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.
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Data integration enabled my organization to easily pool data from our varied system into one data warehouse."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are its intuitiveness and ease to use."
"Previously we used Excel, which took a long time - two or three weeks - to bring the data into a uniform format, whereas BI can do the same job in a day."
"Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable feature is flexibility."
"The tool is very flexible so it allows creativity."
"Most of the clients I am interacting with are looking towards Power BI because of the cost and simplicities. It provides an entire feature set and a complete solution. It has tight integration with Office 365, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Technology Stack, and datatypes like R and Python."
"Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"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."
"I would like to see more visualization options."
"Its price could be better. Its licensing cost is very high."
"It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that."
"It should be more user-friendly and simple."
"I'm looking for something that can make it much easier to incorporate Power BI visuals or dashboards into, let's say, Power Apps – custom Power Apps or anything like that. The most important thing would be to seamlessly embed reports in applications. For example, to have buttons that can be navigated through multiple solutions – from Power Apps to Power BI to SharePoint – via links or something like that."
"In the future, Microsoft BI can be better by increasing user-friendliness"
"here are some limitations with the data models needed to build the report."
"The reporting could be a bit better."
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.