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.
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"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."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"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."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"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."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."
"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."
"Users already using Excel can generate new reports and dashboards within minutes."
"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."
"The flexibility of the program is valuable. We are able to add other information to the reporting information and expand upon it."
"PowerBI – Self-service BI."
"Its ease of use is most valuable."
"The best feature for me is Power Query. I know that probably sounds strange, but you can't do too much with visuals and reports if the backend stuff is horribly dirty and just bad. But for me, that is absolutely fantastic. I can load the data and do the transformation and be able to load it in a useful way. There are tons of connections, which is absolutely fantastic as well. It's been fairly easy, and it's intuitive."
"Technical support has been great."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"It could have more options for themes."
"The graphic interface could be better."
"The solution could be more customizable and you do not have too much freedom on the code."
"The mobile app is very poor."
"Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget."
"The challenge of this product is in truncating the table data."
"The look is simple, and could be a little more professional."
"We need more integration capabilities."
"Power BI doesn't support some open-source data sources that are new, such as SnowSQL, Iceberg, or ClickHouse."
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.