IBM Cognos Analytics vs. Jaspersoft

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
Jaspersoft
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Jaspersoft commercial edition is an embedded business intelligence suite designed to be built-into SaaS products as an integrated reporting engine. It provides reports and dashboards for customer-facing applications without requiring app developers to build their own reporting engine.N/A
Pricing
IBM Cognos AnalyticsJaspersoft
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 AnalyticsJaspersoft
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsJaspersoft offers flexible pricing for ISVs and SaaS per customer or by CPU core.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cognos AnalyticsJaspersoft
Considered Both Products
IBM Cognos Analytics
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 …
Jaspersoft
Chose Jaspersoft
The support and chances of implementing the own branding, as we ship TIBCO Jaspersoft as a stand-alone server we did our own branding for the Jasper server with the login page and the theme, hiding the unnecessary options to the user. The ease of creating canned reports using …
Chose Jaspersoft
We selected Jaspersoft because of its cost, the fact that it's a full web-based solution, and for the embedding possibilities.
Chose Jaspersoft
Selected Jaspersoft because of it's open source credentials and value for money. Our requirements did not require top of the range MI or analytics, just a basic MI platform
Chose Jaspersoft
In other roles, we have used Cognos. The cost of Jaspersoft was a huge advantage when we were starting up. We couldn't afford Cognos and since we are proficient in Jaspersoft, we haven't missed Cognos a bit.
Chose Jaspersoft
We have /are using Tableau, MSTR, Spotfire, Cognos at many of our clients
Chose Jaspersoft
We used TIBCO Jaspersoft due to the open source nature and the reduced cost of licensing and maintenance. It also allows itself to be embedded in a resold product more easily then other applications do.
Chose Jaspersoft
Apart from Microsoft's SSRS (incumbent solution that Jaspersoft replaced), we evaluated Power BI, Business Objects, Cognos, and Tableau. Jaspersoft was selected because of the following reasons:
Chose Jaspersoft
The breadth of features and functionality, Ease of access to a vast community of users for support. The key factor after comparing features and functionality was price. The Jaspersoft suite is hands down the best value bay a large margin..
Chose Jaspersoft
When we originally selected Jaspersoft four years ago, the other finalists were Cognos (could not scale at an affordable price) and Pentaho (reports and security model - not as functional).
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Cognos AnalyticsJaspersoft
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.9
101 Ratings
4% below category average
Jaspersoft
7.7
100 Ratings
6% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.592 Ratings7.687 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.899 Ratings7.588 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.496 Ratings7.886 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
103 Ratings
0% below category average
Jaspersoft
7.4
98 Ratings
9% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.1101 Ratings7.289 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.1102 Ratings7.397 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.871 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.499 Ratings7.781 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
103 Ratings
1% below category average
Jaspersoft
7.7
101 Ratings
8% below category average
Publish to Web8.327 Ratings7.276 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.797 Ratings8.799 Ratings
Report Versioning8.626 Ratings7.659 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.0100 Ratings7.582 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.112 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
93 Ratings
0% above category average
Jaspersoft
7.7
72 Ratings
5% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.088 Ratings8.472 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.285 Ratings7.053 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.181 Ratings00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.020 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
98 Ratings
4% below category average
Jaspersoft
8.1
98 Ratings
6% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.495 Ratings8.194 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.394 Ratings8.192 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.294 Ratings8.588 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.423 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.376 Ratings7.773 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.3
81 Ratings
8% below category average
Jaspersoft
6.6
64 Ratings
18% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.975 Ratings7.959 Ratings
Mobile Application7.366 Ratings5.528 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.172 Ratings8.141 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
60 Ratings
5% below category average
Jaspersoft
7.7
90 Ratings
3% below category average
REST API7.357 Ratings7.981 Ratings
Javascript API7.556 Ratings8.062 Ratings
iFrames8.39 Ratings7.754 Ratings
Java API6.911 Ratings8.255 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.110 Ratings6.558 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.87 Ratings7.860 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cognos AnalyticsJaspersoft
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsJaspersoft
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(126 ratings)
7.4
(119 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(27 ratings)
8.0
(23 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(8 ratings)
7.9
(16 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(4 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(5 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(8 ratings)
7.1
(26 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(4 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(4 ratings)
6.5
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(7 ratings)
7.8
(15 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(2 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(3 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(3 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cognos AnalyticsJaspersoft
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Our first and most basic scenario was to automatize the creation and publication/sharing of business reports that used to be created manually by employees throughout our organization. Using Cognos for that first use case worked well. The advanced analytics functionalities we used on the aggregated data were also as expected. However, the user interface is not always intuitive, and there is a steep learning curve, so I would recommend Cognos only to large organizations where there is a need for the most advanced functionalities (AI analysis/prediction).
Read full review
Jaspersoft
It is well suited for the fact of scalability itself and the breadth of features this application has in order to make the migration from legacy systems to the newer different versions more seamless and effective. Data integrity and security are the main aspects of this tool which does not lose their value when doing day-to-day operations for data mapping.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very similar to real-life scenarios.
  • Options of customizing & scheduling reports as per our requirements basis.
  • Has mobile application which works seamless.
Read full review
Jaspersoft
  • TIBCO Jaspersoft allows you to embed reports into your own application, which gives users the feeling they are using a single product.
  • TIBCO Jaspersoft Studio allows for more advanced report development, such as adding subreports, drilldown to detail reports, images, page headers, page footers, maps, and more.
  • TIBCO's Jaspersoft Domain Designer is very easy to use and navigate.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • Sometimes there might be performance issues when dealing with large and complex data.
  • Although IBM provides full documentation but sometimes it's difficult to find answers to questions and connect with their customer support.
  • It relies on external tools for data cleaning, transformation and also for some integration tasks. It can also improve on providing wider range of data sources for integration.
Read full review
Jaspersoft
  • One of the issues we found during our implementation was that the reporting software would work faster for certain data sources and not the others. Extracting CSVs and XML was slower in comparison to JSON in our experience.
  • Jaspersoft Studio was the main IDE we used for development. Built atop the Eclipse IDE, we found that the tool was really resource intensive and generally take long time to initialize.
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
Jaspersoft
JasperSoft has been amazing. It is well documented, fast, and transparent in how it functions. We have been very confident in JasperSoft in every aspect of our business and offerings where we've used it. On top of that, their improvements to the product have been fantastic. I am really looking forward to seeing where they take their product and how we can leverage that to please our clients
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
Jaspersoft
I think it's a tool well suited for a software developer. Others with less coding skills could struggle somewhat with the tool. I find java a little unforgiving as a language for expressions and not very user friendly for the technically dis-inclined. Sometimes the numeric conversions cause issues (who knew that 0 and 0.0 would cause different things to happen). Previous experience with a reporting tool that used visual basic for its' expressions that I found much simpler to use. On the other hand, java is so widespread, you can easily google the syntax to accomplish what you need to do.
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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
Jaspersoft
We've never had an outage of the software itself. If it was unavailable, it was due to a network outage, not a problem with Jasper.
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
Jaspersoft
Complex reports on heavy data load may take considerable amount of time. We have experinced some latencies/misfires regarding to this.
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
Jaspersoft
They have a great customer support ticketing system in which they always respond same-day. They offer conference calls with srcreensharing as well in order to better understand your issues.
I wish that the lower level support access came with more than just 12 cases per year though as this makes us less likely to reach out for questions on things that we then instead try to solve ourselves which results in loss of time in trying to acquire new features and or solve a problem.
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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
Jaspersoft
It did the job of getting us to our deadline we set for ourselves for initial launch. The customer we launched the product for was also there to learn about it at the same in order to better understand the capabilities. This helped greatly so that the customer was on the same page on what was possible when using jaspersoft. I think most people would not want their customers aware the product they are using is third-party but in this case it was a new experience for us both and so as we learned more about jaspersoft, we both had better communication on what the future road map was for their business needs in BI.
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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
Jaspersoft
Resources available in the TIBCO Knowledge Base are covering almost everything. They are well organized, and covering almost every possibility. There is always the change to get back to the TIBCO support or to the dedicated Customer Success Manager whenever something very specific or bound to a customization is not covered.
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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
Jaspersoft
Having just completed an upgrade to the latest version of Jaspersoft, I am happy to say their support was very good. There were a couple of small challenges which were not easily resolved, but they were primarily related to the fact that we had skipped updates for a couple of versions. The current update procedures assumed we were upgrading from the prior latest version (6.4) to to the new version (7.1).
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
In the past Management had used Excel and Workiva capabilities to create the reporting dashboards that were being used to make decisions. Since switching to IBM Cognos Analytics the Company has been much more efficient and decision making has been streamlined. IBM Cognos Analytics was chosen due to its reputation and data visualization capabilities and neither have been wrong.
Read full review
Jaspersoft
When looking at the different features of these reporting engines, and what we were going to be using it for, the answer seemed clear. Jasper offered exactly what we were looking for, and did so for a price that we were happy with. For a scalable, feature-rich reporting engine that doesn't break the bank, Jaspersoft is the way to go.
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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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Jaspersoft
We haven't really started to explore the scalability of the product as yet, but in terms of existing deployments it has done what we need it to do.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • High ROI with well designed solutions. Supported by scalable deployment, robust security model and ability to create valuable content.
  • High ROI where well designed data models can be deployed with a common metadata layer to a variety of users and use cases.
  • High ROI in an environment that includes a variety of vendors and best of breed products within the overall platform
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Jaspersoft
  • When we demo our Jaspersoft environment to potential clients, their eyes light up and they sit up in their chairs a bit more. A lot of our meetings have ended with with the client very interested in our product due to Jaspersoft.
  • Our existing clients have been very satisfied with the adhoc features of Jaspersoft. We've been able to provide them better access to their data on their terms instead of ours. Of course this turns into a huge win for us.
  • We've always used SQL Server Reporting Services to deliver our reports to our clients. Converting to Jaspersoft has allowed us to generate the reporting layer that our clients demand. They no longer feel like they are settling for what we offer.
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ScreenShots

Jaspersoft Screenshots

Screenshot of Report DesignScreenshot of Ad-hoc ReportingScreenshot of Mobile ReportingScreenshot of Dashboard