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.
$11.25
per month per user
IBM watsonx Orchestrate
Score8.2 out of 10
N/A
IBM® watsonx™ Orchestrate® leverages AI to automate complex workflows. The solution helps build, deploy, and manage AI assistants and agents. It offers a catalogue of pre-built agents and tools, low-code agent builder, multi-agent collaboration capabilities, and integrations with enterprise apps.
$530
per month
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Score8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.
$14
per month per user
Pricing
IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM watsonx Orchestrate
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Editions & Modules
On Demand - Standard
USD 11.25
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
USD 44.90
per month per user
Essential
$500
per month per subscription
Essentials
$500
per month Per subscription
Standard
Enterprise
Standard
Enterprise
per month Per subscription
Power BI Pro
$14
per month per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM watsonx Orchestrate
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
IBM watsonx Orchestrate can be deployed and run on IBM Cloud, AWS, or on-premises. Prices shown are indicative, may vary by country, exclude any applicable taxes and duties, and are subject to product offering availability in a locale.
Analista de Sistemas in Information Technology at Consultor independiente de software (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM is a titan in BI innovation but has arduous competitors as I mentioned before. IBM has prestige in BI and the directors and managers know that. On the other hand, complexity is not the strategy of Cognos, that's why if you need big cubes of data, Tableau, and Microsoft BI …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Cognos provides very advanced analytics functionalities, maybe even more advanced than the competition, and works great when used in collaboration with Watson. However, Tableau and other newer products are much better regarding overall usability.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Microsoft Power BI has a more user friendly interface and it is integrated very well with the other Microsoft products but IBM Cognos Analytics has a more advanced reporting and complex data analysis capabilities.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Cost wise, the above products are less expensive and offer tons more upfront, but you will pay for it on the back end. They have vendor limitations and their support mechanism was inline for what we wanted.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Project Management Consultant in Finance and Accounting at Hennepin County (Government Administration, 5001-10,000 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
It was cost prohibitive to switch platforms we have a huge investment in our Cognos implementation. There was retooling costs for our resources training costs for our users as well as a million $ plus investment in licensing costs. We could have considered a move to the cloud …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
There are a number of reporting systems, but these other systems are really data visualization systems that lack the ability deliver information through an enterprise on their own. IBM Cognos is well suited to be the delivery system for an enterprise's analytics and the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
MS BI: A lot of times we meet customers who are dealing with an MS BI maintenance nightmare and we try to ease their pain by implementing Cognos BI and their reporting and analysis system. Cognos BI is better than MS BI from ease of implementation to production support and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Cognos has better functionality and it is easier to develop once the package is ready. On the other hand SSRS doesn't need a package, just a connection to DB.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Cognos developer in Information Technology at PLS Logistics Services (Logistics and Supply Chain, 501-1000 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos is a separate product but it allows us to connect to any databases and databases from Microsoft Analysis Services as well. This feature made me choose Cognos.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Marketing and Digital Communication Specialist in Marketing at Grupo Planeta (Libraries, 5001-10,000 employees)
Chose IBM watsonx Orchestrate
My experience working with Microsoft Bot Framework and Dialogflow has shown that Watson Assistant features an intuitive interface combined with powerful analytics. We selected Watson Assistant because it strikes an excellent balance between providing powerful capabilities while …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM watsonx Orchestrate
Watsonx Assistant is distinguished by its ability to understand natural language and its ability to adapt and learn over time. This allows for a more natural and personalized interaction with customers, enhancing the user experience. In addition, Watson Assistant offers a wide …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Microsoft
Verified User
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Each of the solutions has their pros and cons, but Microsoft's BI offerings provide the best "bang for the buck." Few solutions available offer the breadth of feature functionality in a single package, with BI and database generally being sold as separate offerings. However, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
We initially considered Google Analytics, but eventually decided against it due to the licensing terms and the associated software that we would need to incorporate. IBM Cognos is great at what it does, as long as you are trying to integrate with software that is on their …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Graduate Research Assistant in Research & Development at Western Kentucky University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Specific data displays are some of the strongest aspects of Microsoft BI when compared to alternate programs. It also does a superior job in compatibility with many programs, especially those from Microsoft. Since my company primarily uses Office 365 and other Microsoft …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Regional Product & Solution Architect Manager in Information Technology at GRUPO DATCO (Information Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Microsoft BI is mainly based on Microsoft SQL Server, so it is perfectly integrated. Many of the Microsoft BI components require using SQL Server as the database engine. Generally, the functionalities that are achieved when using SQL Server as a database engine are greater than …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Customer Service Team Manager in Customer Service at Ruukki (Construction, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
One of the main reasons Microsoft BI was chosen by our company is because it is a reliable program. We tried different programs in the past (and currently also use other ones for certain reporting and analysis needs) but Microsoft BI was the least buggy out of our top choices.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Business Intelligence Specialist in Information Technology at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
-Tableau is clearly more cutting edge when it comes to data visualization and connecting to multiple data sources (support for MongoDB, Hadoop, etc). -Assuming your data is not that sophisticated, Microsoft BI is a great product. I would say its a good "all around" BI tool. It …
We are a larger, more established company with a backlog of data in Excel and multiple departments. Everything was on Excel sheets in a file being run manually monthly. I think it is a good bridge for a company that was stuck in the 2000's but isn't ready to come to 2026 yet. It's for a company that needs a reporting solution and has needed it for quite some time but not a techy company with lots of integration issues and reports in 5 different places.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For starters, most enterprise-grade organizations and Customers struggle to align their current IT estate and landscape with fast-moving, agile, AI-driven automation and development initiatives. All tooling, governance, structure, and frameworks available to support and facilitate the incorporation of this new but still cross-system technology layer are essential to minimize the risks of data leaks, unauthorized access, unbridled token consumption, and other issues. For some businesses and organizations with a handful of systems or a smaller footprint, the platform could be a bit too complex.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Enterprise reporting - Create, customise, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, etc.
Dashboard creation and data exploration & analysis - Using drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualisation. Additionally, using AI powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input (formation of pie, bar, line charts). It's useful for no-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheet data to get quick answers.
Building insights for accurate decision making - Package reports with data backed insights for stakeholders in pdf, and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting and strategic recommendations on relevant asks.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
New and improved natural language processing yielding better results helps the assistants understand the intention behind the query.
Preserves context of communication, allowing the customers to establish inquiries on the website and continue on the mobile app without having extra informational input.
Intelligent conversations mean that complex paths that are branched based on the user's inputs allow for a much more natural flow of the conversation than fixed scripts.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IBM Cognos Analytics enables customer data segmentation, which is essential for marketing, improving and streamlining purchasing behavior and preferences. This helps companies create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
Our clients Through data analysis, we can identify and observe trends in the behavior of other clients, allowing us to anticipate needs and adjust strategies to avoid consequences.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I think that it needs to be able to integrate better with the knowledge catalogs. It currently provides a default database, which isn't quite large enough for enterprise use. We can connect that then to an external source, but it'd be nice if we could able just to instantiate one straight away.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
Currently we are using to develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library. Action flow and dialog flow we are currently in chatbot.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.
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.
With the growing use of AI and chatbots, it's very easy to use, and the conversational language makes it easier than keyword searches in a document. The contextual language processing is impressive. It's easy to integrate into our internal portal. The use of this tool would depend on each company's security and data sensitivity.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
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.
To develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library. IBM Watson library anyone can easily learn and develop chatbots.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We've rarely had to engage support, but they've always been prompt in responding and very attentive. Support experiences have been extremely positive (but we're mostly happy that we just don't have any cause to routinely need support in the first place!).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.
Cognos has the edge over Crystal Reports because you have to create any ODBC/JDBC setups. Cognos provides the ability to created scheduled reports where as SAP requires additional parameters to achieve this functionality. This next thing that I'm about to mention serves as a BIG advantage - Crystal Reports has to be installed onto each User's PC which is time consuming for a Bank that has hundreds of Employees where as Cognos of course doesn't require this process as its a cloud app and even better, Users sign into to the app via SSO (Single Sign On).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Strong ITSM and HR workflow automation with governance, ServiceNow excels in IT/HR but lacks flexibility for cross-departmental use cases such as demand planning, finance close, or procurement analytics. Orchestrate supports a broader set of enterprise functions beyond IT service automation. So, watsonx is a better approach than any other available tool in the market as of now, based on the use cases I've encountered and my efforts to understand the essence of the service.
We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We rate IBM Cognos Analytics a 9 out of 10 for overall scalability. The platform handles large numbers of users, reports, and analytical workloads very reliably. We have experienced strong performance even in demanding enterprise environments with substantial data volumes. Its architecture provides sufficient flexibility to scale resources according to demand, making it well suited for large, business-critical deployments.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
From past 3+ years I am using IBM Watson in our current project easily can implement and manage and monitor user how their using. Is there and update also just update dialog is just enough to change no need to touch any other templates. Multiple language will support, and action and dialog speak recognize chatbot we can create as per client requirement. Overall, as of now good experience with IBM Watson.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
