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.
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"It is a stable product."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"I have found the best features to be the dashboard creation, graphs, charts, and presentation bar graphs."
"Microsoft B's beneficial features are that it is a Microsoft product and it is well known by the staff here in the company. It suited the available skills."
"Microsoft BI is scalable."
"In contrast to what we were using before I think that Power BI has given us more extensive results."
"In my experience the scalability is good. You are able to increase users and add more data."
"I find Power BI's reporting feature the most valuable. The solution has improved a lot. There are new features getting added day by day. In the past, they didn't even have the printing feature, but now they have it."
"The uploading of information is very easy, as you just use an Excel sheet to start work right away and obtain the benefits of Power BI."
"The amount of customization that you can do is good, and it's relatively straightforward to do."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"The solution's support could be better."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"Maybe they can enhance the UI a bit. Right now, it's very basic, I would say, compared to the MicroStrategy or Qlik."
"The data source definition is all over the place."
"Better mapping capabilities and easier administration access would be beneficial, especially for understanding who has viewed reports."
"I have found using Microsoft BI is not easy. For example, trying to use the auto-refresh feature is not simple."
"The upgrade process could be improved."
"There is no column-level security in Microsoft BI, and this is a feature that most of our customers are looking for. That is something that should be implemented."
"It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI."
"The integration with third-party products could be more stable."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 129 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 293 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 Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and Databricks. 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.