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.
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"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."
"We find the solution offers good stability."
"Because this solution is very easy, and very visual, you can have results in minutes."
"I find Power BI's reporting feature the most valuable. The solution has improved a lot. There are new features getting added day by day. In the past, they didn't even have the printing feature, but now they have it."
"Its connection to every database: Whatever and wherever it is."
"We like the drag and drop interactability visualization. We really like that. It's user-friendly."
"The solution overall is very useful. The reports that are generated and the reporting functionality management are beneficial."
"It is in the cloud, which makes it easy for mobile access of reports and data."
"Microsoft BI's initial setup is very straightforward."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case."
"There needs to be improved guidance and documentation for the initial setup of Power BI as it currently remains complex."
"From any improvement perspective, I want the product to be made available to users free of cost...The stability and scalability of the product can be better."
"Some kind of expression wizard, where the user can build a complex expression without any knowledge of DAX, can be a good addition to the product."
"The product doesn't support unstructured data. It doesn't support video, streaming, and strings of files."
"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."
"We have used other solutions and the reporting functionality should be user-friendly and have a drag and drop feature should be available, but Microsoft BI doesn't have these features. When you are creating reports and you can't change as a user. Every time you need one developer or one technical person to make the changes."
"The solution could use a faster speed on certain interactions and a refresh of the dashboards."
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.