The IT industry has always resented the image of social ineptitude that clings to computer experts. The PR staff around Bill Gates went to great lengths to portray him as a regular human being with a sense of humour before abandoning the struggle and pushing the substantial figure of Steve Ballmer into the frame.

So when Cognos boasts that Ron Zambonini, its 54-year-old chief executive, has a penchant for donning outrageous costumes and hamming it up in corporate videos that parody Hollywood movies, it is tempting to see history repeating itself. That cynicism is blown away by five minutes with Mr Zambonini, a Scot of Italian extraction who has lived in Canada for 26 years. With a passion for clear communication, he exudes a grasp of business essentials that puts technology in its rightful place and elevates the realities of customer experience to centre stage.

Mr Zambonini and his wife moved to Canada in 1974, when the UK's economic fortunes were low and his job as a computer programmer looked like a life-long career. He recalls working in an environment that mirrored the cubicles of the cult Dilbert cartoons, where high-tech workers slave away writing lines of code in doomed and futile projects.

"The guy in the next workspace was working twice as many hours as I was, and I was working hard. So I discovered I was destined for management." It is typical of Mr Zambonini that he makes light of his ascent up the corporate ladder. "My only skills as a manager are that I am good at strategy and communication."

He joined Cognos as vice president of research and development in 1989, becoming chief executive in 1995. Cognos started life in Ottawa in 1969 and has reinvented itself with successive waves of technology. Today it has an annual turnover of more than $385m and aims to hit the $2bn mark by 2005.

When Mr Zambonini arrived Cognos had a flagship product, a software suite called PowerHouse. This spawned PowerPlay, the program that brought Cognos into the fashionable realm of business intelligence. PowerPlay allows customers to interrogate their business data through a Windows interface. Sales of Cognos' business intelligence products grew from $47m to $96m between 1994 and 1995. This market appetite led Cognos, and PowerPlay "took over the company".

The boast of the business intelligence software market is that it allows users to get more out of their vast software purchases. But it does seem remarkable that the simple ability to access reports quickly took a new software tool. Surely the IT industry has been promising this kind of capability again and again before the term business intelligence was harnessed by marketing departments?

Mr Zambonini is frank. This criticism is "right, up to a point".

He acknowledges the limits of software. The IT sector constantly surprises its audience by unveiling capabilities that an outside observer would imagine already existed. Mr Zambonini's real enthusiasm is for Cognos and its way of working. "We give customers the ability to discover wonderful things in their data," he says.

In the case of one Toronto company, a Cognos presentation to the founders provoked a vocal dispute over a new piece of information the software had extracted from their data. Cognos had followed up PowerPlay with Visualizer, an internet-based tool for giving the kind of fast snapshot of fiscal data that had the board of this business shouting over their figures. Mr Zambonini talks of Visualizer sales like a motorist impressed with the acceleration of a new car. "This was our fastest product to $10m," he says.

New Purchase

Mr Zambonini's travels coincide with his strategy of buying up small companies with products that complement the business intelligence portfolio. His latest purchase is a small west London software house, NoticeCast, acquired for $15m. NoticeCast specialises in generating automatic notifications of business events to executives on the road.

But the acquisitions trail also conflicts with Mr Zambonini's belief in commitment as an ingredient of commercial success. "I bought a Californian outfit once. I will not do that again."

He speaks with contempt of the "IPO junkies" who have proliferated in Silicon Valley. These are staff who live for their share offerings without a long-term view on the company's well being: "All they want is what they call an outcome. They wait to be acquired."

Mr Zambonini welcomes the fall in high-tech valuations, "it makes them more affordable for us". His personal loyalty to Cognos over 11 years is reflected in his respect for committed staff. "Programmers only get productive after two years. We give out longevity awards for long-serving employees. Our turnover of people is much lower than in a Californian operation."

He thinks Cognos can get along fine by keeping a Canadian identity and steering clear of Silicon Valley's desperate faith in innovation for its own sake. "This business is not about technology. Technology is going to change anyway. It is about the relationship with the customer. Given the pace of development there will always be times when your product is not the best but if your customer trusts you he will stay around."

The test of this thinking is in the here and now. Mr Zambonini admits that Cognos could have reacted faster to the adoption of the internet. He refers to the rapid arrival of an online business world in terms of the tidal wave provoked by an earthquake, "this Tsunami".

But Cognos has doubled in size from 1,600 to 2,500 staff inside the last 18 months and has flung itself into internet applications. Nasa, a PowerPlay customer, stuck with Cognos and now uses it to fuel rapid external internet access to its employment profile and work practices.

Cognos' sales conferences are an occasion for Mr Zambonini to exhibit his flamboyant side. A recent event saw him wearing motorcycle leathers and riding onto stage on the back of a Harley-Davidson to the strains of 'Leader of the Pack'. The grandson of Italian immigrants who ran ice cream and fish and chip shops on either side of the family in 1920s Scotland, always sees the stunts for what they are. He grabs the attention of staff and customers before hitting them hard with the facts.

Mr Zambonini is relaxed about discussing his C$25m shareholding in Cognos, but money is obviously not his true motivation as he scours business capitals for new acquisitions. Off duty his recreations of bridge and golf are not extravagant. "I do not spend a lot of money."

When he spends it on behalf of Cognos it will be with a very shrewd eye to winning customer loyalty into the 21st century.