We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Tableau based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In this comparison, IBM Cognos comes out on top. Users are happier with the support than Tableau users are, and IBM Cognos users also report an ROI.
"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'."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
"The most valuable part of the solution is the general dashboard features."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."
"It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there."
"It allows us to basically understand and evaluate our numbers in an expedient manner."
"It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI."
"One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be. As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."
"The price could be better."
"I am a BI consultant. I have worked on different reporting tools, such as Power BI and MicroStrategy. As compared to other tools, Tableau lags behind in handling huge enterprise-level data in terms of robust security and the single integrated metadata concept. When we connect to large or very big databases, then performance-wise, I sometimes found Tableau a little bit slow. It can have the single metadata concept like other tools for the reusability of the objects in multiple reports."
"Tableau has so many functions, so sometimes it's hard to find the right solution quickly. I have to search multiple menu bars to find the right command."
"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."
"The product's features for cloud integration need improvement."
"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."
"The user experience for less savvy or non-technical people (from my experience)."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 290 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Tableau is rated 8.4. 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 Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Tableau is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAS Visual Analytics and Oracle OBIEE. See our IBM Cognos vs. Tableau 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.