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.
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"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."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"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'."
"The stability is good."
"Provides good data flow related to the container and control flow."
"The advantages of Microsoft Power BI stem from the fact that it is really easy to use. The drag and drop facilities provided by the product are good."
"Premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month."
"The solution integrates with other Microsoft solutions very well."
"Easy to use and the visualization is valuable."
"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."
"Tech support is very helpful."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"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 AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"I would like to see a change in the premium capacity."
"One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel."
"A few features available in Tableau are not available in Power BI. For example. Tableau has the ability to make up the physical layer and all other stuff at runtime. In Power BI, we have to develop a proper physical layer to connect it. The limitation that we normally face is related to the direct query mode. When it comes to the direct query mode, most of the functionality is not working, which is an issue for us. We have to use the direct query mode frequently because the client needs real-time data. They should work on this limitation. There are a lot of other technical things that need to be improved. I am also following the Power BI platform and Microsoft Support Center platform on the web where users have put their requirements. Microsoft is also working on improving this solution. In every update, they add new features to this solution."
"Trend data and dashboards need improvement."
"Maybe they can enhance the UI a bit. Right now, it's very basic, I would say, compared to the MicroStrategy or Qlik."
"There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface with Microsoft BI."
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.