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.
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"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'."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"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."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"Microsoft BI is better than most solutions we have. It's pretty easy to conduct analysis with it."
"The sharing features are vital, especially the ability to share and test different shared dashboards."
"I also find connecting to different data sources is quite simple. Other solutions we were using before were complicated."
"My primary use is for view of the dashboard."
"As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"What Power BI is, is a whole collection of templates of small amounts of data that can be used to do something for a real world project, that can be easily set up and become the business intelligence environment or a data warehouse for a large amount of data, for a real world customer. That's what is remarkable."
"We like the drag and drop interactability visualization. We really like that. It's user-friendly."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."
"If I have to update data automatically, where I have to pin the gateway, it doesn't update. There is a scheduled refresh functionality so that it refreshes automatically, but I find it very hard to make it work."
"These licenses are in US dollars. With a long-term license, the client is unaffected when the exchange rate goes up. However, if the exchange rate goes down, you don't get refunded from the excess money you've paid. I guess that is a risk you take in business."
"It needs an AI which can choose the appropriate connection strings and provide options for connections."
"When I create measures, sometimes the error messages aren't clear. It makes me spend more time searching for solutions. I need the error messages to be more specific. So, I would like clearer error messages when creating measures."
"Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop."
"Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case."
"I think that the product would benefit by increasing the range of visuals and graphics readily available, as opposed to using a third party included as part of the product."
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.