IBM Cognos Analytics vs. Looker

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cognos Analytics
Score 7.8 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
Looker
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.N/A
Pricing
IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
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
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalRequired
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
Considered Both Products
IBM Cognos Analytics
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We chose IBM Cognos Analytics because, in our opinion, IBM Cognos Analytics has Better enterprise integration
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics was more matured enterprise modeling-based tool. Our power Bi struggled against large ERP data sets, which IBM didn't after few initial days.

IBM had much better scalability and security when comes to user reports distribution. The schedule feature worked …
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Compared to other tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Google studio, IBM Cognos Analytics is better for the companies who looks strong control on detailed reports. Power BI and Tableau are easy to use and good for quick presentation, but Cognos has more options for security, such …
Looker
Chose Looker
We find Looker much easier to develop and manage. The LookML central data repository is far more robust and easy to use. The fact that Looker manages the server for you, means you never have any downtime. The other products have you managing all sorts of servers, which is a lot …
Chose Looker
  • Looker offers significantly better reporting options than most other BI tools in a similar price range.
  • In terms of performance, Looker can handle much greater amounts of data than similar BI tools.
  • Although Looker primary works with LookML, you can do everything on LookML that …
Features
IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.5
129 Ratings
8% below category average
Looker
7.8
128 Ratings
4% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.3119 Ratings7.0104 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.7125 Ratings8.6127 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.4121 Ratings7.8109 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.5
129 Ratings
7% below category average
Looker
7.5
126 Ratings
7% below category average
Drill-down analysis7.0126 Ratings7.4122 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.6128 Ratings7.2124 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.491 Ratings6.651 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.0122 Ratings8.9125 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
127 Ratings
1% below category average
Looker
8.2
122 Ratings
0% above category average
Publish to Web8.327 Ratings7.9100 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.6121 Ratings8.3109 Ratings
Report Versioning8.626 Ratings7.579 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.0123 Ratings9.1104 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
7.0
116 Ratings
13% below category average
Looker
6.6
122 Ratings
19% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.5111 Ratings7.7118 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.5106 Ratings7.5104 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.6102 Ratings4.66 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.439 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.4
121 Ratings
14% below category average
Looker
7.7
122 Ratings
10% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)7.3118 Ratings8.3114 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.4117 Ratings7.699 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)6.6116 Ratings7.5116 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control7.846 Ratings7.554 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.1100 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
6.6
101 Ratings
16% below category average
Looker
5.5
91 Ratings
34% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access6.895 Ratings6.087 Ratings
Mobile Application6.785 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.091 Ratings6.281 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
81 Ratings
2% below category average
Looker
-
Ratings
REST API7.178 Ratings00 Ratings
Javascript API7.575 Ratings00 Ratings
iFrames8.39 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API6.911 Ratings00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.110 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.87 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(146 ratings)
8.5
(128 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(30 ratings)
9.3
(8 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(9 ratings)
8.8
(12 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(5 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(9 ratings)
8.8
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.8
(5 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
2.8
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
IBM Cognos Analytics has great scheduling capabilities. A single report can be parameterized (e.g., “Store Manager ID”) and burst to thousands of recipients with their slice of data.IBM Cognos Analytics is a good fit for highly complex, multi-level calculations which can be handled by Report Studio. For example Monthly balance sheet that requires multi step calculation
Read full review
Google
Looker is ideal if you are heavily invested in Google Services, particularly marketing related services, and you with to quickly create reporting dashboards for that data. It gets more difficult when you try to tie in data from other services, and I would not use this were I already using BI package - it is not anywhere near as well supported or as widely known as some of its major competitors, but what it does do, it does do well.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • We can make dozens of dispatchers all focusing on different types of workloads.
  • Friendly user interface, without the need for coding or complicated editing.
  • Highly functionality reporting tools.
  • We can easily create trigger when a certain threshold are met sending reports or alerts to needed parties.
Read full review
Google
  • Show visited pages - sessions, pageviews - which programs are viewed the most.
  • Displays session source/medium views to see where users are coming from.
  • It shows the video titles, URLs, and event counts so we can monitor the performance of our videos.
  • It gives a graphic face to the numbers, such as using bar charts, pie graphs, and other charts to show user trends or which channels are driving engagement.
  • Our clients like to see the top pages visited for a month.
  • I like the drop-and-drag approach, and building charts is a little easier than it was before.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • 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.
Read full review
Google
  • I wish I could get more granular in the Google ad data, such as down to the campaign type, instead of having to see only all campaigns.
  • The setup can be time-consuming if you're not using the product regularly.
  • Editing the dashboard requires a few logins; I wish it was more seamless.
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
Google
I give it this rating because it deems as effective, I am able to complete majority of my tasks using this app. It is very helpful when analyzing the data provided and shown in the app and it's just overall a great app for Operational use, despite the small hiccups it has (live data).
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
Google
Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
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
Google
No objections
Read full review
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.
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Google
Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
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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.
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Google
Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
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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
Google
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
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Google
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.
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Google
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
My company selected IBM Congos Analytics because of its advanced features and data representation for data analysis. Its row and column features are very effective for creating dashboards and reports to visualize data. It's chart representation and view format are very attractive and useful for representation.
Read full review
Google
Looker Studio, you can easily report on data from various sources without programming. Looker Studio is available at no charge for creators and report viewers. Enterprise customers who upgrade to Looker Studio Pro will receive support and expanded administrative features, including team content management. So it's good.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
IBM
No answers on this topic
Google
Perfect price to performance
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
Google
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very similar to real-life scenarios.
  • Options of customizing & scheduling reports as per our requirements basis.
  • Has mobile application which works seamless.
  • API integration is not upto the mark with very limited options.
  • Licensing & Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.
Read full review
Google
  • Looker has a poignant impact on our business's ROI objectives. As an advertising exchange we have specific goals for daily requests and fill, and having premade Looks to monitor this is an integral piece of our operational capability
  • To facilitate an efficient monthly billing cycle in our organization, Looker is essential to track estimated revenue and impression delivery by publisher. Without the Looks we have set up, we would spend considerably more time and effort segmenting revenue by vertical.
  • Looker's unique value proposition is making analytical tools more digestible to people without conventional analytical experience. Other competing tools like Tableau require considerably more training and context to successfully use, and the ability to easily plot different visualizations is one of its greatest selling points.
Read full review
ScreenShots

IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of a natural language query, used in IBM Cognos Analytics to get AI-powered insights from data.Screenshot of AI-generated insights and forecasts that can be added with just a click of a button.Screenshot of a dashboard that can be generated automatically using IBM Cognos Analytics by uploading or selecting data.Screenshot of an AI-generated dashboard from a spreadsheet that was just uploaded. This offers a great starting point for the creative process.Screenshot of where to import data to IBM Cognos Analytics from CSV files and spreadsheets. Users can connect to cloud or on-premises data sources, including SQL databases, Google BigQuery, Amazon, and Redshift.Screenshot of a sample operational dashboard of a coffee shop created using IBM Cognos Analytics.

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.