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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

    Strategy Analytics

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicroStrategy Analytics is an enterprise business analytics and mobility platform. Key features include automatic big data analysis and reporting, data discovery and visualization, digital security credentials, and support for mobile devices.N/A
    Pricing
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    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 AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing information.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    In my opinion, MicroStrategy has a better product architecture. As a reporting and analysis platform, MicroStrategy allows developers to build reports and dashboards using an integrated development tool for all capabilities. It also has a more powerful and easy to use …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    IBM Cognos Analytics is our legacy BI solution. It hadn't stacked up well against its modern contemporaries. We are thinking of replacing it with Microsoft BI.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    We have alot of resources already invested in Cognos and it would be a humongous effort to migrate. CA is more inline with Power BI and Tableau now that there are dashboarding capabilities.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is an enterprise ready tool and could provide end to end functionality expected from a BI tool. Provides integration with custom applications as well as provides not just high end visualizations that Tableau or PowerBI provides but also the very …
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    Cognos is a more stable tool, which is integrated to many others. It has a lot of experience in the market. Your support is very good. Many facilities in Argentina
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    IBM Cognos stood out presumably because of the target market - we have been doing it in telco market so IBM Cognos could be a good fit due to its powerful capacity to establish the reports and data sets.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    I didn't select IBM Cognos, I only used it in situations where it had already been selected. Cognos was better for a long time than most of the traditional BI vendors. And their modeling is still second to none.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    I myself have been exposed to Microstrategy, Business Objects, and Microsoft BI. While I do find strenghts in all of these tools, one area I do believe that IBM Cognos has distinct advantages when deployed in an environment where integration with other IBM products (AIX, DB2, …
    Incentivized
    Strategy
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    • Standardized & optimized data repository resulting in better pricing strategy and increase in revenue & profitability
    • Better decision making capability and efficient on-boarding of end users through a near real-time reporting platform
    • Four major investor segmentation reports for …
    Incentivized
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    Microstrategy integrated architecture and ease of deployment.
    Incentivized
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    Speed, visually, and sales process - MicroStrategy outranked Cognos by far.
    Incentivized
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    Tableau is probably MicroStrategy Analytic's biggest competitor I've noticed over time, and I'm not sure why. Tableau only covers visualizations independently for each business user, which then creates the issues of every employee creating their own version of the data, and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    I have only used SSRS 2012 and MicroStrategy 9.4.1 as reporting tools. SSRS is not as fully featured as MicroStrategy and does not have the same level of quality in the delivery of expert reports. MicroStrategy meets many more needs out of the box and allows for many more …
    Incentivized
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos, QlikView - better integrated, single metadata, broader functionality
    Chose Strategy Analytics
    As a whole Microstrategy is good in more areas than the others are great in specific ones. It is probably not #1 in any particular category of BI Tool evaluations, but they are #2 or #3 in more categories than the all of the other tools we have evaluated. We selected …
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    92 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    91 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    64 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.7
    138 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Strategy Analytics
    10.0
    26 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Pixel Perfect reports7.6129 Ratings10.023 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.0136 Ratings10.023 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.5131 Ratings10.024 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.9
    138 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Strategy Analytics
    10.0
    24 Ratings
    22% above category average
    Drill-down analysis7.4136 Ratings10.022 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.3139 Ratings10.024 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages7.397 Ratings10.016 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.6133 Ratings10.023 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    136 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Strategy Analytics
    10.0
    23 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Publish to Web9.836 Ratings10.022 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.2132 Ratings10.023 Ratings
    Report Versioning9.833 Ratings10.020 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.2134 Ratings10.022 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers9.918 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.4
    124 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Strategy Analytics
    10.0
    22 Ratings
    22% above category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9121 Ratings10.020 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.0114 Ratings10.019 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics6.7110 Ratings10.018 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.947 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.8
    130 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Strategy Analytics
    10.0
    21 Ratings
    16% above category average
    Multi-User Support (named login)7.5129 Ratings10.019 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model7.5127 Ratings10.020 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.4127 Ratings10.020 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control8.257 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)8.6111 Ratings10.09 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    6.4
    109 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Strategy Analytics
    9.7
    19 Ratings
    22% above category average
    Responsive Design for Web Access6.8104 Ratings10.019 Ratings
    Mobile Application6.390 Ratings10.015 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.696 Ratings10.019 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Strategy Analytics
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    87 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Strategy Analytics
    10.0
    8 Ratings
    25% above category average
    REST API7.683 Ratings10.06 Ratings
    Javascript API7.779 Ratings10.07 Ratings
    iFrames9.912 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Java API10.013 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)9.915 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.99 Ratings10.06 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    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 AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (158 ratings)
    10.0
    (50 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.4
    (31 ratings)
    9.9
    (27 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (10 ratings)
    3.2
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (9 ratings)
    2.2
    (5 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    8.0
    (21 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.3
    (40 ratings)
    8.8
    (21 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.3
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 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 AnalyticsStrategy Analytics
    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
    Strategy
    MSTR is great for any organization that is looking for a way to deliver complicated data in an uncomplicated way. From business teams to marketing and finance, several departments benefit from using MSTR to keep track of KPIs enabling teams to make optimizations along the way. MSTR provides great visual representations of data enabling team members to distill thousands of data points into easily digestible charts and graphs
    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
    Strategy
    • They sell the product well, and make promises you will actually believe
    • "checks the box" for most features a company would need. Doesn't actually deliver them though
    • They answer the phone in a timely manner. Can't answer your questions or provide support, but the queue time isn't bad
    • They have online documentation. It's not up to date, and likely doesn't reflect the version of software you are using, but hey... they can point to it.
    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
    Strategy
    • The graph options are not as robust as an Excel user might want.
    • The metadata layer can sometimes be slower, and it takes a long time for reports to run.
    • Viewing the data feed entered can be cumbersome at times, in terms of validation with reports.
    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
    Strategy
    I would always choose to renew MicroStrategy as long as they lead the market in features, functionality and price. The support of MicroStrategy is timely and professional, I frequently get answers to my questions within 24 hours and normally have solutions within 48 hours. Training available for MicroStrategy completely covers everything required to be able to expertly use MicroStrategy and understand data warehousing.
    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
    Strategy
    The standard grid reporting could look more like the styling and object used for the Import and Visual Insight products. In addition, object properties almost seem to be hidden when first using the product. It's as if they are asking the engineers to only use the presets we make available...and, these presets are 10+ years old. On the positive side, Microstrategy seems to be the only product, not named Cognos, which can scale to Big Data. The product is "hackable" via the SDK or tricking the Intelligence Server to do uncommon things. The Microstrategy development team also seems to be very involved with their OEM partners; especially when it comes to features and enhancements. A large majority of the improvements we suggested have made it into the product or on the roadmap for future enhancements. Only suckas fall for the shiny objects from most other vendors; Microstrategy is really the only choice for Enterprise BI.
    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
    Strategy
    I've never had an issue with MicroStrategy not being available due to MicroStrategy application malfunction. It is very robust and only failures I've seen were due to user error or the platform the machine running the service failed some how.
    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
    Strategy
    Being able to customize the performance based on the business need is extremely powerful. Proper configuration and understanding of the usage pattern is key, if the technical ability of the architect is not at top level, then the product will not be configured correctly which will lead to poor performance.
    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
    Strategy
    Good user community. Support team is available if you are under AMC. You get decent support after raising the support ticket. If it is product bug they will inform you and let you know which patch will resolve the same.
    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
    Strategy
    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
    Strategy
    I have attended many trainings offered by MicroStrategy; both distance and in-person training. I earned my CRD (Certified Report Developer) certification via the online training. I found the training to be well organized and concise. Overall I will definitely continue to increase my knowledge with MicroStrategy via the online training offering.
    Read full review
    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
    Strategy
    We measured following KPI for the success
    • Increase in Business Feeds Loads
    • Reduction in Controllers Manual Work.
    • Conversion of Manual Work into Systematic Workflows.
    • Increase in Customer Spend
    • Reduction in Service costs
    • Reduction in time-to-market for new campaigns
    • Increase in cross sell and Up sell
    • Error reduction in customer Identification
    • Existing client retained
    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
    Strategy
    Tableau is probably MicroStrategy Analytic's biggest competitor I've noticed over time, and I'm not sure why. Tableau only covers visualizations independently for each business user, which then creates the issues of every employee creating their own version of the data, and then you have 20 versions of the truth. A enterprise data warehouse and MicroStrategy's Visual Insight is a better method.
    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
    Strategy
    This software is extremely scaleable, one can add more core servers which performs as a load balancing. The configurations available to manage usage patterns and daily activity are as high a caliber as any other enterprise level software. This product can be installed on both a windows and unix platform allow for integration on a budget.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Strategy
    • MicroStrategy was helpful for reducing the amount of time we needed to spend number crunching large data sets, and in doing so, allowed me as the primary users to spend more time gleaning insights from the data that in turn informed our leadership team to make strategic decisions.
    • By creating numerous canned reports available to all members of the team through email distribution or basic access to the platform, we were able to reduce the time I spent showing people how to pull the data in Microsoft Excel by nearly 40% .
    • We ended up needing to make many changes to the way our DMP was feeding data into MicroStrategy due to incorrect reporting that caused complications in accounting and finance.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

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