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 most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"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."
"There is a feature in Microsoft BI that allows JSON data to SQL on the dashboards effectively and quickly."
"Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially."
"The sharing features are vital, especially the ability to share and test different shared dashboards."
"The flexibility of the program is valuable. We are able to add other information to the reporting information and expand upon it."
"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."
"It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation. Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution. Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on."
"I like that I can use Power BI to upload data. That is very important for me. The visualization is also convenient and easy to use."
"As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"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."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"It could have more options for themes."
"Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region. Its usability could also be better, and it could also have more connections with different data sources."
"It is easy enough. I don't see any real substantial improvements that are needed. It is great as it is, but its interface could be a bit modern."
"Microsoft BI’s integration and visualization could be improved."
"The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team."
"We would like improvements made to the paginated reports so that it produces quality similarly to SSRS."
"There could be an integrated AI that can automatically analyze some of your data and highlight or provide suggestions. For example, when you are looking at a data set, it can suggest putting it into a certain type of chart so that you gain different insights or a trend line. You would almost have templates that it would recommend for you."
"Microsoft BI lacks some of the scheme features. It would be beneficial if there were a way to show how we move values in a different way."
"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."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 129 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 293 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 Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and Databricks. 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.