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.
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"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."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"It is a stable product."
"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."
"The user interface is easy to work with."
"The interface is very fluid."
"They should add mobile access."
"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."
"Very intuitive and easy to use."
"The use of graphics to show and view the data indicators is the most valuable feature. It is also very stable."
"Provides good data flow related to the container and control flow."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"The solution's support could be better."
"The data source definition is all over the place."
"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."
"A lot of people work on Excel, so being able to export an Excel file as part of a subscription would be an improvement."
"I would like to see more AI capabilities in future releases. There's a strong interest in AI, including technologies like GPT, which facilitate real-time interactions."
"The integration with third-party products could be more stable."
"You need to purchase upgraded support separately."
"The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire."
"Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget."
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.