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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

    Tableau Cloud

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ATableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is a self-service analytics platform that is fully hosted in the cloud. Tableau Cloud enables users to publish dashboards and invite colleagues to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data, from any browser or mobile device.

    $15

    per month per user

    Pricing
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    Editions & Modules
    On Demand - Standard
    USD 11.25
    per month per user
    On Demand - Premium
    USD 44.90
    per month per user
    Tableau Viewer
    $15
    per month billed annually per user
    Enterprise Viewer
    $35
    per month billed annually per user
    Tableau Explorer
    $42
    per month billed annually per user
    Enterprise Explorer
    $70
    per month billed annually per user
    Tableau Creator
    $75
    per month billed annually per user
    Enterprise Creator
    $115
    per month billed annually per user
    Tableau+
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    Since we have previously used Salesforce, Tableau and Qlik Sense. I find each platform has it own strengths and weaknesses. Tableau is very intuitive and flexible, Qlik is very strong with ease of development. But IBM Cognos Analytics stands out in structured org level …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    We selected IBM Cognos Analytics based on the following. The scalable and robust features for large organizations allowing it to grow as we do. The nest feature is the strong data governance and security features. It also supports a wide variety of data sources. Lastly, it …
    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 looked at Qlik Sense, SAP Analytics Cloud, and IBM Cognos Analytics for our financial brand's needs. Qlik Sense is super user-friendly, great for quick data digging. SAP Analytics is perfect when we're working with other SAP stuff; it just clicks. But for our big project, …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    While all of them have their own advantages. IBM Cognos Analytics is highly scalable and have unmatched data analytics capabilities which makes the data from IBM Cognos Analytics of very high quality and data governance also makes sure your data is safe and protected.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    IBM is a titan in BI innovation but has arduous competitors as I mentioned before. IBM has prestige in BI and the directors and managers know that. On the other hand, complexity is not the strategy of Cognos, that's why if you need big cubes of data, Tableau, and Microsoft BI …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    The University of Pittsburgh BI team continues to explore different BI and analytics platforms. Tableau was offered as a reporting tool to complement Cognos users.
    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
    Tableau
    Chose Tableau Cloud
    There are lots of excellent products are available in market for data analysis like SAP BusinessObjects, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy Analytics, Microsoft Power BI, etc. I found other products are specific to their tools like SAP BusinessObjects suits great with SAP Products …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Cloud
    Tableau does a great job compared to all of these mentioned tools. Other tools also have a great shape-up of dashboards but obviously all have their advantages and disadvantages. The reason Tableau has an edge over all the other tools is because of its excellent visual design …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Cloud
    Domo does not fare well against Tableau in terms of visualizations. Our users gave a thumbs up for Tableau, so we went with Tableau Online.
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Cloud

    My work environment uses both Tableau Online, MicroStrategy & SSRS in parallel. Tableau is much closer to the SSRS in terms of visualization tool where as MicroStrategy is an enterprise data modeling and reporting tool.

    WHY SELECT TABLEAU ONLINE

    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Cloud
    Birst seems very good at getting data aggregated into the tool (ETL), but weaker at the front end visualizations.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    92 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    22 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    91 Answers
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    25 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
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    64 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    Features
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.7
    138 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Tableau Cloud
    7.6
    74 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Pixel Perfect reports7.6129 Ratings7.656 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.0136 Ratings8.774 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.5131 Ratings6.663 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.9
    138 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Tableau Cloud
    7.6
    74 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Drill-down analysis7.4136 Ratings8.574 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.3139 Ratings7.371 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages7.397 Ratings6.147 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.6133 Ratings8.672 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    136 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Tableau Cloud
    7.8
    72 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Publish to Web9.836 Ratings8.668 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.2132 Ratings7.567 Ratings
    Report Versioning9.833 Ratings7.655 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.2134 Ratings8.559 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers9.918 Ratings6.738 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.4
    124 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Tableau Cloud
    7.9
    70 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9121 Ratings8.267 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.0114 Ratings8.366 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics6.7110 Ratings7.857 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.947 Ratings7.26 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.8
    130 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Tableau Cloud
    8.4
    69 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Multi-User Support (named login)7.5129 Ratings8.363 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model7.5127 Ratings7.756 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.4127 Ratings8.659 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control8.257 Ratings8.87 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)8.6111 Ratings8.754 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    6.4
    109 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Tableau Cloud
    7.5
    59 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Responsive Design for Web Access6.8104 Ratings7.457 Ratings
    Mobile Application6.390 Ratings7.744 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.696 Ratings7.851 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Tableau Cloud
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    87 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Tableau Cloud
    7.0
    41 Ratings
    10% below category average
    REST API7.683 Ratings8.136 Ratings
    Javascript API7.779 Ratings7.534 Ratings
    iFrames9.912 Ratings6.833 Ratings
    Java API10.013 Ratings5.729 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)9.915 Ratings6.735 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.99 Ratings7.232 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (158 ratings)
    8.9
    (76 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.4
    (31 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (10 ratings)
    8.6
    (29 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (9 ratings)
    8.7
    (20 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    8.0
    (49 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.3
    (40 ratings)
    8.3
    (49 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 AnalyticsTableau Cloud
    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
    Tableau
    If you're using Tableau as the primary BI tool, then Tableau Cloud is well suited to publish and share the results with a wide(r) audience. It is well suited for various degrees of self-service proficiency, from pure consumers of analytical work to more advanced users who can use web editing for smaller or larger adjustments, and even for desktop power users who will publish their work to Tableau Cloud. It has many good ways to organize the content and make it easily accessible via search, favorites, folders, collections ("playlists for your data"), or history ("recents"). It might not be ideally suited if there are many on-prem sources to be used (even though there are options to connect them) or if you have very special requirements regarding custom server setup, which is limited in a shared cloud environment like Tableau Cloud.
    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
    Tableau
    • Tableau Online is completely cloud based and that's why the reports and dashboards are accessible even on the go. One doesn't always need to access the office laptop to access the reports.
    • The visualizations are interactive and one can quickly change the level at which they want to view the information. For example, one person might be more interested in looking at the country level performances rather than client level. This is intuitive and one doesn't need to create multiple reports for the same.
    • The feature to ask questions in plain vanilla English language is great and helpful. For quick adhoc fact checks one can simply type what they are looking for and the Natural Language Programming algorithms under the hood parse the query, interpret it and then fetch the results accordingly in a visual form.
    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
    Tableau
    • Can be a steep learning curve for new users
    • Modeling and building algorithms aren't always intuitive and take some testing/retesting to ensure it's working as it should
    • Inability to integrate easily with our HRIS platform. Reports are pulled from HRIS at various intervals and uploaded into Tableau
    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
    Tableau
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Tableau
    Based on comments from our clients, I awarded it this grade. Non-technical customers frequently compliment us on the ease with which they can utilize Tableau Online. Usability is rarely a source of contention amongst our customers. Few complaints have come from me as a user of our internal products.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Tableau
    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
    Tableau
    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
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    Tableau
    I have not had any issues that require customer support from Tableau at this time, which speaks well to Tableau. I have taken an online course with Tableau and it was very professional and well done, so based on that I would assume a similar level of quality for their customer service.
    Incentivized
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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
    Tableau
    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
    Tableau
    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
    Tableau
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Tableau
    In determining whether to go with Tableau Online versus Alteryx, two important factors stood out in determining our go-to solution. First, while Alteryx is an impressive tool for data cleansing, it did not stack up in terms of data visualization capabilities. Tableau, on the other hand, provided us everything we needed in terms of visualizing our data and analytics. The second factor is cost. Well neither solution would be considered cheap, Tableau was the more cost effective solution for our needs.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Tableau
    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
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    Tableau
    • When we release new products, we are now able to quickly see data and toggle between current periods and previous to see performance
    • Generating new reports requires less IT time to build
    • Data can be shared across many different device types
    • We now have integration where our customers can extract data from our software more easily-this was a big ask from our customers
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

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