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.
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"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."
"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."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"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 solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."
"The ease of integration and connectivity stands out as the most critical aspect, followed closely by the flexibility to customize reports and dashboards."
"I have found the best features to be the dashboard creation, graphs, charts, and presentation bar graphs."
"It is a little easier at buildings charts and graphs than Tableau."
"Its ease of use is most valuable."
"It allows individuals to do the analysis themselves."
"We have found the product very stable and reliable."
"In my opinion, Microsoft BI is a low-cost solution, and it could be an interesting solution for a tourism company."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"Microsoft has got a very large repository of all change suggestions which have been raised by the BI community. They keep on adding features that are very widely sought after by the community. We don't focus on product features. We focus on business requirements. To use the solution, we find that existing features are good enough and offer us a very effective solution."
"It should be more scalable for an enterprise-level implementation. When you deploy large data sets, the response has to be faster in Power BI. This is one thing that needs to be improved in it."
"The mobile app is very poor."
"SSMS & SSRS."
"I am taking a course to be able to use the solution better. Some aspects of the solution are not straightforward."
"I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect."
"The solution could use a faster speed on certain interactions and a refresh of the dashboards."
"Integration with artificial intelligence would help. Humans take time to review the data and eliminate errors. Artificial intelligence based on machine learning and understanding can bring the same functionality."
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.