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 most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"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."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"Provides good data flow related to the container and control flow."
"I have found the best features to be the dashboard creation, graphs, charts, and presentation bar graphs."
"Technical support is quite responsive."
"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."
"Management reporting solution that's very stable and scalable."
"It's a pretty scalable product."
"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."
"The data can be accessed from anywhere."
"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."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"Microsoft BI lacks some of the scheme features. It would be beneficial if there were a way to show how we move values in a different way."
"Not having to login again after a mobile app upgrade. A simple login on mobile would be great."
"Sometimes while developing, the front end is not easily customizable and it has limitations. We cannot go and do any UI we want. We have to stick to the limitations of the product."
"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."
"The smart phone application could be improved, along with better graphics and faster updating."
"When we have a big report with lots of data, the solution slows down quite a lot."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"The challenge of this product is in truncating the table data."
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.