Overview
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.
Good BI tool for advanced analytics.
It's like a Swiss Army knife for our data
IBM Cognos Analytics Review
Great Data Visual tool that's let down by lack of integrations & customer support.
IBM Cognos for Automation, Business Performance Insights, and Advanced Learning
Unlocking Business Insights with IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics: The best blend of PowerBI, Tableau & Qlik
Best Business AI Tool
IBM Cognos Analytics
Great for data analysis
Best translation of AI into Business Analytics
Powerful and reliable BI tool
IBM Cognos Analytics Review
Data unification capacity, great help to the end user in the creation of the final report.
How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
The AI assistant natural language processing is also a great tool to fill the knowledge gap that is normal for clients using these kind of tools.
Data Security and Quality
Proper content management and data quality features improved the confidence in the quality of the data.
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Once IBM implements it, we'll …
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Self-Service
Data Security and Quality
Awards
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Popular Features
- Formatting capabilities (102)8.181%
- Drill-down analysis (101)8.181%
- Report Delivery Scheduling (100)8.080%
- Customizable dashboards (99)7.878%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
On Demand - Standard
$10.00
On Demand - Premium
$40.00
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
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
IBM Cognos Analytics Product Tour
Features
BI Standard Reporting
Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
- 8.5Pixel Perfect reports(92) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
- 7.8Customizable dashboards(99) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
- 7.4Report Formatting Templates(96) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
- 8.1Drill-down analysis(101) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
- 8.1Formatting capabilities(102) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
- 7.8Integration with R or other statistical packages(71) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
- 8.4Report sharing and collaboration(99) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
- 8.3Publish to Web(27) Ratings
- 8.7Publish to PDF(97) Ratings
- 8.6Report Versioning(26) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
- 8Report Delivery Scheduling(100) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
- 8.1Delivery to Remote Servers(12) Ratings
Ability to deliver reports to remote servers
Data Discovery and Visualization
Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.
- 8Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)(88) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
- 8.2Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization(85) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
- 8.1Predictive Analytics(81) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
- 8Pattern Recognition and Data Mining(20) Ratings
Pattern recognition and data mining mean the ability to recognize hidden patterns in large quantities of data.
Access Control and Security
Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.
- 8.4Multi-User Support (named login)(95) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
- 8.3Role-Based Security Model(94) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
- 8.2Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)(94) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
- 8.4Report-Level Access Control(23) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
- 8.3Single Sign-On (SSO)(76) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications
Mobile Capabilities
Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
- 7.9Responsive Design for Web Access(75) Ratings
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
- 7.3Mobile Application(66) Ratings
A dedicated app for iOS and/or Android.
- 8.1Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile(72) Ratings
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another
- 7.3REST API(57) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
- 7.5Javascript API(56) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
- 8.3iFrames(9) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
- 6.9Java API(11) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
- 7.1Themeable User Interface (UI)(10) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
- 7.8Customizable Platform (Open Source)(7) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is IBM Cognos Analytics?
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
Additional Features
- Supported: AI Forecasting
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
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(579)Attribute Ratings
- 9.7Likelihood to Renew27 ratings
- 8.6Availability4 ratings
- 9Performance5 ratings
- 8Usability8 ratings
- 10Support Rating8 ratings
- 8Online Training4 ratings
- 8.7In-Person Training4 ratings
- 7Implementation Rating7 ratings
- 8Configurability2 ratings
- 8.3Product Scalability3 ratings
- 7.3Ease of integration3 ratings
- 7Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 7Vendor post-sale1 rating
- 2.5Data Visualization4 ratings
- 8.3Data Sources40 ratings
- 8.6Data Sharing and Collaboration40 ratings
- 8.7IBM Cognos Reporting 4.14.2157 ratings
- 8.3IBM Cognos Data Modeling 4.14.212 ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 27)Good BI tool for advanced analytics.
- Data Visualization: Plenty of options exist for multiple use cases, and dashboards are easy to implement and customize.
- Integration with IBM Watson: makes it easy to use Watson AI features (NLP etc.) on your data.
- Its advanced analytics functionalities with powerful pattern detection/prediction models.
- Steep learning curve for beginners. It takes time to understand what can be done and how.
- The user interface feels old and not easy to use, especially compared to recent solutions.
- Limited options for user identification (LDAP only).
It's like a Swiss Army knife for our data
- The user-friendly dashboards lets us create custom dashboards super quickly. It's great at visualizing data in a way that's easy to grasp, which means we can spot trends at a glance without getting lost in the numbers.
- AI-powered Insights are a lifesaver. It automatically highlights patterns and insights we might miss, making our analysis more thorough without extra effort on our part.
- Data integration is a breeze. Merging data from various sources is very simple to implement. Whether it's customer feedback or sales figures, Cognos handles it seamlessly, giving us a complete view without the headache of manual merging.
- We love the report automation. Generating reports is no longer a time-consuming task. We set up what we need once, and Cognos does the rest, automating our weekly or monthly reports and saving us a ton of time.
- The learning curve can be a bit of a challenge. Getting the hang of Cognos Analytics was a bit of a challenge at first. It's packed with features, which is great, but it can be overwhelming. A simplified introductory mode for new users would be a huge help.
- The mobile experience could be a lot better. Accessing reports on the go is a bit clunky. The mobile interface could definitely use some polishing to make it as smooth and intuitive as the desktop experience.
- Performance with large datasets sometimes lages. When we're working with really big data sets, things can slow down a bit. Improving the efficiency and speed for these situations would make our data analysis tasks even smoother.
- advanced modeling
- reporting and dashboarding
- integration with engineer toolsets
- admin access
- re-running reports
- user experience (modernization)
Best Business AI Tool
- Charts!
- Dashboard reporting
- Assigning of roles and rights to users
- Speed
- User interface
I guess it would be less appropriate for smaller organisations with less quantum of data.
Best translation of AI into Business Analytics
- Great dashboard
- Understands prompts reasonably well
- Amazing charts
- Decent speed
- Procedure to add data import file can be confusing at times
- UI feels outdated
Works really well for us for assessing and analysing audience engagement on various social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, X, etc. and helps us guide our clients on efficient marketing strategy.
Powerful and reliable BI tool
We also use it for Data exploration/cleansing efforts in initial stages of our Machine Learning projects and to run statistical analytics on various data sets.
- AI assistant is handy and speeds up intial setup
- Data exploration and discovery
- Excel charting
- Integrates with wide range of data sources
- Clunky UI
- Not as widely used as Qlik & Tableau and hence lacks community
- Lots of minor bugs
- Needs initial training as its not as intuitive.
- Support is lacking compared to competitors
It's less suited for use by Machine Learning engineers/developers to probe data and derive statistical insights from datasets.
Data unification capacity, great help to the end user in the creation of the final report.
- It can be connected to multiple data sources.
- Easily integrates with any other tool.
- Combination of data sources.
- Favorable technical service, always attentive.
- It is fully scalable.
- After configured, learning is a bit difficult, although later, one takes it until one understands it.
- The administration interface needs to be improved a bit.
- Everything works without a hitch, from its implementation to its general use.
Powerful analytics platform
- AI chatbot provides an excellent user experience for the researcher
- Very good looking reports
- Forecasting
- Security
- 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
Less apropiate in a scenario where you want to use it for a small startup that lacks a significant amount of data to analyse.
- Forecasting after eliminating random bias
- AI chatbot can answer any query raised in simple English from the data, perform calculations.
- Reports are visually appealing
- Reports can be made more easier to create.
- Speed of performing operations within dashboard can be increased as at times it is slow.
- There is a steep learning curve at the beginning. Make it more easier.
Cognos Analytics with Watson is very good
- reporting
- dashboard
- ai assistent
- burtsting report management
- re-schedule reports with failed
Great Reporting Software
- Good for combining data sources
- Good data visulizations
- Easy to manage permissions
- You have to really understand the underlying data structure before you use it
- It can be hard to learn at first
- It can be glitchy sometimes
My current client is a large pharmaceutical company who uses IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson across multiple divisions. I've been brought in to help with the finance team.
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is flexible enough to make their reporting do everything they want. A major focus was ensuring high visibility reports work on mobile devices. Because IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson allows JavaScript and lets authors directly define HTML, I can make responsive reports that behave perfectly for any sized screen.
Another focus was expanding the default functionality in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson through a series of JavaScript controls. Writing back directly to TM1, sending users emails from a button inside the report, or exporting reports to PowerPoint, the API available in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson makes writing these controls quick and easy.
- Pixel perfect reports. If a client can provide a pixel-perfect mockup, I can make the report indistinguishable from the mockup.
- Data security. It doesn't matter who the user is; when they log in and run a report, they will only see the data they are permitted to see.
- Performant reports on large data. Many tools have issues running on tables containing only a few million rows. Cognos can consistently run reports on multi-billion row tables without issue.
- Embedding reports in third-party tools. With Cognos Mashup Services, it is possible to build a report in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson and call it programmatically. Need straight HTML? No problem. JSON? Atom? All good.
- Data modules still can't match the flexibility of the framework manager. When dealing with large data models, or multi-grain, FM still wins.
- The new native graphs, while pretty, still can't match the version 10 graphs in terms of flexibility or options. It is possible to import third-party graphs, but it's a pain.
- Some functionality, like version control, is only available through third parties. Motio or BSP.
Pixel Perfect Enterprise Reporting Tool
- Importing and modifying metadata
- Create queries for use in GUI
- Print Friendly Report
- The new UI requires more clicks compared to previous version
- Dashboards require more color options
- Learning curve to use is still high compared to other products
IBM Cognos Analytics: A new way of data analysis
- Report Studio for the management reports.
- OLAP functionality using the analysis module.
- Interactive dashboards.
- State-of-the-art technologies like AI-based features.
- Monitoring related features.
- Machine learning.
Rich and scalable platform for Analytics
- Powerful Report Authoring solution.
- Debugging is not easy or at least cumbersome.
Report consumption is easy for less experienced users as well, but for building individual reports some learning efforts are required.
Great product!
- Handles big data well.
- Provides the end-user with the data.
- Allows for management to get the data they need.
- Large learning curve.
- Requires a lot of IT support.
Cognos is a great enterprise tool
- IBM cognos is great as an enterprise tool.
- Being able to create cubes and packages that can be used to pull exactly what you want to see specific to your group.
- IBM Cognos allows multiple users to go in and change the report in a way that they want to see without changing the data that is provided to everyone as a whole.
- IBM Cognos has room for improvement in its charts and graphs. They are awesome on their own but compared to Tableau fall a little short.
- The speed of IBM Cognos could run faster, however considering the amount of data it is able to pull without slowing down makes up for the overall slower processing.
- The ease of setup and usage has a bigger learning curve compared to similar reporting products but once again the return on effort makes it worth that steep curve.
Cognos of the Titan IBM for superb users
- All in one Platform, with IBM integration capacities
- Easy to use for directors and managers
- Large user base
- Relativity lower prices than the competition
- The limited complexity of data analysis
- Lower customer experience
- Slow upgrades compared to competitors
IBM Cognos is a Powerful BI Tool
- It's powerful. As long as you have all the components setup, you will have the query studio to access more granular data, while using the report studio to set up something for good and deliver them via email or whatsoever fits your environment.
- We have implemented Cognos for a lot of telco customers and they have attained much insight into network performance by creating the reports based on all different dimensions.
- The functions are very rich and filters are very powerful and helpful to define all sorts of conditions up to your expectation.
- It's a little bit cumbersome. Not very friendly to the new users. In particular here in Telco market, the users are not used to the heavy tool. Learning curve takes a little bit more time compared to other tools. However, once you set your foot in and get used to it, it's not difficult to set up the reports or do whatever.
- The presentation (charts or tables) can be more modernized if possible to make the reports more presentable.
What, son?
- Great for visualizing data in an appealing way.
- Makes analytics and the process of "asking questions" very easy for people.
- Learning how to work the product is easy as well.
- Ability to link to a variety of data sources.
- Shortcuts are great, but sometimes provide a roadblock when trying to dive deeper into the data.
- Customizing the look of charts would be great.
IBM Cognos Review by the Average Joe
- Report Analysis
- Integrates well with Microsoft Office especially the ability to create presentations with PowerPoint.
- Easy integration with Deltek Costpoint as well as Microsoft SQL server.
- Troubleshooting technical problems can be difficult.
- IT Support is not easy to reach.
Great Reporting with Cognos BI
- Very robust functionality that allows for a variety of report types as well as reporting structures.
- Report prompts make reports easy to run for end users even when reports are very complex.
- Ability to set up security classes that restrict access to end users based on their need to know and use the data.
- The learning curve for Cognos is fairly high due to the high level of functionality available. It would be helpful to have some less expensive training options available.
- Instructions for using Cognos could be more robust, but I realize that's partially dependent on how it's used and documentation writers would not necessarily be able to anticipate all uses.
- Instructions for creating a cross tab report with formatting and subtotals could be better.
A solid tool from a bygone era.
- The strength of Cognos has always been their data modeling layer. Both in Framework Manager and in Transformer, very sophisticated data models could be applied to any database-housed source data.
- Very easy to implement security on data access.
- The ability to control what queries/operations were handled by Cognos, versus those that would be passed off to the database.
- Having both the Framework models and the report studio specs be xml documents made third-party integration quite nice.
- Printing reports is very easy.
- Drilling up/down/through very easy to do.
- The data models aren't available to anything besides Cognos Reports. So if a custom application or an analysis tool from another vendor wants to access the data, they can't take advantage of any of the modeling work done in Framework Manager, they have to do it all over again. This is a travesty. The modeling should be presented as a federated database layer that any application can take advantage of.
- The data modeling environment doesn't lend itself to good development practices: You can't tell easily what the impact will be to making a change (Will this break report? cubes?), there's no built-in version control, only one person can work on a model at a single time, large files become unwieldy.
- The general level of graphics is behind other vendors. The maps in particular are terrible.
- The tool is expensive, and locks you in.
- Working with a performant, dimensional source like a cube requires learning and using archaic mdx, and is very difficult to do in Report Studio.
God Knows or Cognos
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.
- 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.
Meghdeep
- Framework Manager (metadata modeling tool) is a pretty flexible tool for any complex data modeling.
- With use of Report Studio you can handle any business logic for reporting.
- Event studio is used for event based scheduling.
- Business Insight advanced is used for ad-hoc reporting.
- Query studio out-of-the-box is a bit primitive. It is used for ad-hoc reporting, but if something is changed in Query Studio by and end user, it's not possible to see what exactly was changed without going into Report Studio. This is problematic as it means that end users need licenses for Report Studio which is not feasible.
- Metric studio we have not used at all, and don't know exact purpose of it.
Need better performance monitoring tool.