IBM Cognos vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 10, 2022

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Most users of both solutions report that their initial setup and deployment is straightforward.
  • Features: Reviewers of both products are happy with their stability and scalability. IBM Cognos users praise its reporting tools and say it has excellent analysis features. Several users mention that its performance is a bit slow. Microsoft BI users say it is user friendly, flexible, and has good querying capabilities. Several users mention that the UI could be enhanced.
  • Pricing: Each of these products received mixed reviews in the pricing category. Some users of each solution feel that the price is too high.
  • ROI: Reviewers of both products report seeing an ROI.
  • Service and Support: Most reviewers of both solutions report being satisfied with the level of support they receive.

Comparison Results: Microsoft BI has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, it is a more lightweight solution than IBM Cognos.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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.""Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting.""The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'.""The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson.""I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot.""The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."

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"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power BI is the drill-through feature that takes you to a details page the users want to see.""Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.""There is continual improvement year-over-year.""This solution has improved our ability in making decisions and explaining data.""The stability is great and continues to get better and better.""The solution is not that difficult to install, although this will vary with the experience of the person responsible for its installation.""It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on.""The most valuable feature is integration with Python."

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Cons
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved.""I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like.""I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers.""One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics.""There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool.""We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics.""The solution's support could be better.""Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."

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"Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions.""Technical support could be a bit better.""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.""The DAX in Microsoft BI is quite difficult.""Things can slow down if you create too many pages.""Not having to login again after a mobile app upgrade. A simple login on mobile would be great.""This solution needs integration with SAS and more deep analysis functionality.""My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack."

More Microsoft Power BI Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
  • "The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
  • "IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
  • "Pricing should be improved."
  • "The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
  • "It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
  • "Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
  • "It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
  • More IBM Cognos Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "There is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price."
  • "MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."
  • "All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
  • "I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."
  • "Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? ​"
  • "Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
  • "Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
  • "Paid for itself in the first month."
  • More Microsoft Power BI Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting.
    Top Answer:The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved.
    Top Answer:There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows:  1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle  - look for SAP… more »
    Top Answer:Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance… more »
    Top Answer:Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle… more »
    Ranking
    4th
    out of 50 in Reporting
    Views
    7,475
    Comparisons
    4,437
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    433
    Rating
    8.2
    1st
    out of 50 in Reporting
    Views
    20,317
    Comparisons
    17,415
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    555
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
    SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

    IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

    IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

    • IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.

    • IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.

    • IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.

    • IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.

    • IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.

    • IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

    Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

    Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

    Sample Customers
    More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
    Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company9%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization57%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Government5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise61%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft Power BI
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.