IBM Cognos Initial Setup

Kumar Gurram

Senior Business Analyst at HSBC

The initial setup is easy and takes four to six months to complete.

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Gnanavel-Chakkarapani

Junior Consultant at CMA CGM

For the setup phase, my company uses SQL Server. The tools' setup phase is easy.

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SalmanAhmad

Head of ERP Applications at Patel Hospital

The initial setup was straightforward for me because of my previous experience with Power BI and other solutions. I would rate the setup process at eight out of ten.

I created a prototype based on input provided by process owners. It took about six to seven months to deploy the solution.

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Mahmoud SAmi

Data & AI Solution Arch. at Alkan CIT Ethiopia

I rate the product's initial setup phase a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup phase, and ten is an easy setup process.

The ease or difficulty experienced during the setup phase of the tool depends on the experience of the person involved in the installation process.

Most of our company's clients have confidential data, so the solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The time taken to deploy the product varies from project to project. In the last project that I managed, the deployment process took around six months to complete.

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reviewer2112948

Consultant at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

The product's initial setup phase is easy, but we are using it with another tool. When we use IBM Cognos with another tool, meaning when you plug it in for the first time, it is a little bit complicated, but once you have done it, the next time, it will be okay.

For the product's deployment phase, you have to follow the setup guide to create the deployment plan. My company plugs IBM Cognos with our database, which is populated by our main tool. My company gets the data from the database or one of the other tools we use and from the vendor of IBM Cognos.

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SusheelA

Director - Metrics & Analytics with 5,001-10,000 employees

The initial setup was a bit complex.

The joins and structures that we had to create were somewhat difficult. I've worked on the OB as well and the RPD constructions that we do on OB are pretty straightforward. If we have some features such as we have in Oracle Business Intelligence, of the RPD structure, it would be a great help for IBM Cognos.

I would rate the complexity a three out of five.

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Prasad Babu

Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The solution is very easy to implement. It's not overly complex or difficult. The documentation is good from IBM. IBM tried to create not too much complexity in terms of integration and configuration. We can usually implement using the IBM docs. It's not a problem.

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Jay Bockstoce

Cognos BI Developer at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I don't know about the initial setup as I was hired after it. Upgrades seem to take some time and some fine-tuning with IBM's assistance. There has been nothing out of the ordinary.

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reviewer2293248

Data Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The solution's initial setup is not too bad. We have IBM support if we run into issues.

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LUKE FITZGIBBON

Resp offre IBM Cognos, Lyon at Talan

I rate the solution's initial setup process as a five. It takes a year to complete.

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Lou Zunin

Managing Consultant at Adaptive USA

Depending on customer needs, complexity and size of the BI environment, the initial setup can be tailored to either being very straightforward or robust/complex.

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SunnyDarediya

Sr. Data Warehouse Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The setup is slightly complex for us because Cognos is basically integrated with our company's product.

So what happens is, we have our product and Cognos is a separate product, a reporting tool for that product. Whenever we release a new version of Cognos, we have to make a sort of handoff from our product to Cognos and we need to create some Custom Namespaces and do other Custom Roles. So for us, the setup is complicated.

But I have installed Cognos out of the box once, as well, and it was very easy. I did face an issue in an early in version 11.0.1, that whenever Cognos started and set up everything, a lot of times RAM use was an issue, even though the system had quite a lot of RAM. But if the system RAM was allocated to the standby memory, then Cognos did not get it. That used to be an issue. However, that issue has been resolved in subsequent versions.

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FranciscoSosa Garcia

RPA Architect & RPA Product Owner at Francisco Sosa

The initial setup was extremely easy.

You log in from your account or create an account and instantly you have access to a 30-day trial or you can test the tool, and create exercises to determine if it is good for you. Once complete you can decide if you want to pay monthly or you can dismiss the tool.

In our case, the only thing that we needed to do was to upload the data, which took a couple of hours.

We don't require any staff to maintain this solution.

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Asha Shankar Lakshumanan

DWH/Cognos Project Lead at Syntel Inc @ Mercedes Benz USA

It was a mix of both.

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it_user123936

Sr Programmer Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

Setting up a full-fledged distributed environment is not for the inexperienced administrator. On a scale from 1 to 10, the complexity level is definitely above 7.5. You need to have low to mid-level network knowledge; need a sense of how database connective and security works. Your average system admin might be able to do a single-server installation.

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KARTHIKEYAN THANGARASU

Database Administrator at American Savings Bank

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward, if the staff involved are experienced with the product. However, the deployment takes time to carry out.

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Pietro Noli

Founder, Owner and CEO at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

When I initially studied the IBM Cognos software, it was not so easy to fully understand, but now all in all it’s not so complex.

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Susheel A

Director - Metrics & Analytics at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The initial setup isn't very complex. It's mostly straightforward. However, due to the setup of our organization and its architecture, we did face a few specific complexities during implementation.

We have seven people who handle the administration as needed.

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BIMan297500

‎Manager BI Manufacturing at a paper AND forest products with 10,001+ employees

The initial setup was straightforward.

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it_user551517

Sr Cognos BI Developer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Cognos has come a long way. Fifteen years ago, the installation and setup was very complicated.

It is not difficult nowadays. However, the tune-up is still tricky.

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it_user504054

Senior Business Intelligence Consultant at Aspen Associates

We had training but were able to do the install in-house.

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Hardik Parashar

Associate Data Engineer at Digit Insurance

The deployment was easy and very straightforward. The deployment was not difficult.

I'd rate the solution at a four out of five.

We have around three members who are maintaining Cognos. On a daily basis, they monitor schedules and all those things, such as maintenance, storage, et cetera.

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reviewer990360

Director at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

I started with Portal Play and then moved to IBM Cognos which made the installation straightforward because I have known the history of these solutions and I had a lot of time with it. However, the challenge is to get people to build their own reports and to understand data.

The time for installation depends on a lot of factors. The last time we did an integration with an API, it took five months to build the dashboard, in IBM Cognos it took one hour. It took five months to get the data and one hour to build the dashboard.

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reviewer1620732

Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Installation and configuration-wise, Cognos is more complicated than Tableau and Power BI — it takes more time. You have to install and configure it, then make the data available before you can do reporting. With Tableau and Power BI, the initial setup is very quick; you can just directly connect to Excel or a file on the desktop. Unlike Cognos, Tableau and Power BI eradicate dependency on a framework model.

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it_user79140

Manager, Business Intelligence at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Initial setup was straightforward. Cognos was very easy to install and configure and the documentation provided by IBM was very user friendly.

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it_user5220

Senior Manager of IT at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initial setup was complex. Cognos is a very complex tool to configure.

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it_user509850

Cognos Consultant at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initial setup was pretty straightforward. Initially, we had the Content Manager and the report server on the same box, but moving the Content Manager to a SQL server box and having the report server on its own box really helped performance.

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reviewer1538121

Head of Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I don't know what the initial setup was like because I wasn't with the company at that time.

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it_user569925

Senior Cognos Analyst Developer at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees

The installation was quite straight forward. But the webserver setup can be a bit tricky.

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it_user514284

Sr Consultant at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

It was easy to set up; good documentation.

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it_user193824

Business System Analyst at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I wasn’t at my company for initial setup. We have consultants do the upgrades, because they do tend to be complex and we are short on manpower.

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it_user190104

Managing Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I have been installing/configuring IBM Cognos BI environments for years and I will have to say the documentation for the first iteration of IBM Cognos Analytics 11.0.0 was not complete and created a few challenges. The subsequent releases have been more complete and the latest version is pretty solid.

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it_user897015

Developer at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees

I was hands-on in setting up the environment for our company. It was pretty straightforward. It's a bit fiddly on a few things, if you want some extra components installed, but overall, the basic installation is pretty straightforward.

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Pavan Kumar Maddali

Senior Cognos Developer at ADP

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

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dataware204993

Data Warehouse Manager at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

The setup was complex. We built scripts to create and configure at a redundant server level.

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it_user156465

Head of Business Analytics, Operations at a aerospace/defense firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Our IT department has taken care of this, thus I do not know.

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it_user148620

Associate Director at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

The complexity of initial setup depends on the hardware platform used and the level of skill of IT.

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Barry Morris

BI Cognos Expert at Pilmark LTD

The initial setup of IBM Cognos is complex. It takes time and experience to know how to do it. You can't only install it, there are a lot of things you need to take into consideration before you begin. You have to make sure you have the right hardware specifications, and that you are not conflicting with any firewalls. You can put it on many servers and for large organizations. The solution can handle complex issues that other solutions can't. Most of the smaller products can't handle it. IBM Cognos is efficient at handling multi servers with data coming from many places and organizing it into one place. The implementation can take a long time because the requirements are complex.

The basic setup will take approximately one day. If it is not a basic implementation the time depends on how complex the data is and how much needs to be worked on. For example, on a predefined data warehouse, in which everything has been done, the setup might only be a few hours then you can start working.

It can be between hours and months. It depends on the context of how many databases are being used, fields, and calculations. You can bring 500 tables and none of them are difficult, but then you have one table with three calculations and takes three weeks to build because those calculations are complex. it doesn't matter which tool you use.

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it_user551511

Team Lead, BI and Analytics at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

If you are doing a standalone installation, then the initial setup is easy.

However, if you get into a distributed environment and load balancing, then it requires you to really know the application well. You need to know about the server level for all of the configurations.

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it_user502383

Senior BI Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

The initial setup can be complex for large organizations; for smaller companies, it is easier.

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it_user550095

Sr Cognos Developer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The installation can be a little complex. It depends on the environment. If it is a Windows environment, the setup will be easy. If it is a Linux environment, it will involve scripting.

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it_user416913

Group Reporting Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I can't comment on the implementation; it was completed before I joined.

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it_user503625

Business Intelligence Manager at Mspark

It is pretty straightforward, but it needs to be planned out in detail and executed a few times to make sure there are no hiccups.

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Mangai Murugan

Lead Technical Consultant at Perficient

The initial setup was straightforward.

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it_user139509

Solutions Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Setup for a multi-server environment is of average complexity. Tuning the environment takes time.

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Ahmed Ashmawy

Data Practice Lead at Hyve Technology Consulting

The solution's initial setup process is easy.

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reviewer1196148

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

The initial setup is quite easy and has improved from previous versions.

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reviewer1418973

Senior Technical Coordinator - IM and BI at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees

The setup is straightforward. If the organization has a very complex architecture, I would say it might take many months to implement it properly. But setting up the environment is normally just a couple of hours or maybe a day or two of work. Generally, I would say it is easy to do the initial setup. It was easy for us.

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it_user534747

Cognos - BI Consultant / Tech Lead at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The installation was pretty straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation that comes with it. It covers everything.

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it_user453288

Project Leader at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Initial setup was quite complex. We started with a single-server installation, and faced performance issues; then, we tried a distributed installation. A distributed installation is quite complex, especially when the requirements are high, such as AD integration, load balancer support, enabling single sign on, etc.

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Carlos Mardinotto Junior

BI Expert at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Not very simple. It's important to get the advice of a qualified professional.

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it_user73401

MIS & Development Manager at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Initial setup was complex in the sense that there were different ways to deliver BI: relational models, DMR, and cubes. When you first start using it, it is difficult to know which is the best.

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it_user80244

Head of Data Analytics at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

As usual it requires a lot of reading and it can get a bit complex since there are a lot of different technology involved (web server IIS or Apache, app server TOMCAT, java and Oracle RDBMS as the content store). View full review »

it_user547329

Cognos Developer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

The initial setup is very straightforward. The basic installation is very easy and you can start reporting.

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it_user538227

Business Reporting Engineer (Contracter) with 10,001+ employees

Starting with Cognos wasn't easy before the most recent version 11, Cognos Analytics.

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Bob Edis

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Initial setup was 99% straightforward; only complex in getting ports opened by a third party, implementing SSO, and WebDAV configuration.

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it_user544590

Cognos BI Architect/ Developer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The initial setup to install is pretty simple. You will need some technical experience to be able to successfully install the software components.

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it_user98526

Consultant IT at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Not too complex.

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it_user504741

IBM Cognos Instructor and Consultant at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Building the image for a new version takes several hours. Of course, IBM has cloud options that eliminate the need for keeping your own images.

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it_user165297

Cognos Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

At the most basic level, Cognos is a "next-next-next" install. While this works for very simple, low usage systems, in order to really get the most out of it it requires a great deal of tuning.

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it_user561699

Database application specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I never encountered this issue, as it was already set up. We are currently in the maintenance and monitoring phase.

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it_user560289

Cognos Consultant (Contract) at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

A lot of companies that I've worked with outsource the set up activity to IBM or a second-tier consulting firm.

In every case, it has proven to be a wise move. I've never seen the choice of machines or configurations become an issue later down the track.

My advice is to outsource what you are not in the business of doing every day.

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it_user544740

Senior Business Intelligence consultant, freelance at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

The initial Cognos setup requires experienced people. Besides a correct software installation on a multi-server architecture, it is important to design an adapted Framework Manager architecture. Furthermore, it requires experience to make some professional standard reports or other advanced reports, such as Active Reports.

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it_user86730

Senior Development Manager - Innovation - ERP Protheus with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initial setup was complex; many servers.

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it_user174690

BI Senior Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

The initial setup is a complex one that needs an administrator.

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it_user171960

Assistant Manager - Technology at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

For us it was complex to do it for the first time and too much R&D had to be done. Later on it was easier. It may have been complex as it was our first time setting up the Cognos.

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Barry Morris

BI Cognos Expert at Pilmark LTD

The initial setup usually takes a few hours.

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it_user561858

BI Cognos Developer II at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I was not involved in the initial setup process.

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it_user34830

Business Intelligence Specialist at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

The initial setup was not complex. There is great documentation. It has gotten better as Cognos has matured, but some documentation isn't updated as fast as you'd like if you're utilizing one of the latest versions.

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it_user142380

Managing Partner, Lead Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the product variant itself (for. ex., Cognos has an Express version, which can be set up really easy), and it depends on the planned BI architecture as well. So it can be really easy and it can be really complex, too.

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it_user507990

Cognos & OBIEE Business Intelligence Consultant at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees

Installation is straightforward. Configuration is complex if your database is AS/400, but it’s easy if your DB is Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL Server.

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it_user286518

Data Strategist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The new installation is very simple. Wizard driven installation takes about an hour. It can get more complex to install a distributed architecture, but still not more than a day or two to install it.

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it_user250983

Bi Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The setup now is straightforward. The complexity decreased by time until it reached a very good level, but it gets far too complex for advanced setup.

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it_user552825

Analytics Specialist at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

It is a mature, full-featured enterprise product and as such requires detailed configuration/administration knowledge to set up.

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it_user221220

Analyst in XBRL Projects at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

In 2003 It was very complex, and we must survive by ourselves because we can’t find any technical support for us.

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Artour Aslanian

BI Architect/Cognos Solution Architect/ETL Design Architect at a media company with 201-500 employees

Some issues, though not many.

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it_user555990

IBM Cognos Consultant at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

The initial setup is very straightforward. You only have to follow the installation wizard screens, indicate where you want to have it installed, and click "Next".

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it_user507993

Business Analytics Coach at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Setup is very easy. There are three options with this newest product that limit the involvement of a technical install specialist.

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it_user174678

Corporate BI Developer with 1,001-5,000 employees

The first time ever setup is always more complex. After that it is pretty much "known road." Again, IIS configuration may be more complex than it should.

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it_user551508

Continuous Auditing Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees

I wasn’t involved with installation directly, but the consulting group set it up for us and supported it, so it was OK.

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it_user259185

Prinicipal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initial setup was straightforward.

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Bob Edis

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

It was straightforward.

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it_user84468

Consultant

It was quite complex.

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it_user549354

Cognos Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The initial setup was simple and straightforward.

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it_user185781

Solution Architect with 51-200 employees

Complex, many options and variations available which is both good and bad.

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it_user73137

Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Straightforward View full review »

it_user560208

Business Technology Associate Consultant at a consultancy with 5,001-10,000 employees

The initial setup is very straightforward for a technical person.

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it_user505671

Senior Consultant - IBM SPM Cognos Solution Specialist at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

It's simple enough to install because IBM takes care of initial setup.

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it_user235326

Sales Specialist with 51-200 employees

Initial setup was straightforward, especially with the new version.

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it_user217470

Partner, CTO, CBIP, BI Solutions Arhitect with 11-50 employees

Initial setup is straightforward, with minor problems in the area of configuring data source connectors. Because the product uses a JDBC data interface, the administrator needs to be familiar with JDBC.

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it_user176946

BI Architect at a wellness & fitness company with 501-1,000 employees

Initial setup can be straightforward but expertise is needed to fully benefit from the capabilities of Cognos.

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it_user552831

Business Intelligence Specialist / Information - Business Analyst / Cognos BI Specialist at a local government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The installation was straightforward.

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it_user544752

Business Intelligence Consultant at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The setup is a little bit complex with regard to the IT procedures, but the installation is quite easy.

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it_user8061

Business Analytics Cognos Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Initial setup was simple. YouTube is a rich way to learn tips & tricks.

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it_user191655

BI (Cognos) Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 501-1,000 employees

It is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take an expert to set up, but consultants will try to make it seem more complex than it is.

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it_user505653

Principal Consultant at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initial setup was pretty much straightforward.

Free Report: IBM Cognos Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Cognos. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.

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768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.