IBM Cognos vs Knowage comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Knowage based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.
To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 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 most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them.""A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports.""Security administration tools are powerful and flexible.""The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson.""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."

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"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage.""We can easily do our own customizations.""The embedding feature is great.""The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

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Cons
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics.""The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help.""One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map.""I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality.""Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't.""I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information.""The charts and graphics are weak.""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."

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"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there.""It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products.""The dashboard components could be better.""The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

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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 →

  • "It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
  • "Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
  • More Knowage Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    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's an open-source product; we use the open-source edition for Knowage.
    Top Answer:The integration could be better. We've been struggling a bit with embedding it without the need to log on. The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more. If you compare it with… more »
    Top Answer:We primarily use the solution to embed reports. We are using it as a server to share our embedded reports.
    Ranking
    Views
    9,561
    Comparisons
    5,647
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    433
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    1,115
    Comparisons
    878
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    1,093
    Rating
    7.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
    SpagoBI
    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.”

    Knowage (formerly SpagoBI) has a 14-years history. The actual release is the 6.3.

    Knowage offers FULL ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES, with a special focus on big data analytics and comprehensive support to rich and multi-source data analysis. Knowage provides different modules, each one focused on a specific domain but mutually combinable (Big Data, Smart Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Location Intelligence, Performance Management, Predictive Analysis). Moreover, Knowage is an OPEN SOURCE solution: the source code is freely accessible, everyone is allowed to join the community and build the own business solution to ensure strategic decision-making and improved productivity.

    Knowage suite is supported by Engineering Group, the leading Italian software and services company, with about 10,000 people and more than 50 offices worldwide. Maintenance and support services (such as trainings, migration support, proof-of-concepts, etc) are provided by Engineering Group (KNOWAGE Labs) under subscription.

    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.
    FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
    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
    Comms Service Provider25%
    Computer Software Company25%
    Hospitality Company13%
    Non Tech Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Government11%
    Real Estate/Law Firm10%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise61%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise49%
    Buyer's Guide
    BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 11 reviews while Knowage is ranked 23rd in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 1 review. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Knowage is rated 7.6. 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 Knowage writes "Open-source with great embedding capabilities but the dashboards could be better". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Oracle Hyperion, whereas Knowage is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Pentaho Business Analytics and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

    See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors and best Reporting vendors.

    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) 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.