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.
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"It is a stable product."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"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."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."
"The solution overall is very useful. The reports that are generated and the reporting functionality management are beneficial."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft BI is its visualization and its ease of use."
"Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use."
"Technical support has been great."
"Data integration enabled my organization to easily pool data from our varied system into one data warehouse."
"SSRS and the Tabular server/Vertipaq engine/DAX are probably the two most valuable components."
"When we are introducing Microsoft BI to our clients, if they're familiar with Excel, the transition phase will be much easier for them. They can easily switch from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft BI. The core foundation or the base technology is the same in both tools. There are a few limitations in Microsoft Excel, and this is where Microsoft BI comes in."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"The solution's support could be better."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"It could have more options for themes."
"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 visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"When we have a big report with lots of data, the solution slows down quite a lot."
"If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization."
"The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions."
"The product doesn't support unstructured data. It doesn't support video, streaming, and strings of files."
"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."
"In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization."
"I think that the solution is harder to use for people who are not experts in data."
"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.