I think everyone is saddened by this, and all  air traffic accidents.  But I
believe that Concord is also on the way out.  It's a financial nightmare to
operate.  The money generated by passengers doesn't make up for the cost to
maintain and fly these birds.  Since Cognos was using the Concord on their
packaging is there any resemblance to the high cost of purchase and
maintenance?

Just my two-cents worth of observation.....

Conrad Whittall wrote:

> As a number of people on the powerh-l list have observed, the current
> packaging and documentation for the Cognos application development tools --
> PowerHouse 4GL, PowerHouse Web and Axiant 4GL -- carry an image of Concorde
> (nose up, trimmed for supersonic flight).
>
> Everyone in the ADT Group here at Cognos was shocked and saddened when we
> heard the news of the Concorde crash on Tuesday afternoon just outside
> Paris. Our deepest sympathies go to the families of those who lost their
> lives in this tragic accident, as well as to Air France and all of its
> employees.
>
> We have no doubt that the accident investigators will uncover the cause of
> the fire in the number 2 engine and that the remainder of the Concorde
> fleet, in service with both Air France and British Airways, will have many
> years of safe operational service ahead of them.
>
> Our corporate marketing group came up with the idea of using Concorde to
> represent the Cognos application development tools range a few years ago,
> when all of the product images were being updated -- resulting in
> Impromptu's observatory, PowerPlay's footprint on the moon,
> DecisionStream's high speed TGV train, etc. At the time we revealed the
> Concorde image the rest of the product marketing teams were quite
> upset...the Concorde just looked so much better than what they had for
> their products. It was generally agreed that the Concorde image was
> the "best so far" when it came to the new product images.
>
> I don't think that it was realised at the time how close some of the
> similarities between Concorde and PowerHouse actually were: both perceived
> as old technology, but both still the fastest way to get to where you want
> to go...and really in a class of their own. Concorde is the perfect
> embodiment of an older technology that is still faster, more sophisticated
> (it was the world's first fly-by-wire airliner) and just down right better
> looking than any of its modern counterparts. Have you ever noticed how
> people simply refer to Concorde...not "a Concorde", but "Concorde" or "the
> Concorde"? No other airliner is ever referred to like this...its always "a
> 747", or "an Airbus 320".
>
> After almost three years of use, our corporate marketing group have decided
> that we should start replacing the individual product images with a single,
> strong, corporate brand image. And so all of the individual product images
> will gradually be replaced with the new corporate Cognos image. In fact,
> this has already started with some of our business intelligence products a
> few months ago.
>
> So, Concorde will eventually disappear from our product packaging and
> manual covers. We will be sad to see it go. I should add that this has
> nothing to do with Tuesday's tragic accident...the decision to replace all
> of the individual product images with a single Cognos brand image was taken
> earlier this year. I'm sure that it will be a long, long time before the
> real Concorde is no longer seen in the skies above Europe, North America
> and the Caribbean.
>
> Conrad Whittall
> Marketing Manager, Application Development Tools, Cognos Incorporated