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.
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"It is a stable product."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Power BI is its ability to provide customized visualizations and insights tailored to specific business needs."
"The solution is very intuitive, you do not need to have too much programming knowledge to use it. Advanced Excel users can use it very easily."
"It is useful for bringing visualization to data. It calculates counts, ratios, etc."
"The solution is easy to use and flexible."
"Its seamless integration with Microsoft products, such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Excel, is the most valuable."
"It's pretty easy to set up the product."
"They should add mobile access."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The solution's support could be better."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"It could have more options for themes."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"One opportunity for improvement would be on the Power Query side. As a consultant, I know Power Query is not the main strength of Power BI. It is not where Power BI shines, but many customers use Power Query to do full ETL workloads for deliverable cookies."
"When we have a big report with lots of data, the solution slows down quite a lot."
"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."
"From a scalability and performance perspective and based on my understanding and feedback from end users, there's room for improvement in data processing, scaling up, and leveraging the cloud. That could be an enhancement area for me to look into."
"The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on."
"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for the solution."
"For someone who is new, I think that Power BI can be a little complicated."
"The data source definition is all over the place."
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.