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.
"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 three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"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."
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The solution is quite scalable."
"Tech support is very helpful."
"MS SQL & SQL Server Analysis Services."
"Microsoft BI's initial setup is very straightforward."
"The initial setup is relatively simple."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."
"It is in the cloud, which makes it easy for mobile access of reports and data."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"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."
"It could have more options for themes."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"Not having to login again after a mobile app upgrade. A simple login on mobile would be great."
"You do need to do some hard coding for certain things in Microsoft BI."
"I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance."
"The DAX in Microsoft BI is quite difficult."
"Better mapping capabilities and easier administration access would be beneficial, especially for understanding who has viewed reports."
"I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint."
"The solution could improve by simplifying the user interface and adding integration or compatibility with APA."
"The product’s on-premise reporting servers could support real-time data refreshing capabilities like its on-cloud version."
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.