos is a heavy and expensive tool.

How we use IBM Cognos Analytics at Office Depot

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
November 03, 2020
HG
Herber Gonzalez
Lead Developer
Office Depot (Retail, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos Analytics
20 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
IBM Cognos Analytics is being used across our whole organization, from the stores that access links to previously executed reports that are saved as outputs to our headquarters and field users who connect to IBM Cognos Analytics to execute, on demand, any canned report. Users have the ability to self service by creating their own ad-hoc reports. We have a group of IT employees that creates all model/packages needed for this to be possible. We also run batch process every morning and schedule a set of reports that are used by executives and different users across multiple departments like finance, supply chain, store operations.
Pros
  • Schedules and delivery of reports
  • Visualizations in the latest version 11.1.7
  • Ease of use for end users
  • Ability to allow users ad-hoc reporting
Cons
  • Active reports (disconnected/portable reports)
  • More up-to-date functions available with recent RDBS technologies like Snowflake
  • Better handling of in memory capabilities (cache, datasets)
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cognos Analytics is well suited for ad-hoc reporting as well as delivery of reports via email in multiple formats. Combining data from multiple data sources. Our company has Oracle, Sql Server Snowflake, and data files that are accessed through Cognos.
I can't think of a scenario where IBM Cognos Analytics is less appropriate. A lot of times it depends a lot on the way the back-end data is stored. I've heard users and companies complain about IBM Cognos Analytics' performance, but again, I think this has to be with different data sources to access the company's data. I've also heard that compared to Tableau Desktop, IBM Cognos Analytics is still "not there" in regard to visualizations.

Congrats on Cognos

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
September 12, 2023
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 10,001+ employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos Analytics
3 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I used Cognos for my reporting and dashboarding to create, modify, delete for different teams and applications within the organization. The clients were mostly insurance based and required scheduling and troubleshooting services with respect to Cognos. Query studio was used for ad hoc reporting or one time use reports, while Report Studio was used for complex and demanding reports that will be used for a long duration.
Pros
  • Reporting Tabular Format
  • Arrangement and Alignment
  • Ad Hoc Reporting.
  • Access to multiple datasets and restrictions based control
Cons
  • Dashboarding and multiple charts
  • Performance
  • Involvement of statistics
  • Easy to use functions
Likelihood to Recommend
Reporting whose demands are not too high but simple tabulated format which can be used for over several years. Also adhoc reporting using Query Studio is better in making short time reports. Other options where it lacks is Dashboarding where I would prefer Tableau or PowerBI

Review of Cognos BI

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
February 29, 2016
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 11-50 employees
Vetted Review
Reseller
IBM Cognos Analytics
10 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We sell IBM Cognos BI to our customers, it's used for analysis, reporting, dashboards, and scorecards, etc.
Pros
  • It's very easy to implement Cognos BI in an organization, easy to learn and maintain the system.
  • Framework Manager packages provide central metadata management of underlying database or data warehouse to be used in reports. Unlike SSRS or other reporting tools where updating a single column in 1000 reports means 1000 manual changes, in Cognos you just update the framework model and it's done.
  • Cognos Workspace is amazing at giving consumer level users the power to manage the presentation of a dashboard from colors to layout format to what data they want to see. They have the power and capability to customize any dashboard to their needs.
  • Ad hoc Analysis capability of Cognos for enterprise level application is very easy to use, user friendly, and easy to maintain. Power users can get help from professional developers where needed and still can go back to using the ad hoc studio without any issues. This means the ad hoc analysis tools give you the power of professional reporting/analysis tools when needed and still be simple in interface and easy to use.
Cons
  • Charting and visualization in Cognos 10 version was not best of the best available. But with the new release of Cognos Analytics (Cognos 11) IBM have improved it quite a bit.
  • Map Analysis/Reporting and geospatial capabilities needs to be improved.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cognos BI is an enterprise level BI/reporting tool. it lacks the fancy visualizations which other tools are better at but at the same time those tools are not well suited for anenterprise reporting application. If any organization has a large volume of data analysis/reports then you have to consider maintenance costs and overhead. With IBM Cognos BI maintenance is easy as compared to other tools on large set of reports.
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