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 product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"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."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"We have found the product to be scalable."
"It is very good, and it supports the Microsoft ecosystem, including Excel, etc."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources."
"It's similar to Excel, but it's much more powerful than Excel."
"The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app."
"The querying capabilities are the most valuable because they allow me to build many automations. We have many workflows and many databases that we work on a daily basis. They need to be updated quite quickly. In order to not to take much of our time doing these updates manually, I have set up these automations using the systems. The process is just to ingest the data and reprocess it. Every time I click a button, everything is updated in almost real time. It is by far the easiest system not only for querying but also for data modeling, data visualization, and deployment. It is light years ahead of Tableau and even Microsoft Excel to do these kinds of things. It is very easy to use and set up, and it has a lot of videos on the internet."
"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"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."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"The mobile app is very poor."
"The orchestration module for refreshing data flows is something that is missing and we have to do it manually."
"It needs more analytic tools."
"They can provide a user-friendly and easy way to use this tool for people who don't know about programming or technical things. It will be quite good if they can improve the look and feel and make it simpler to operate. They can make it easier to create some of the reports. They can also include predefined templates that you can directly use."
"I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited."
"It would be nice to use other connectors to link with the data."
"Creating dashboards could be easier."
"This solution needs integration with SAS and more deep analysis 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.