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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Cognos Analytics

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/AIBM 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

    Looker

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ALooker 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 11.25
    per month per user
    On Demand - Premium
    USD 44.90
    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
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    We chose IBM Cognos Analytics because, in our opinion, IBM Cognos Analytics has Better enterprise integration
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Google
    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 …
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    92 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    85 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    75 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    91 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    87 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    64 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    69 Answers
    Features
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.7
    138 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Looker
    7.4
    134 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Pixel Perfect reports7.6129 Ratings6.5110 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.0136 Ratings8.2133 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.5131 Ratings7.5115 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.9
    138 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Looker
    6.8
    132 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Drill-down analysis7.4136 Ratings6.4128 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.3139 Ratings6.6130 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages7.397 Ratings5.655 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.6133 Ratings8.8131 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    136 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Looker
    7.9
    128 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Publish to Web9.836 Ratings7.7105 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.2132 Ratings7.8113 Ratings
    Report Versioning9.833 Ratings7.984 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.2134 Ratings8.3110 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers9.918 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.4
    124 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Looker
    6.6
    128 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9121 Ratings7.7124 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.0114 Ratings7.5110 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics6.7110 Ratings4.66 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.947 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.8
    130 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Looker
    7.3
    128 Ratings
    15% below category average
    Multi-User Support (named login)7.5129 Ratings7.6120 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model7.5127 Ratings7.2105 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.4127 Ratings7.2122 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control8.257 Ratings7.360 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)8.6111 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    6.4
    109 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Looker
    5.2
    95 Ratings
    39% below category average
    Responsive Design for Web Access6.8104 Ratings5.091 Ratings
    Mobile Application6.390 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.696 Ratings5.885 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    87 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Looker
    -
    Ratings
    REST API7.683 Ratings00 Ratings
    Javascript API7.779 Ratings00 Ratings
    iFrames9.912 Ratings00 Ratings
    Java API10.013 Ratings00 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)9.915 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.99 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (158 ratings)
    8.0
    (134 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.4
    (31 ratings)
    9.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (10 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)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    8.5
    (51 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.3
    (40 ratings)
    7.3
    (51 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.5
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.3
    (5 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
    For Transaction monitoring, we build reports for executive management, providing insights into the number of alerts, the types or categories of detection scenarios, the risk profile, and a snapshot of high- or urgent-priority cases to be reported to AUSTRAC. Congos helps to build the report by ingesting alert data exported from SAS datasets. It joins with other data from Teradata and Customer Hub (Oracle).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    When data drives potential for new orders, Looker earns its place in our tech stack. If, on the other hand, we are hoping for pipeline generation, Looker is useful if you are willing to repeatedly go check customer utilizations .... it is not appropriate if you are hoping to automate data analysis for this purpose.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Documentation is scarce, and very difficult to find when you need it.
    • Pricing is unclear, particularly as you look to scale your reports across the business.
    • Data from other sources is not represented in the system as well as first party Google services.
    Incentivized
    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).
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    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.
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    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
    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
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Google
    Very satisfied, easy to implement
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    Perfect price to performance
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • The platform can be pretty pricey.
    • Convoluted contracts and they fine you for any breach during audits.
    • Things are changed between releases without any warning and break.
    • It is second to none at being able to customize list and crosstab type reports.
    • You can easily set up a report to be emailed out every day and even have it export the report to a shared folder.
    • On-prem environments can be scaled up pretty much as much as you would like.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot

    Looker Screenshots

    Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.