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 solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"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."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"It is a stable product."
"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."
"Being able to transfer data with the Power Query feature is great for teaching with about one to two hundred rows of data. I am also able to see the relationship between multiple tables and create various sheets and dashboards."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Technical support is quite responsive."
"Premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month."
"Technical support has been great."
"Its ease of use is most valuable."
"The product is intuitive and user-friendly."
"Microsoft BI was very helpful for me because I had a huge variety of connections. It is very convenient to build reports, even if somebody has no experience using BI tools or data visualizations. Additionally, the performance is very good when generating reports."
"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."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"The solution's support could be better."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"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."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"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."
"I would like to see more AI capabilities in future releases. There's a strong interest in AI, including technologies like GPT, which facilitate real-time interactions."
"I believe the price should be degressive, and we should have a lower, or better unit price if we have more users."
"A lot of people work on Excel, so being able to export an Excel file as part of a subscription would be an improvement."
"SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is not user friendly."
"I have been doing trial and error to figuring out how to do the data analyzing and modeling. There could be some improvement to simplify it."
"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."
"The solution could improve by providing more free visuals. A lot of them are very nice but you have to purchase them."
"In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization."
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.