IBM Cognos Analytics vs. OpenText Magellan

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cognos Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.
$10
per month per user
OpenText Magellan
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
OpenText Magellan Analytics Suite leverages a comprehensive set of data analytics software to identify patterns, relationships and trends through data visualizations and interactive dashboards.N/A
Pricing
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
Editions & Modules
On Demand - Standard
$10.00
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
$40.00
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.9
102 Ratings
4% below category average
OpenText Magellan
7.0
2 Ratings
16% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.593 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.8100 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.497 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
104 Ratings
0% below category average
OpenText Magellan
8.3
3 Ratings
2% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.1102 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.1103 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.872 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.4100 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
104 Ratings
1% below category average
OpenText Magellan
8.3
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Publish to Web8.327 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.798 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Report Versioning8.626 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.0101 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.112 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
94 Ratings
0% above category average
OpenText Magellan
8.0
1 Ratings
1% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.089 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.286 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.182 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
99 Ratings
4% below category average
OpenText Magellan
9.0
2 Ratings
5% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.496 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.395 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.295 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.377 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.3
83 Ratings
8% below category average
OpenText Magellan
7.0
2 Ratings
13% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.977 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Mobile Application7.368 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.174 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.5
62 Ratings
5% below category average
OpenText Magellan
6.2
1 Ratings
24% below category average
REST API7.359 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Javascript API7.658 Ratings9.01 Ratings
iFrames8.39 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API6.911 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.110 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.87 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(127 ratings)
9.0
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(27 ratings)
3.9
(9 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(8 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(8 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOpenText Magellan
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Well suited: 1. We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. 2. Options
of customizing & scheduling reports as per our
requirements basis. 3. Has a mobile application that works seamlessly. Less Appropriate: 1. API integration with minimal options is not up to the mark. Laptops get overheated when using the tool, from moderate to heavy use. 2. Also, there is a lag in the tool times. 3. There is a lot of scope to improve customer support & it's not up to industry standards. 4. Licensing
& Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.
Read full review
OpenText
If you do not have a large budget and are a large organization, I would steer clear of Actuate. If you are looking to do very complex washboarding, I would not use them. Your developers have to be very skilled to work with this. Plan to bring in consultants if necessary to help your process. Adhoc reporting is weak. If your pricing is user based and you expand, this could be very expensive.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • It provides statistical analysis and predictive modeling which helps to forecast sales trends based on data and other factors.
  • It provides user friendly interface which helps users to explore data without extensive IT support. Like sales and marketing teams can use self service BI to analyze customer data and personalize campaigns for marketing.
  • It integrates well with IBM products and also with third party which enables organization to integrate with different products for better results and growth.
  • It provides security and governance features which maintains confidentiality, and compliance of data. It impose HIPAA compliance by providing role based access and encryption to protect sensitive data.
Read full review
OpenText
  • The report outputs can vary across different types such as HTML, PDF, and Excel
  • Their open source offering is very sufficient
  • There are great boards and blogs for developers and engineers to expand and use their features.
  • The people from the company that I've worked with are professional and courteous.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • Uses a lot of the CPU of PC and can be only item running on computer sometimes
  • The error descriptions could be worded differently to help users find out what is exactly wrong with the report they are trying to write
  • Missing third party integration functionality that works succinctly
Read full review
OpenText
  • The documentation on all the available features, but most importantly on the scripting side, can be improved
  • The standard look & feel of some basic options, like parameter selection or sorting and filtering, looks dated and can't be customized
  • The server portal needs to provide better tools
  • More integration is needed with other OpenText products
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
IBM
For an existing solution, renewing licenses does provide a good return on investment. Additionally, while rolling out scorecards and dashboards with little adhoc capabilities, to end users, cognos is very easily scalable. It also allows to create a solution that has a mix of OLAP and relational data-sources, which is a limitation with other tools. Synchronizing with existing security setup is easy too.
Read full review
OpenText
I am no longer working for the company that was using Actuate but I believe they would continue to use it because the stitching costs would be to high. It would require a complete rewrite of the reports and the never version of Actuate (BIRT) even required an almost complete report rewrite
Read full review
Usability
IBM
We have a strong user base (3500 users) that are highly utilizing this tool. Basic users are able to consume content within the applied security model. We have a set of advanced users that really push the limits of Cognos with Report and Query Studio. These users have created a lot of personal content and stored it in 'My Reports'. Users enjoy this flexibility.
Read full review
OpenText
It is quite intuitive to use. It is fit specifically for doing sentiment, emotion, and intention analysis as well as text classification and text summarization. I would have given 10 if it is fit for the purpose of doing image processing and analysis as well. There is a huge market to analyze video and image data.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
IBM
Reports can typically be viewed through any browser that can access the server, so the availability is ultimately up to what the company utilizing it is comfortable with allowing, though report development tends to be more picky about browsers and settings as mentioned above. It also has an optional iPad app and general mobile browsing support, but dashboards lack the mobile compatibility. What keeps it from getting a higher score is the desktop tools that are vital to the development process. The compatibility with only Windows when the server has a wide range of compatibility can be a real sore point for a company that outfits its employees exclusively with Mac or Linux machines. Of course, if they are planning on outsourcing the development anyways, it's a rather moot point
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
Overall no major complaints but it doesn't handle DMR (Dimensionally Modeled for Relational) very well. DMR modelling is a capability that IBM Cognos Framework Manager provides allowing you to specify dimensional information for relational metadata and allows for OLAP-style queries. However, the capability is not very efficient and, for example, if I'm using only 2 columns on a 20-column model, the software is not smart enough to exclude 18 columns and the query side gets progressively larger and larger until it's effectively unusable.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
Why is their web application not working as fast as you think it should? They never know, and it is always a a bunch of shots in the dark to find out. Trying to download software from them is like trying to find a book at the library before computers were invented.
Read full review
OpenText
Always there on the front and backend for us and the client.
Read full review
In-Person Training
IBM
Onsite training provided by IBM Cognos was effective and as expected. They did not perform training with our data which was a bit difficult for our end-users.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Online Training
IBM
The online courses they offer are thorough and presented in such a way that someone who isn't already familiar with the general design methodologies used in this field will be capable of making a good design. The training environments are provided as a fully self contained virtual machine with everything needed already to create the environments. We've had some persisting issues with the environments becoming unavailable, but support has been responsive when these issues arise and straightening them out for us
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
Make sure that any custom tables that you have, are built into your metadata packages. You can still access them via SQL queries in Cognos, but it is much easier to have them as a part of the available metadata packages.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
IBM
I like the cloud native character and ease of deployment with Sigma and ThogthSpot, I also like the metadata modelling capabilities of Power BI. I prefer the ability of Cognos to create and publish a metadata model that provides both ad hoc access and managed reporting and everything in between
Read full review
OpenText
It is vastly superior to these in many ways, for complex reporting it is a much more sophisticated solution. Visualizations are very good. Javascript extensibility is very powerful, others don't support this or as well. Pentaho and MS are both OLAP oriented. Pentaho is moving more toward big data, which was not our primary focus. Others are stuck in the Crystal Reports Band metaphor.
Read full review
Scalability
IBM
The Cognos architecture is well suited for scalability. However, the architecture must be designed with scalability in mind from day one of the implementation. We recently upgraded from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and took the opportunity to revamp our architecture. It is now poised for future growth and scalability.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • I've rebuilt a few metadata models to make the associated reports run at around a fifth of the time.
  • I was able to write and sell an IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson extension pack to add additional functionality and to make report author's lives easier.
Read full review
OpenText
  • Actuate can handle 50 to 60 sub reports inside a report very well.
  • Dynamically creating the datasource, chart, graph, reports are the main advantages. We can do any level of drilling, and can create a performance matrix dashboard efficiently.
Read full review
ScreenShots

OpenText Magellan Screenshots

Screenshot of A Magellan BI & Reporting dashboard that an individual can interact with and personalize to their needs, such as changing chart types or computations.Screenshot of Magellan Data Discovery provides a Smart User Interface, designed to equip new users and users seeking a more streamlined set of features for insightsScreenshot of Magellan Data Discovery provides an Advanced User Interface that allows data analytics pros to leverage its breadth of sophisticated capabilities for insightsScreenshot of Magellan Text Mining insights can be displayed within easy-to-use dashboards.Screenshot of Data scientists can create visualizations within the Magellan Notebook and see it dynamically update as they write changes to it.