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 correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."
"Provides data feeds for enterprise KPI reporting."
"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable features are the user interface, which is easy to use and light."
"Helped identify bad data, enabling the corrections needed to the data for management."
"I like Microsoft BI's drill-down feature and its overall ease of use."
"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."
"It's similar to Excel, but it's much more powerful than Excel."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"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."
"Capacity could be improved."
"Trend data and dashboards need improvement."
"Microsoft BI’s integration and visualization could be improved."
"The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version."
"The graphic interface could be better."
"It would be nice to use other connectors to link with the data."
"There are some other visuals that are available in the Microsoft marketplace, however, you need to use them via trial and error. There needs to be a write-up about how to use them with a quick guide describing the visual."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 129 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 293 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 Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and Databricks. 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.