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
Jaspersoft
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Jaspersoft commercial edition is an embedded business intelligence suite designed to be built-into SaaS products as an integrated reporting engine. It provides reports and dashboards for customer-facing applications without requiring app developers to build their own reporting engine.
N/A
Sigma
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Sigma Computing headquartered in San Francisco provides a suite of data services such as code free data modeling, data search and explorating, and related BI and data visualization services.
N/A
Pricing
IBM Cognos Analytics
Jaspersoft
Sigma Computing
Editions & Modules
On Demand - Standard
USD 10.00
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
USD 42.40
per month per user
On Demand - Standard
USD 10.60
per month per user
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos Analytics
Jaspersoft
Sigma
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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Jaspersoft offers flexible pricing for ISVs and SaaS per customer or by CPU core.
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 …
Cognos Analytics provides wide range for reporting, data visualization, and self service analytics. Cognos has strong security and governance features. Sigma Computing is purely cloud native approach and has spreadsheet like interface and doesn't provide many customization …
Power BI is stronger for quick ad-hoc analysis and dashboards, but IBM Cognos Analytics is better when consistency, precision, and mass distribution matter. Tableau is best for interactive analysis, while IBM Cognos Analytics is better for standardized, repeatable enterprise …
1. Dashboards in cognos perform well compared the above reporting product lines.
2. Report Studio can be very well used to form queries from 2 disjoint data sets and still data can be presented as 2 single reports with in a single report.
3. Query studio performs in a better …
The support and chances of implementing the own branding, as we ship TIBCO Jaspersoft as a stand-alone server we did our own branding for the Jasper server with the login page and the theme, hiding the unnecessary options to the user. The ease of creating canned reports using …
Selected Jaspersoft because of it's open source credentials and value for money. Our requirements did not require top of the range MI or analytics, just a basic MI platform
In other roles, we have used Cognos. The cost of Jaspersoft was a huge advantage when we were starting up. We couldn't afford Cognos and since we are proficient in Jaspersoft, we haven't missed Cognos a bit.
We used TIBCO Jaspersoft due to the open source nature and the reduced cost of licensing and maintenance. It also allows itself to be embedded in a resold product more easily then other applications do.
Apart from Microsoft's SSRS (incumbent solution that Jaspersoft replaced), we evaluated Power BI, Business Objects, Cognos, and Tableau.
Jaspersoft was selected because of the following reasons:
The breadth of features and functionality, Ease of access to a vast community of users for support. The key factor after comparing features and functionality was price. The Jaspersoft suite is hands down the best value bay a large margin..
When we originally selected Jaspersoft four years ago, the other finalists were Cognos (could not scale at an affordable price) and Pentaho (reports and security model - not as functional).
Much better than IBM Cognos. However, I prefer Tableau over Sigma due to its robust optionality. Sigma's only leg up on Tableau is its ease of use and speed of producing visuals and iterating tables.
Sigma Computing was our top choice due to the ease of use of the platform for end users doing self-exploration of data. The structure of the platform for how datasets are created and access provisioned was much better than other products we considered. Sigma Computing may not …
Most legacy BI tools are just that--built in and for a time that has mostly passed. Each tool seems to have strengths in certain areas, but can be overly complex to take full advantage of and can make some of the most basic tasks difficult to discover and use. Sigma Computing …
Most other tools require a desktop instance to "develop," load data, and then publish. These desktop interfaces are usually meant for data analysts or at least specialists. They are mostly designed to companies with a dedicated (large) budget and personnel tasked uniquely with …
Well suited: Financial reporting - It can handle complex, pixel perfect, muti-page reports with scheduled delivery to stakeholders (like sales report by region on quarterly periodicity) Operational dashboard across departments - It can combine multiple data sources (ERP, CRM, excels etc) with filters, and embedded AI insights Less appropriate: Live dashboards - As stated earlier as well, IBM Cognos Analytics doesn't suit well for live dashboards or event driven data. For ex: live web traffic data or IOT device data, etc Data science - Although IBM Cognos Analytics is great tool for data exploration but it should not be used as a substitute for Python or R, which has edge over advanced modelling and stats based workflows like predictive modelling or clustering
It is well suited for the fact of scalability itself and the breadth of features this application has in order to make the migration from legacy systems to the newer different versions more seamless and effective. Data integrity and security are the main aspects of this tool which does not lose their value when doing day-to-day operations for data mapping.
We were able to set up client-facing embedded reports with ease and security. The interface is not difficult to learn, although we may not be aware of or lack the necessary expertise to utilize more advanced features that would likely benefit us.
TIBCO Jaspersoft allows you to embed reports into your own application, which gives users the feeling they are using a single product.
TIBCO Jaspersoft Studio allows for more advanced report development, such as adding subreports, drilldown to detail reports, images, page headers, page footers, maps, and more.
TIBCO's Jaspersoft Domain Designer is very easy to use and navigate.
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.
One of the issues we found during our implementation was that the reporting software would work faster for certain data sources and not the others. Extracting CSVs and XML was slower in comparison to JSON in our experience.
Jaspersoft Studio was the main IDE we used for development. Built atop the Eclipse IDE, we found that the tool was really resource intensive and generally take long time to initialize.
Sigma Computing does not allow custom ordering of pivot fields in pivot tables easily
Sigma Computing lacks functionality for creating tables or sections that dynamically adjust to the browser window's height while maintaining a fixed height textbox at the bottom
Sigma Computing does not provide straightforward options for formatting totals in tables, such as renaming 'Total' to 'Average', 'Team Total', etc
Sigma Computing does not support searching by individual tab names within a workbook
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.
JasperSoft has been amazing. It is well documented, fast, and transparent in how it functions. We have been very confident in JasperSoft in every aspect of our business and offerings where we've used it. On top of that, their improvements to the product have been fantastic. I am really looking forward to seeing where they take their product and how we can leverage that to please our clients
Sigma has helped us a lot and has become an integral part of our daily workflow. It would be difficult to switch to another platform and have to rebuild the numerous metrics and performance reports that we have already established
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.
I think it's a tool well suited for a software developer. Others with less coding skills could struggle somewhat with the tool. I find java a little unforgiving as a language for expressions and not very user friendly for the technically dis-inclined. Sometimes the numeric conversions cause issues (who knew that 0 and 0.0 would cause different things to happen). Previous experience with a reporting tool that used visual basic for its' expressions that I found much simpler to use. On the other hand, java is so widespread, you can easily google the syntax to accomplish what you need to do.
It has a clean and modern interface. However, it is not completely intuitive. I think it would be better and easier to navigate with more Windows style drop down menus and/or tabls. There is a significant learning curve, but that may be due in part to the technical nature of this type of software tool.
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.
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.
They have a great customer support ticketing system in which they always respond same-day. They offer conference calls with srcreensharing as well in order to better understand your issues.
I wish that the lower level support access came with more than just 12 cases per year though as this makes us less likely to reach out for questions on things that we then instead try to solve ourselves which results in loss of time in trying to acquire new features and or solve a problem.
They are very friendly and informative. They are quick in resolving our queries and help us understand very minute things as well. They are quick in creating feature tickets based on our custom requirements, and they would also create a bug ticket if there is any discrepancy and get that checked on time.
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.
It did the job of getting us to our deadline we set for ourselves for initial launch. The customer we launched the product for was also there to learn about it at the same in order to better understand the capabilities. This helped greatly so that the customer was on the same page on what was possible when using jaspersoft. I think most people would not want their customers aware the product they are using is third-party but in this case it was a new experience for us both and so as we learned more about jaspersoft, we both had better communication on what the future road map was for their business needs in BI.
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
Resources available in the TIBCO Knowledge Base are covering almost everything. They are well organized, and covering almost every possibility. There is always the change to get back to the TIBCO support or to the dedicated Customer Success Manager whenever something very specific or bound to a customization is not covered.
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.
Having just completed an upgrade to the latest version of Jaspersoft, I am happy to say their support was very good. There were a couple of small challenges which were not easily resolved, but they were primarily related to the fact that we had skipped updates for a couple of versions. The current update procedures assumed we were upgrading from the prior latest version (6.4) to to the new version (7.1).
Power BI is stronger for quick ad-hoc analysis and dashboards, but IBM Cognos Analytics is better when consistency, precision, and mass distribution matter. Tableau is best for interactive analysis, while IBM Cognos Analytics is better for standardized, repeatable enterprise reporting. Sigma shines for customizable dashboards and drill-down analysis while IBM Cognos Analytics holds an edge in data discovery and visualization.
When looking at the different features of these reporting engines, and what we were going to be using it for, the answer seemed clear. Jasper offered exactly what we were looking for, and did so for a price that we were happy with. For a scalable, feature-rich reporting engine that doesn't break the bank, Jaspersoft is the way to go.
With Looker, to be effective, a substantial amount of coding & modeling needs to happen in LookML. Being another language to learn, users have to context switch again from at a minimum either SQL or Python into LookML. The concept of being able to source control, code review, and deploy your models is a plus though.
Tableau is the gold standard for data visualization, no question. Power users will be able to create dazzling content that Sigma won't necessarily be able to easily match. However, since development usually happens via an extract, helping other users troubleshoot is an arduous process. Trying to re-do or un-do all the transformations and calculations that cause a certain number is very difficult.
With Sigma, all the queries happen directly against Snowflake and you can see the query logs. The data modeling happens right in a tabular, spreadsheet-like manner, so within only a few minutes, substantial transformations can happen, with visualizations just a few more clicks away.
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.
When we demo our Jaspersoft environment to potential clients, their eyes light up and they sit up in their chairs a bit more. A lot of our meetings have ended with with the client very interested in our product due to Jaspersoft.
Our existing clients have been very satisfied with the adhoc features of Jaspersoft. We've been able to provide them better access to their data on their terms instead of ours. Of course this turns into a huge win for us.
We've always used SQL Server Reporting Services to deliver our reports to our clients. Converting to Jaspersoft has allowed us to generate the reporting layer that our clients demand. They no longer feel like they are settling for what we offer.
Monitoring health of cloud platform has allowed the company to anticipate issues before they affect customers – Sigma prompted us building a canary monitoring process that provides customer container health.
Customer success has used an activity report to discover customers running runaway processes that they were unaware of, creating an alert to contact the customer and prevent an embarrassing situation.
Customer success uses the activity report to prompt conversations regarding increases or declines in behavior that led to increasing contract limits or addressing churn concerns.