Self-Service
These features have streamlined some manual work and further advanced automation, but validation and further accuracy-checking is still needed as we gain confidence in the platform and want to ensure confidence.
Starting at $10 per month per user
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What is IBM Cognos Analytics?
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.
Learn from top reviewers
IBM Cognos Analytics is a proven BI Product
Rating: 8 out of 10
March 18, 2025I have used IBM Cognos Analytics previously for reporting retail data. It has good data modeling capability. Very robust system to handle good volume of data. It has good scop...
Effortless Data Visualization and Reporting with IBM Cognos Analytics.
Rating: 9 out of 10
March 17, 2025I use IBM Cognos Analytics mainly for reporting and data visualization, and it makes it easier for me to produce thorough reports and mix several data sources. Predictive anal...
A good tool at a good price
Rating: 9 out of 10
November 26, 2024We use IBM Cognos Analytics as our main platform for company analytics. It is our main source for aggregated information regarding our business. Also there is the main source ...
IBM Cognos Analytics get reports the way you need them.
Rating: 7 out of 10
November 20, 2024Cognos is used for reporting analytical data from our ERP system that is hosted on OS400 BMI
Michael O'Riley
Director - Information Technology
Director of Information Technology at Humphrey Companies, LLC.
Humphrey Companies, LLC
5 years of experienceAlmost perfect
Rating: 8 out of 10
September 24, 2024My organization uses IBM Cognos Analytics to pull data reports from Deltek Costpoint. There is no way to pull data only with Costpoint so we use IBM Cognos Analytics to fill t...
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Administrator
7 years of experience
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Pricing
On Demand - Standard
$10.00
Cloud
per month per user
On Demand - Standard
$10.60
On Premise
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
$42.40
On Premise
per month per user
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://ibm.biz/Cognos_Analytics_Pricin…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $10 per month per user
Product Demos
How to get started with IBM Cognos Analytics
www.ibm.com
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Product Details
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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is IBM Cognos Analytics?
Cognos Analytics is an AI-fueled business intelligence platform that supports the entire analytics cycle, from discovery to operationalization. Cognos Analytics gives users — whether data scientist, business analyst or non-specialist — more power to perform relevant analysis in a way that ties back to organizational objectives. It aims to shorten each user’s journey from simple to sophisticated analytics, allowing them to harness data to explore the unknown, identify new relationships, get a deeper understanding of outcomes and challenge the status quo. Users can visualize, analyze and share actionable insights about data with anyone in the organization.
IBM Cognos Analytics Features
BI Platform Features
- Supported: Administration via Web Interface
- Supported: Live Connection to External Data
- Supported: Snapshot of External Data
- Supported: In-memory data model
- Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
- Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
- Supported: ETL Capability
- Supported: ETL Scheduler
Supported Data Sources Features
- Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
- Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
- Supported: Oracle
- Supported: MS SQL Server
- Supported: IBM DB2
- Supported: MySQL
- Supported: ODBC
- Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
- Supported: IBM Netezza
- Supported: SAP Hana
- Supported: Salesforce
- Supported: SAP
BI Standard Reporting Features
- Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
- Supported: Customizable dashboards
- Supported: Report Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
- Supported: Drill-down analysis
- Supported: Formatting capabilities
- Supported: Predictive modeling
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
- Supported: Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
- Supported: Publish to PDF
- Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
- Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
- Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
- Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
- Supported: Predictive Analytics
- Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
- Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
Access Control and Security Features
- Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
- Supported: Role-Based Security Model
- Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- Supported: Report-Level Access Control
- Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)
Mobile Capabilities Features
- Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
- Supported: Mobile Application
- Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features
- Supported: REST API
- Supported: Javascript API
IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots
IBM Cognos Analytics Video
IBM Cognos Analytics Integrations
IBM Cognos Analytics Competitors
IBM Cognos Analytics Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Countries | Global |
| Supported Languages | English, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Urdu, Farsi |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
IBM Cognos Analytics starts at $10.
Tableau Public, Tableau Server, and Microsoft Power BI are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics.
Reviewers rate Report Versioning highest, with a score of 8.6.
The most common users of IBM Cognos Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews From Top Reviewers
(1-5 of 30)
God Knows or Cognos
Rating: 8 out of 10
September 30, 2015
SK
Vetted Review
Verified User
7 years of experience
IBM Cognos BI suite has been deployed across enterprise and end customers, for one of the customers at my previous company. They are at version 10.2.2 which consists of dashboards and daily data snapshots. The target users are mostly mid-level and top-management but external users such as dealers and vendors have access to the environment when it comes to scorecards. It is easily integrated with other websites. It has a good API that allows seamless integration. However, the main challenge includes extensive learning, frequent service restarts and proper documentation of troubleshooting information. Additionally, visualization and query engine still require improvements in terms of creating simpler queries.
It consists of Analysis Studio, Query Studio, Workspace, Workspace Advanced as Adhoc Analysis tools, which provides alternate for OLAP and relational database, but it poses a challenge while educating users to uses the right tool for analysis. Report Studio is widely used for preparing canned reports, but if the components are not structured properly within a report then it can lead to unstable environment. Dynamic Cubes is one of the client tools which allows analysis on large set of data but has a lot of dependency on materialized views created in database. As per IBM's roadmap, dynamic cube would be the future but IBM needs to improve or enhance the tool in terms of supporting aggregate awareness and less dependency on database materialized views.
It consists of Analysis Studio, Query Studio, Workspace, Workspace Advanced as Adhoc Analysis tools, which provides alternate for OLAP and relational database, but it poses a challenge while educating users to uses the right tool for analysis. Report Studio is widely used for preparing canned reports, but if the components are not structured properly within a report then it can lead to unstable environment. Dynamic Cubes is one of the client tools which allows analysis on large set of data but has a lot of dependency on materialized views created in database. As per IBM's roadmap, dynamic cube would be the future but IBM needs to improve or enhance the tool in terms of supporting aggregate awareness and less dependency on database materialized views.
- IBM cognos can create reports against transactional as well as data marts. It has the capability of combining results of multiple databases too.
- Integrating with external websites is easy and seamless. It provides SDK for Java and C# which extends the report functionality.
- Administrators have easy access to stop/start a particular service through administrator page. It also simplifies the code migration. Modelling tools like framework manager and transformer are quite intutive.
- Zero footprint architecture allows an end user to author and publish reports through an internet browser.
- Bursting option eliminates the requirement of storing multiple copies of report which each user or user group.
Cons
- Visualization and charting engines are still elementary. IBM Cognos has introduced RAVE charts but the capabilities are limited and customization is still tricky.
- Cognos Insight is one of the self-learning BI tools, but it is not at par with the Tableau or Qlik. It needs a lot of improvements.
- Aggregate awareness has to be extended further to other tools like framework manager or transformer. Similarly, active reports have to be more robust in terms of complying to the wide range of use-cases.
- Lack of offline reporting puts an unnecessary dependency on the internet.
- Since, the environment is centralized, a bad query can shutdown development of reports.
- Client tools such as framework manager, transformer GUI, dynamic cube designer, Cognos Insight are restricted to windows. It would be better if they are extended to Ubuntu, Mac or Linux too.
- Support for Chrome browser is minimal.
- Training materials need to be improved.
- Plugin for R is good to have.
Cognos - The "Ace in the Sleeve" BI tool
Rating: 8 out of 10
August 08, 2014
Vetted Review
Verified User
1 year of experience
Used as a front end analytical tool for many organizations. I cannot speak to other organizations but in my organization we develop the reports mostly as canned reports with limited ad-hoc ability. I cannot even begin to say what problems it addresses because it is used so much. One example is a traceability tool for vehicle components.
- I very rarely find something it cannot do. There is always a way to get around a problem you are facing, it may just take some critical thinking to get there.
- Framework manager is excellent. I prefer it over Tableau extracts.
- The exporting options has been used a lot by my team. The business users we deal with are still very much in favor of Excel and this allows the data to be in a familiar format should they chose to do that.
Cons
- Cognos is not the prettiest BI tool. It is very old-school in my opinion. This is not bad for all people, but I think the next generation of users will want something "prettier"
- Very steep learning curve, but that comes along with the complexity of the tool
- When developing a report, the way everything (tools, pages, etc) are laid out is confusing. It took me months to get it down. Again, this tool is very complex and good at what it does, so that it to be expected.
IBM Cognos for Automation, Business Performance Insights, and Advanced Learning
Rating: 4 out of 10
March 22, 2024
SK
Vetted Review
Verified User
This is used by some of the teams for modeling, predictive analysis using historical data, and deep insights on overall Business Intelligence.
- advanced modeling
- reporting and dashboarding
- integration with engineer toolsets
Cons
- admin access
- re-running reports
- user experience (modernization)
Great product!
Rating: 10 out of 10
January 14, 2020
Vetted Review
Verified User
9 years of experience
Our entire organization uses IBM Cognos and we love it. It does have a large learning curve, but it is such a powerful analytics and reporting tool. This tool allows you to manipulate and report off of large amounts of data. Personally, I like being able to extract it to Excel so that you can manipulate the data via pivot tables.
- Handles big data well.
- Provides the end-user with the data.
- Allows for management to get the data they need.
Cons
- Large learning curve.
- Requires a lot of IT support.
Powerful analytics platform
Rating: 8 out of 10
August 31, 2023
Vetted Review
Verified User
4 years of experience
We use IBM Cognos Analytics to analyse user data and customer trends to make forecasts and data-driven decisions. We use the builtin AI Chatbot to get better insights from data using plain english.
- AI chatbot provides an excellent user experience for the researcher
- Very good looking reports
- Forecasting
- Security
Cons
- Kind of expensive and a lot of extras that require additional pay
- Rather scary for the first time users, maybe you can improve the learning curve needed
- Reports need to be easier to setup, maybe more starting templates