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.
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"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."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"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 basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"It is low-cost and easy to deploy. It is fully-featured."
"It's a great tool for visualization data, and it's free for engineers."
"It is more user-friendly compared to SSRS."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"It's a straightforward setup."
"With Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools."
"I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool."
"Power BI has strong support from Microsoft. If you need help, they answer promptly. There are also several discussion groups where you can get information, like the product roadmap and any new things coming up."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"SSMS & SSRS."
"The only challenge I have found is that they do not have a Mac version."
"It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI."
"Areas of Power BI that could be improved are the learning curve for developers who come from non-technical backgrounds."
"Real-time refreshing for SAP BW would be nice. We know its on the radar for the development team at MS. "
"The look and feel should be updated in terms of the types of dashboards and graphs that you can produce. They aren't as visual as some of its competitors."
"It needs a wizard that covers all its options."
"At times, I feel that the system needs improvement in single sign-on, especially for the on-premises side of the tool."
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.