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IBM Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics

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.

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Recent Reviews
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How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors

Self-Service

IBM Cognos Analytics' data modules allow for basic data prep tasks and continue to evolve. They provide a good web-based environment to manage metadata and build out calculations and filters, which help improve self-service analytics for end users. The AI assistant is a nice enhancement in recent …
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Data Security and Quality

Data governance and controls are vital when rolling out an enterprise reporting, dashboarding, and analytics platform. IBM Cognos Analytics has always provided good and effective controls in this respect, which continue to be supported in newer releases. Security control also remains a strong …
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Data Security and Quality

This does increase throughput so that we can deploy content to a wider audience utilizing security to make sure people see only what they are supposed to see. The overall model is flexible and powerful so we can deliver data securely no matter the security need.
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Self-Service

Leveraging AI to analyse data and generate interactive dashboards is an incredible powerful and time saving feature.
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.
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Data Security and Quality

The security controls are a must of using this tool. Beyond important :-) Without security it would not work.
Proper content management and data quality features improved the confidence in the quality of the data.
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Data Security and Quality

Extremely! As we are a healthcare insurance company, we are driven by mandates from the government and have strict policies to follow. CA allows permissions to be set at most of the levels we require.
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Self-Service

We provide training on these exact capabilities and offer custom report/dasboard builds on an SOW basis. Along with our standard reports and dashboards this has allowed us to satisfy all of our customer needs.
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Data Security and Quality

IBM Cognos allows governors at system level, model/package level and report level security controls, but it is lacking control by tenants. e.g. many system level governors like high/low affinity processes or max processes cannot have different settings per tenant.
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Self-Service

These capabilities were designed to empower business users with the ability to access and analyze data without heavy reliance on IT or technical expertise.
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Self-Service

The self-service capabilities of this platform allow users to build their own dashboards, reports and scorecards in a simple, intuitive and secure way. It also provides ease of use for advanced data analysis.
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Self-Service

If it is feasible to have a self-service with IBM, it is possible with the links with other integrated software directly from the hybrid cloud; we can always have a data visualization panel after having all the administrative permissions of each integrated module license, this directly favors the …
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Data Security and Quality

In this sense, clear and precise work rules have been established that help increases the number of administrative permissions according to the authorization of the IT department; this is decisive for data security and even more important for the security of each project in more than ten …
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Self-Service

This is always what characterizes this software; it is possible to link tools that help to work with different data sources and AI, and it is also possible to visualize the data in a personalized control panel with a direct or indirect classification to all the obtaining system Automated data …
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Data Security and Quality

There are more than ten groups with central administrative permissions that are working with this software only in my department; in other areas, different permissions have also been established for each job according to each data source; this significantly helps the individual performance of each …
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Self-Service

If it is possible for all users to clearly understand the generated reports, the information panels are easy even for non-technical staff; it is not necessary to ask for help to export information to components or modules that are required, and it is also easy to change the location and report …
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Data Security and Quality

Documents and reports are shared in all departments only with Latin permissions for password management and encryption when required; there is a person in charge in each department who has the authorization; in the same way, this product has additional security features with advanced verification. …
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Self-Service

It is a software with power in the detection of problems through data analysis, artificial intelligence is perfect because it saves us time by automatically analyzing the data, protects us from any failure that occurs and generates detailed reports that allow us to know the problems. The whole …
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Self-Service

I believe the features before mentioned such as AI assistant have allow the tool to become more effective and helpful, suggestions and options are more customer related and tailored to specific situations.
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Data Security and Quality

In times like that that data and information security has become so critical, having IBM Cognos support that capabilities brings much peace of mind to the administrator, not to be confused to delegated the security to Cognos, the company must always be accountable for the security but in case of a …
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Self-Service

End users and vendors brought external data which IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson was easily able to cleanse, model and integrate with existing metadata models. The NLP capabilities of the tool helped for quicker implementation and insight generation of the external data for analysis and decision …
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Data Security and Quality

The RBAC or Role based access control helped implement object level as well data level security control which is a critical feature required due to multiple business units and various users having access to the single enterprise Bi tool. This allowed for controlled access and provide a peace of my …
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Self-Service

IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is designed to enable business user self-service, with support for data cleansing and connecting the data automatically. We can work on different filetypes like json, csv, xlx etc and generate datapoints from these different filetypes easily. It automatically …
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Data Security and Quality

The data stored is highly secure as IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson enables divisional, group, and individual-level security controls to ensure proper content management and maintain data quality. It is easily accessible from the IBM account as well as the mobile application. It is confidential …
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Self-Service

It offers certain features, for example, simulated intelligence helped information arrangement, robotized dashboards, and the AI intelligence Collaborator which permits clients to pose inquiries in plain language and get suggested representations. These self-administration abilities are …
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Data Security and Quality

The execution of safety controls in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson has empowered us to keep up with the most elevated levels of information quality and trustworthiness. These controls permit us to guarantee that main approved work force approach delicate information, and that all information is …
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Self-Service

Its makes reporting and scheduling task much efficient as compared to using AS400 for creating reports
its a time saver and changes in at any point of time is best part.
its query studio is very simple and dynamic.
we got many adhoc and in built functionality as well here .
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Self-Service

Still the end user find it difficult to build reporting. This is also related that they don't know their own data. To help the users with this should be te focus. (like in Story telling) give the user more help and insight to their possibilities, this also with local language support. For most of …
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Self-Service

Data is automatically displayed in a way that makes sense to the user. The suggested reports and dashboards are very helpful. The templates make it very easy to create dashboards. It truly is a self-service tool and is easy for users of all levels to use. The AI assistant is helpful.
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Data Security and Quality

The different security levels are very important and easy to use. It's nice to be able to use groups to give access to whole content areas to a very large amount of people. We have thousands of reports and managing the permissions of each one individually would be a nightmare. It's nice that you …
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Self-Service

They helped a lot like I am now used to accessing the reports or data I want directly from the dashboard. The parameter selection and the feature to formatting the data is really helpful in day-to-day deliverable. The language use is understandable.The analytics part is so accurate even it is …
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Data Security and Quality

In the research field, the security of the data is the top priority thing and I think IBM Cognos Analytics is very reliable with security of the data.Like the Read, only access feature in IBM is top notch it really help for auditing purpose and the quality of the data is excellent.
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Self-Service

Self-service has without a doubt improved our productivity and reduce complexity as a data platform. Our staff can easily generate reports with little assistance from the IT team unless it's on complex ODBC.
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Data Security and Quality

Because we are in finance, confidential data is shared all the time which means data security is a priority. With a secure licensed governance system, data is handled by a trusted source.
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Self-Service

These self-service capabilities are easy to use and allow business users to create their own reporting content for their business requirements. It has tremendously reduced work for developers and application administrators to engage with other productivities.
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 30 features
  • Report Delivery Scheduling (87)
    8.4
    84%
  • Formatting capabilities (88)
    8.2
    82%
  • Drill-down analysis (87)
    8.1
    81%
  • Customizable dashboards (85)
    7.9
    79%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Nick Waters | TrustRadius Reviewer
Nick Waters
Solution Architect
Capita (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees)
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Management Consulting Company, 1-10 employees
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Pricing

View all pricing

On Demand - Standard

$10.00

Cloud
per month per user

On Demand - Premium

$40.00

On Premise
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.ibm.com/products/cognos…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting / Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $10 per month per user
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Product Demos

IBM Cognos Analytics Product Tour

Walnut.io
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.1
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.3
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.5
Avg 8.3

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.

7.7
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.5
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.2
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7.6
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

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

Additional Features

  • Supported: AI Forecasting

IBM Cognos Analytics Integrations

IBM Cognos Analytics Competitors

IBM Cognos Analytics Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, 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.

SAS Cost and Profitability Management, Tableau Public, and Tableau Server are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics.

Reviewers rate Publish to PDF highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of IBM Cognos Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(549)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 86)
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November 15, 2023

High Quality Enterprise Analytics Platform

Nick Waters | TrustRadius Reviewer
Nick Waters
Solution Architect
Capita (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Alternatives Considered
IBM Cognos Analytics supports better enterprise connectivity than the competition. It supports on-premises and cloud deployments, regardless of cloud platform, and also provides its own SaaS cloud platform. Other tools are locked in to specific cloud platforms and are not as data agnostic as IBM Cognos Analytics and its wide range of deployment options.
October 10, 2023

Cognos Analytics for Enterprise reporting

Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Management Consulting Company, 1-10 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Alternatives Considered
I like the cloud native character and ease of deployment with Sigma and ThogthSpot, I also like the metadata modelling capabilities of Power BI. I prefer the ability of Cognos to create and publish a metadata model that provides both ad hoc access and managed reporting and everything in between.
July 21, 2023

IBM Cognos can't be beat for customer satisfaction

SL
Shawn Lamson
Tech Manager, BI & Analytics
Ideagen (Environmental Services, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Alternatives Considered
We could deliver a corporate wide solution with Cognos, it is an end-to-end platform. No other option provided the same breadth of scope. I can't think of a feature that the others provide that Cognos lacks, but the others do not provide the same features and governance of data with user/data security in mind.
February 24, 2023

Versatile and next generation BI tool.

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is an enterprise ready tool and could provide end to end functionality expected from a BI tool. Provides integration with custom applications as well as provides not just high end visualizations that Tableau or PowerBI provides but also the very much needed detailed pixel perfect operational reports as well. Ability to extract and share data within and outside the organization. Schedule reports and burst reports based on report parameters which is not available or complex to implement in any of the tools evaluated. While Thought spot provided natural language querying, IIBM Cognos Analytics with Watson also was able to do that, effectively.
September 13, 2022

Great Reporting Software

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Alternatives Considered
We selected IBM Cognos because it has all of the features our organization needs for reporting. There are multiple report and dashboard options. Security and scheduling options are good. Tableau does not have good tools for advanced reporting besides dashboards. Power BI does not have as many features as IBM Cognos.
July 26, 2022

The Real AI and automation in Data Analytics Market

Verified User
Administrative Assistant in Research & Development
Research Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
The AI and the automation in IBM Cognos Analytics are pretty simple to use and almost provide accurate data. The report part compared to the Medidata Rave is always efficient and error-proof I got the reports nearly 90 percent. The analysis is pretty good I actually got the outcome that I wanted to produce.
February 12, 2022

Sharing reports is possible, easy and effective.

Damith Low | TrustRadius Reviewer
Damith Low
Software Engineer
AI Singapore (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
They are powerful tools, they are used to handle a large amount of data, create different and complex visualizations. They make it easy for users to run queries using natural language and get automatic feedback on the information. They are powerful, intuitive and allow users of all levels to harness their potential.
February 11, 2022

IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson - adaptable to different situations and data processing environments.

Nicholas Maeda | TrustRadius Reviewer
Nicholas Maeda
Senior Software Engineer Team Lead
SafetyCulture (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Unlike traditional Business Intelligence (BI) tools, IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is geared toward enabling people from all walks of business to analyze information in an engaging way.
February 10, 2022

You can efficiently discover, access, and merge your data with IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson

Traylor Haney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Traylor Haney
Agile PM
Cynopsis Solutions (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
  • Board
Both are business intelligence solutions with combined features of business intelligence, data discovery, and analytics that help us collect data, work with it to perform analysis, and interactive reports.
February 07, 2022

A great tool for end-users with exceptional potential.

Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting
Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
They complete in each other in the analytics cycle. Not only can we get infused insight and descriptives and diagnotics from my data, I can actually plan when combining both software.
February 06, 2022

Pixel Perfect Enterprise Reporting Tool

Mohammed Younus Siddiqui | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mohammed Younus Siddiqui
Business Intelligence Analyst
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
IBM Cognos Analytics is the only product that provides pixel-perfect reports right out of the box. You do not need third-party tools to implement it. Secondly, other tools require you to create a relation between the tables if you are going to use them in the report. Only in Cognos, you can display tables with no relationship between them at all. Thirdly, if you need to create queries or sub-queries then you can do it on the fly in Cognos. However, in other tools, you need to do the data preparation in the database itself before using it in the tool.
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