We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Microsoft BI based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft BI has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, it is a more lightweight solution than IBM Cognos.
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"It is a stable product."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"The feature I find most valuable is the ability to publish Power Bi reports, using an embedded link, directly onto a website."
"You can learn a lot of things quickly using resources like ChatGPT or Microsoft's own solutions, which are very helpful within the Microsoft ecosystem."
"The visualization part and its inclusion in a cloud-based application are valuable features."
"The scalability overall has been quite good."
"There is also a chart store where we can download charts, which is extremely useful."
"Technical support has been great."
"In my experience the scalability is good. You are able to increase users and add more data."
"I like that I can use Power BI to upload data. That is very important for me. The visualization is also convenient and easy to use."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"It could have more options for themes."
"They can improve it in terms of rule-based security. Currently, it has very limited rules."
"I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint."
"here are still better UI designs they can go through. I'm assuming they are focusing more on capabilities rather than look-and-feel designs."
"The solution could improve the extraction and transformation of data. For example, you transform the data and then send it to Microsoft BI without having to use your own API. We are only providing the API to Power BI, and then Power BI is doing the job."
"At times, I feel that the system needs improvement in single sign-on, especially for the on-premises side of the tool."
"They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly."
"Most clients have MacBooks. Therefore, they use Tableau as Power BI Desktop is not available for the MacBook right now."
"The DAX features need some improvement. It's not as easy as Excel. They need more DAX formulas."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 297 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". IBM Cognos is most compared with Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. See our IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft Power BI report.
See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.