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.
"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."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"It is a stable product."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on."
"Power BI has strong support from Microsoft. If you need help, they answer promptly. There are also several discussion groups where you can get information, like the product roadmap and any new things coming up."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"Tech support is very helpful."
"It allows individuals to do the analysis themselves."
"We like the drag and drop interactability visualization. We really like that. It's user-friendly."
"There is also a chart store where we can download charts, which is extremely useful."
"We can see that it's really improved the way end users can do their own graphs and pick their own fields of information and present that in a nice way."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"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."
"Microsoft needs to do some more research and development to make it more stable."
"The Microsoft BI interface should be simpler and more user-friendly. I find it very difficult to move between their data sources and their analytics section."
"I would like for there to be some type of user manual that shows steps on how to navigate the solution."
"I believe the price should be degressive, and we should have a lower, or better unit price if we have more users."
"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."
"If you need data in real-time, it's not an ideal solution."
"Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region. Its usability could also be better, and it could also have more connections with different data sources."
"The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 131 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.
