IBM Cognos Analytics vs. MicroStrategy Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cognos Analytics
Score 8.2 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
MicroStrategy Analytics
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
MicroStrategy 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 AnalyticsMicroStrategy Analytics
Editions & Modules
On Demand - Standard
$10.00
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
$40.00
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsMicroStrategy 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 AnalyticsMicroStrategy Analytics
Considered Both Products
IBM Cognos Analytics
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 …
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.
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 …
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.
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
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 …
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.
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.
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, …
MicroStrategy Analytics
Chose MicroStrategy 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 …
Chose MicroStrategy Analytics
Speed, visually, and sales process - MicroStrategy outranked Cognos by far.
Chose MicroStrategy 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 …
Chose MicroStrategy 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 …
Chose MicroStrategy 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 …
Chose MicroStrategy Analytics
Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos, QlikView - better integrated, single metadata, broader functionality
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Cognos AnalyticsMicroStrategy Analytics
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.9
102 Ratings
4% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
26 Ratings
20% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.593 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.8100 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.497 Ratings10.024 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
104 Ratings
0% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
24 Ratings
21% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.1102 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.1103 Ratings10.024 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.872 Ratings10.016 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.4100 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
104 Ratings
1% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
23 Ratings
18% above category average
Publish to Web8.327 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.798 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Report Versioning8.626 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.0101 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.112 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
94 Ratings
0% above category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
22 Ratings
21% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.089 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.286 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.182 Ratings10.018 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.021 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
99 Ratings
4% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
21 Ratings
15% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.496 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.395 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.295 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.424 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.377 Ratings10.09 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.3
83 Ratings
8% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
9.7
19 Ratings
20% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.977 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Mobile Application7.368 Ratings10.015 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.174 Ratings10.019 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
62 Ratings
5% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
8 Ratings
23% above category average
REST API7.359 Ratings10.06 Ratings
Javascript API7.658 Ratings10.07 Ratings
iFrames8.39 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Java API6.911 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.110 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.87 Ratings10.06 Ratings
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User Ratings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsMicroStrategy Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(127 ratings)
9.9
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(27 ratings)
9.9
(27 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(8 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
10.0
(8 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
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(3 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 AnalyticsMicroStrategy Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Well suited: 1. We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. 2. Options
of customizing & scheduling reports as per our
requirements basis. 3. Has a mobile application that works seamlessly. Less Appropriate: 1. API integration with minimal options is not up to the mark. Laptops get overheated when using the tool, from moderate to heavy use. 2. Also, there is a lag in the tool times. 3. There is a lot of scope to improve customer support & it's not up to industry standards. 4. Licensing
& Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.
Read full review
MicroStrategy
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
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • It provides statistical analysis and predictive modeling which helps to forecast sales trends based on data and other factors.
  • It provides user friendly interface which helps users to explore data without extensive IT support. Like sales and marketing teams can use self service BI to analyze customer data and personalize campaigns for marketing.
  • It integrates well with IBM products and also with third party which enables organization to integrate with different products for better results and growth.
  • It provides security and governance features which maintains confidentiality, and compliance of data. It impose HIPAA compliance by providing role based access and encryption to protect sensitive data.
Read full review
MicroStrategy
  • 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
  • Uses a lot of the CPU of PC and can be only item running on computer sometimes
  • The error descriptions could be worded differently to help users find out what is exactly wrong with the report they are trying to write
  • Missing third party integration functionality that works succinctly
Read full review
MicroStrategy
  • 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.
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
MicroStrategy
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.
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
MicroStrategy
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
MicroStrategy
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.
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
MicroStrategy
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.
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.
Read full review
MicroStrategy
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.
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
MicroStrategy
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
MicroStrategy
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.
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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
MicroStrategy
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
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
IBM
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 everything in between
Read full review
MicroStrategy
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.
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.
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MicroStrategy
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
IBM
  • I've rebuilt a few metadata models to make the associated reports run at around a fifth of the time.
  • I was able to write and sell an IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson extension pack to add additional functionality and to make report author's lives easier.
Read full review
MicroStrategy
  • 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
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