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.
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The solution is easy to use and flexible."
"There is a lot of help and documentation on the Internet, so no special training is needed to use the source code."
"Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially."
"It's similar to Excel, but it's much more powerful than Excel."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable feature is flexibility."
"You don't need much support with Microsoft Power BI because it has such a large base of users who can answer your questions on their forums. There are also many video tutorials and webinars available online that offer solutions to whatever problems you may have."
"It has provided customer purchase patterns and great visualization."
"Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I believe the price should be degressive, and we should have a lower, or better unit price if we have more users."
"More connections with other systems should be added, which would allow for other integrations."
"Better mapping capabilities and easier administration access would be beneficial, especially for understanding who has viewed reports."
"The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on."
"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."
"The reporting needs to be improved."
"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."
"Integration with artificial intelligence would help. Humans take time to review the data and eliminate errors. Artificial intelligence based on machine learning and understanding can bring the same functionality."
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.