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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

    Syncfusion Essential Studio

    Score7.3 out of 10
    N/ASince 2002, Essential Studio® has supported the development of software applications across industries and economic sectors, in both public and private enterprises.

    $0

    with the Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License. It includes free access to all 1,600+ controls and is available to companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue and 5 or fewer developers.

    Pricing
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    Editions & Modules
    On Demand - Standard
    USD 11.25
    per month per user
    On Demand - Premium
    USD 44.90
    per month per user
    1. Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License
    $0
    *The Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License includes free access to all 1,600+ controls and is available to companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue, 5 or fewer developers, and 10 or fewer total employees. Note: An entity or organization may not have ever received more than $3,000,000 USD in capital from an outside source, such as private equity or venture capital, in order to be eligible for the Community License.
    2. Essential Studio UI Edition
    Custom Quote
    per year Packages to suit teams of all sizes
    3. Essential Studio Document SDK
    Custom Quote
    per year Packages to suit teams of all sizes
    5. Essential Studio Standalone Document SDKs
    Custom Quote
    per year PDF Viewer SDK; DOCX Editor SDK; Spreadsheet Editor SDK
    4. Essential Studio Standalone UI SDKs
    Custom Quote
    per year Grid SDK*; Chart SDK*; Schedular SDK; Gantt SDK; Rich Text Editor SDK; Diagram SDK; File Manager SDK*
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details—*Grid SDK, Chart SDK, and File Manager SDK are also included as part of the Essential Studio UI Edition. **The Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License includes free access to all 1,600+ controls and is available to companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue, 5 or fewer developers, and 10 or fewer total employees. Note: An entity or organization may not have ever received more than $3,000,000 USD in capital from an outside source, such as private equity or venture capital, in order to be eligible for the Community License.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    MS BI: A lot of times we meet customers who are dealing with an MS BI maintenance nightmare and we try to ease their pain by implementing Cognos BI and their reporting and analysis system. Cognos BI is better than MS BI from ease of implementation to production support and …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    Business Object, Pentaho, Tableau
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    • SpagoBI
    • Qlikview
    • Tableau
    Syncfusion
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    92 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    29 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    28 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    91 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    29 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    25 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    64 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    Features
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.7
    138 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports7.6129 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.0136 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.5131 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.9
    138 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis7.4136 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.3139 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages7.397 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.6133 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    136 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web9.836 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.2132 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning9.833 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.2134 Ratings00 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers9.918 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.4
    124 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9121 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.0114 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics6.7110 Ratings00 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 Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.8
    130 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)7.5129 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model7.5127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.4127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control8.257 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)8.6111 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    6.4
    109 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access6.8104 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application6.390 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.696 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Syncfusion Essential Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    87 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Syncfusion Essential Studio
    -
    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 AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Progress Kendo UI
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Progress Telerik
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Progress Telerik
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (158 ratings)
    8.8
    (31 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.4
    (31 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (10 ratings)
    8.5
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (9 ratings)
    8.3
    (4 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    4.9
    (2 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.3
    (40 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.4
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsSyncfusion Essential Studio
    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
    Syncfusion
    The datagrid is probably their most popular control I would think. It is so flexible and configurable. Most of mine are plain views in ASP.NET Core, but I have a whole bunch that are dynamically created at runtime in my controller. That is so powerful.
    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
    Syncfusion
    • Integrates well into Microsoft tech stack. i.e. ASP.NET, Blazor etc. So it acts as a plug-n-play, which is great!
    • Shrinks the development cycle without adding too much of its own ecosystem overhead.
    • Provides different UI skins so the controls don't appear as "stitched".
    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
    Syncfusion
    • Sometimes links point to dead addresses in the documentation.
    • Some components have a difficult learning curve but that is usually due to the complexity of the control.
    • Minor version changes introduce breaking changes, for example updating from 20.1.x to 20.2.x gives us licensing errors, which in my opinion is a kind of breaking change as it requires all users to update their licenses.
    • Theming with CSS variables is not possible. Access to Theme Studio code is not possible. So a fully custom solution is needed to make Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition components themeable with CSS variables.
    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
    Syncfusion
    It takes effort to include a new component library into existing software, especially in our case where we have 5 large applications that are written and maintained by about 100 developers. So changing such a core thing comes with a lot of effort. The other reason we will very likely renew our use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition is that it works really well and has helped us to speed up the development process.
    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
    Syncfusion
    I would rate Syncfusion® Essential Studio® a 10 out of 10 for overall usability. The components are intuitive to implement, with clear APIs and consistent design patterns across the suite. This makes it easy for developers to get started quickly and reduces the learning curve even when working with new controls.
    In addition, the documentation and sample projects provide practical guidance that helps accelerate development. The built-in customization options also allow us to adapt the components to fit our branding and business requirements without excessive effort. Overall, the usability is one of the key reasons why Syncfusion has become an essential part of our development toolset.
    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
    Syncfusion
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Syncfusion
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Syncfusion
    Although I have decades of software development experience, I had never created a website from scratch before, and my html and css skills are not particularly strong. Between documentation and incredible dedication from the support team they helped me overcome all of my challenges. It's amazing that they typically create sample code for most of the issues that I submitted. On rare occasions where I uncovered a defect they kept me informed as to its status, and typically resolved it in a short-term release, and/or gave me a reasonable workaround. They hopped on zoom calls with me on multiple occasions when necessary.
    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
    Syncfusion
    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
    Syncfusion
    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
    Syncfusion
    Feedback from the team has been very positive.
    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
    Syncfusion
    Firstly, there is a free version for small businesses and it allows you to jump start without risk. I found one of the other products a bit short in the number of out-of-the-box supported events handlers for each control and, although you can manually add them, I feel more comfortable to just have them ready. After using the free version I just felt in love with Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls and decided to stay with them; they have all I need and more. The usage of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls is straightforward and intuitive. Support is world-class even for the free version; you get answers in 24 hours at most. Also, the support team is ready to remotely connect to your project in case it is needed; we have had one situation like this, and the issue was solved.
    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
    Syncfusion
    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
    Syncfusion
    • First of all, I think the best positive impact is the reduce of time development. I do not know exactly how much time, but certainly, using the framework we save a lot of effort and time.
    • About negative impact, sometimes using the controls of the framewrok have a signifcant impact in the execution time and page load.
    • And of course, the use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition has a significant impact of the learning of javascript and JQUERY.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot

    Syncfusion Essential Studio Screenshots

    Screenshot of An overview of Syncfusion® Essential Studio®, which is a software package that includes more than 1,600 components and frameworks for WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET (Web Forms, MVC, Core), UWP, WinUI, Flutter, Blazor, JavaScript, Angular, Vue, and React.Screenshot of The DataGrid control, which is a grid component that helps display and manipulate large amounts of data in a tabular format. Its feature set includes functionalities like data binding, sorting, grouping, editing, filtering, swiping, dragging, resizing, loading more items, pull-to-refresh, and exporting to Excel and PDF file formats.Screenshot of The PDF Viewer, which is .NET PDF class library developed with 100% managed C# code that can be used to create, read, and write PDFs.