IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
IBM Logo
2,086 views|1,221 comparisons
Oracle Logo
192 views|132 comparisons
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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 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.""Security administration tools are powerful and flexible.""Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users.""This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats.""We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting.""A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use.""It is a stable product."

More IBM Cognos Pros →

"The solution can handle a large volume of data.""It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements.""The solution is stable and reliable.""The solution is scalable.""It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases.""I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features.""Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data.""Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."

More Oracle Essbase Pros →

Cons
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like.""It could have more options for themes.""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.""Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes.""The solution's support could be better.""The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved.""There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data.""They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."

More IBM Cognos Cons →

"The initial setup is pretty complex.""The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved.""There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness.""It's an expensive product to use.""The initial setup could be simplified.""They should improve the solution's performance.""I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool.""Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

More Oracle Essbase 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 →

  • "Essbase is competitively priced."
  • "I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
  • "It is a costly solution."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • More Oracle Essbase Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Legacy BI Tools solutions are best for your needs.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    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:It is a costly solution. This is because we require high-performance servers with substantial CPU and RAM capacities to handle our extensive datasets effectively.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness.
    Top Answer:We are a telecommunications company operating in Iran, and we manage a vast amount of data related to our network infrastructure. We have hundreds of data points specifically pertaining to our network… more »
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 3 in Legacy BI Tools
    Views
    2,086
    Comparisons
    1,221
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    433
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    192
    Comparisons
    132
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    381
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
    Essbase
    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.”

    Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

    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.
    CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company9%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization57%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm50%
    Retailer25%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Retailer7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise61%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Large Enterprise73%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise76%

    IBM Cognos is ranked 3rd in Legacy BI Tools with 11 reviews while Oracle Essbase is ranked 10th in Database Development and Management with 8 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Oracle Essbase is rated 8.4. 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 Oracle Essbase writes "Everybody uses it for financial purposes, but it can also be used for other analytic purposes, such as mathematical models, statistical models, and so on". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Oracle Hyperion, whereas Oracle Essbase is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle Analytics Cloud and Databricks.

    We monitor all Legacy BI Tools 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.