We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Looker based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"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."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"The product is easy to use."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"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."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"The product does not have documented material."
"Stability needs improvement."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 132 reviews while Looker is ranked 5th in Embedded BI with 19 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Looker 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 Looker writes "The APIs are exposed at every level, so it's highly modular". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and IBM Controller, whereas Looker is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, Google Data Studio, Databricks and Domo.
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