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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

IBM Cognos Analytics

8 out of 10
March 20, 2024
Incentivized
This technology is a great way for our business to see the scope of the work we are doing in one large dashboard. The data driven insights …
Continue reading
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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
  • Formatting capabilities (103)
    8.1
    81%
  • Drill-down analysis (102)
    8.1
    81%
  • Report Delivery Scheduling (101)
    8.0
    80%
  • Customizable dashboards (100)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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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.

7.9
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

8.1
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.3
Avg 8.4

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.

8.1
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

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

8.3
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.3
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

7.5
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 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.

Tableau Public, Tableau Server, and Microsoft Power BI are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics.

Reviewers rate Publish to PDF highest, with a score of 8.7.

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

(580)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 17, 2016

Cognos the Congo!!!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos is being used as an analytical solution for our company’s enterprise product mainly for dashboards based reporting. The analytics product is being used by our large enterprise customers and it is being used mainly by the executive teams of our customers of our enterprise product. This Cognos based analytical solution is used by a specific group of people (10-20) who support, implement, and maintain the cognos based servers which are being bought by customers of our company.
  • Dashboards (built in cognos workspace) - navigation across cognos workspace seems to be seamless compared to other reporting tools available on the market.
  • Report studio - construction of the complex reports and widgets, filters can be achieved with ease. The support of complex expressions places it at the top of the stack [when] compared to Microsoft and Jasper tools.
  • Query Studio - Really puts [one at an ease whenever any end user can easily pull up the data with out even pulling up the actual report. Really helpful for a reporting developer when trying to check the data sanity / consistency and also report testers.
  • Compatability with IE alone puts the product completely down compared to other reporting product lines where they are providing cross platform support. Report Studio cannot be made operational in all the browsers except in IE.
  • BI model is completely controlled from Framework Manager and cannot be exposed to every cognos administrator. Merge of Cognos Framework manager and report studio in a single framework would become a lot more beneficial as editing BI model and construction of new data-sets becomes an ease compared to Jasper soft.
  • Event studio can be embedded into single platform than being separated into multiple layers like report, query, framework, event, work space etc.
  • Licensing model is very expensive for an SMB units to adopt compared to competitive cutting edge tools available in the market like Jasper, Tableau etc.
  • Trouble shooting an issue is a very complex each time we need to log a IBM support (PMR) and an expensive affair.
  • Audits of IBM are pain staking especially while they audit the users in reporting solution to make sure that companies are not misutilizing the licenses bought. Instead every thing has to be automated something like salesforce etc are doing in establishing a simplified model while selling licenses to customers who are SMB's.
IBM Cognos is:

1. A more intuitive solution when some one needs a reporting solution which can run cross platform for Windows based end users compared to any other platform. 2. Best suited for an organization who runs the business on dashboards, monitors data inflow etc. 3. Very well suited for companies who run in a closed loop and tightly coupled processes like banking, telecom, pharma etc.

It is less appropriate on the following grounds: 1. Very less favourable to SMBs where conditions are in Agile nature of change management processes. 2. Browser independence and cross platform compatibility support for all Cognos modules (workspace, report studio, query studio).
  • Jasper Studio and Microsoft SSRS
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 fashion compared to Jasper where displaying full data crashes their editor but query studio can perform better despite being displaying the data in full mode.
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (3)
86.66666666666666%
8.7
Pixel Perfect reports
90%
9.0
Customizable dashboards
100%
10.0
Report Formatting Templates
70%
7.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (4)
47.5%
4.8
Drill-down analysis
70%
7.0
Formatting capabilities
70%
7.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
N/A
N/A
Report sharing and collaboration
50%
5.0
Report Output and Scheduling (3)
80%
8.0
Publish to Web
80%
8.0
Publish to PDF
90%
9.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
70%
7.0
Data Discovery and Visualization
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security (3)
63.33333333333333%
6.3
Multi-User Support (named login)
50%
5.0
Role-Based Security Model
70%
7.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
70%
7.0
Mobile Capabilities
N/A
N/A
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
This is best feature cognos has, where any one can join two disjoint datasets and still present it as a single report which many of the reporting solutions tend to fail. Real time solutions can be constructed with an ease where any custom dataset can be created mapping to real time objects (tables, views etc) connecting to any third party database (SQL, Oracle etc) which is a greatest selling point.
This has become a complex in structure while providing admin privileges, report author privileges, report end user privileges in cognos. It should become more simplified in nature than referring to hundreds of pages of documentation for understanding the security model of cognos.
Server teams - who maintains the servers / cloud which is being deployed with Cognos. Dev team - who develops the BI model - supports them interms of code perspective. Support team - who supports customers who bought the cognos based product. Implementation team - who customizes the BI model based on customers custom requirements/ business needs
Cognos Report Studio Cognos Query studio
  • In house reporting connecting to Salesforce
  • Also it would be beneficial if you are getting the best of reporting solutions like "Tableau", "Jaspersoft" , "Microsoft SSRS" and develop a more intuitive solution for the reporting world at a more affordable cost and very easy to use.
  • Analytical solution for our customers.
  • Dashboard reporting solutions.
No
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
There is an existing analytical product brought by our company in the past where they had the IBM license and later this license was re-used to create a new product.
1. Based on the flexibility of the product. 2. Affordable licensing model/ per user. Instead of paying per user would like it to based on the usage.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
1. Cognos installation 2. Cognos admin configuration
3. Configuring web sites 4. Configuring load balancers 5. Deploying BI model 6. Configuring permissions 7. Configuring customer specific roles and permissions
8. Testing by internal / customer groups
9. Final Sign off - GO-live
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
Managing roles and permissions between the folders, reports, roles created an initial havoc and tensions between the groups. Once the product went live then system was very well adopted by every one.
  • Concurrency of the system - especially cognos occupying a lot of CPU, RAM and with limited set of licensing model provided by IBM initial there are a lot of challenges with in our internal groups on how the product can be scaled up as a finished product to our customers. (Vs Jaspersoft, Vs SSRS)
Cognos is a great dashboarding product but implementation needed some key brains with past experience with Cognos implementations/roll outs.
No
Even though there is a vast knowledge base available for Cognos reports, I think there is a still lot of room for development of documentation in the similar lines of help.sap.com or help.jaspersoft.com
There are certain scenarios where the resolution has been not being offered as a new service pack was available.
No
During a server down issue IBM support provided an exceptional support in resolving the issue.
  • Pulling up simple reports on the report studio based on the existing BI model.
  • Pulling up reports, exporting of the reports vs. Jaspersoft.
  • Pulling up reports data in query studio vs. Jasper soft.
  • Writing complex expressions, generating drill down, navigating between layouts has to be done with complex right clicks and left clicks
  • Navigation is not even easy at all for a new Bee adopting to the system.
No
Development of reports is really complex and should have professional reporting authoring experience in the past for any user to ace the Cognos application.
Robert Goodman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos is a comprehensive reporting tool. It is being used by almost all central offices at Georgetown (HR, Finance, Student, Advancement, etc.). The Report and Query Studio tools are sophisticated and support our talented user base. They provide flexibility and the ability to query the packages in an ad-hoc way. We've also seen some adoption of the Cognos Mobile tools which is really neat. We're working with end-users to make the mobile features more apparent so that they can access data on-the-go.
  • The Report and Query Studio tools are nice for sophisticated power users. This allows power users to query and report on data which has already been modeled.
  • The architecture of the application can be tiered nicely for performance. This allows us to scale the application to support our growing user base.
  • Mobile features are more mature than other comparable products
  • Licensing for Cognos is difficult to understand. It is based upon a proprietary 'PVU' or Processor Value Unit calculation which has been created by IBM. This effectively licenses each server by the number of processing cores.
  • The software licensing is expensive.
  • The product requires very technical staff to maintain and support. This adds greatly to the TCO of IBM Cognos that many overlook.
  • Even with version 10.2.1 - browser compatibility is an issue for Report and Query Studio users. For example, they still don't work in Google Chrome. This causes a lot of confusion.
After upgrading to 10.2.1, I am upgrading my overall rating. We have been pleased with the ability to publish 64-bit packages, IBM added new visualizations, a nice Workspace feature, and several new Excel output options. Plan to budget a 5-7% increase annually to continue to support this tool.
  • IBM Cognos is currently serving approximately 2000 unique logins per month across 18,000 interactive report executions.
  • Access to structured data is more widely available to our audiences
  • Ad-hoc query capability is extended through the use of Cognos Query Studio
  • Ad-hoc report generation is supported through the use of Cognos Report Studio
We will continue to use IBM Cognos to support our student community. In other areas of the university, Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services has become a cost effective alternative. That being said, the Report and Query Studio tools of Cognos still remain superior and will bring business benefit to Georgetown for many years to come.
3500
Student Accounts, Student Records, Financial Aid, Financial Affairs, Human Resources, Advancement - these groups also span multiple campuses (i.e. Main, Medical, Law).
5
Cognos requires a more technical skill set. Our staff that manage this product have extensive backgrounds in supporting Cognos and many have Informatica/data integration skills. In addition to Cognos, they need to have a solid understanding of database platforms (i.e. Oracle 11g, MS SQL 2012) and also have to feel comfortable with writing queries.
  • IBM Cognos drives corporate reporting for the university. Primarily, it serves the Student community by reporting on Ellucian Banner and ODS data.
  • Ability to query structured data in an ad-hoc way via Query Studio
  • Access to data on-the-go with Cognos Mobile
  • Security data at a fine grain across multiple functional areas and multiple campuses
  • I've been pleased with the innovation around dashboards. We're now exploring further uses of the new Workspace functionality.
  • Cognos Mobile adoption will grow very quickly. Cognos Mobile now supports push notifications to the status IOS status bar in the iPad app – users can now be notified when a new version of their report is available, further reducing the latency in decision making on the go.
  • We are also looking at ways to support further data export and integration capability. Cognos 10.2.1 now allows increased spreadsheet maximums to 16,384 columns by 1,048,576 rows. It also adds an Excel output format called Excel 2007 Data which is perfect for lightweight data transfer to Excel without any report formatting.
Yes
Legacy shadow systems were replaced. They were replaced due to security, data governance, scalability, and performance.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
Cognos was chosen due to the fact that it is a market-leading reporting product. Georgetown is a large university with many complexities. We needed an enterprise-level reporting tool that would support our growing need for data and analysis.
The landscape has changed slightly since we implemented Cognos. However, we'd approach the process similarly now and put out and RFP and allow the vendors to bid on the project.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Professional services company
We implemented in partnership with a 3rd party professional services vendor, Entigence, and IBM.
Yes
We implemented Student reports during the first phase of the project. Financials were handled primarily in phase 2.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
Early exposure to the tool is necessary. We have several different environments setup (i.e. DEV, TEST, QA, PROD), so we were able to allow users to get into the lower environments informally for testing and training. We then held formal trainings closer to rollout.
  • Defining data security
  • Data governance
  • Data access requests
The implementation was handled very well. The initial implementation exposed a lot of disagreement between our campuses and departments as to how we define data. This was not entirely unexpected, but I thought that we did a nice job as a team to work through some of these challenges.
  • In-person training
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.
Cognos is highly configurable, but also takes advanced technical skill to do so. The product is highly flexible and highly configurable. The market-leading position demonstrates that other users/companies feel the same.
Spend time on building the right architecture from the beginning. Review your organization's security needs and define an appropriate security hierarchy. Spend time governing this hierarchy and ensure that it doesn't get out of alignment. Create test environments so that you can deploy fix packs and changes to the software prior to rolling them into production.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Yes - we have added extensive custom code
We have added numerous JavaScript snippets to our report prompts. They have allowed us to customize the report prompts to suit the users complex requirements.
Ensure to configure mobile and remember that version 10.2.1 has new visualizations and Excel capability that need to be installed.
Yes
20% of the license price charged annually for subscriptions and software maintenance (S&S).
When pressed, they ultimately get to the right people. However, IBM is still working through the Cognos acquisition. You can easily get lost in the IBM 'sea' that doesn't know much about Cognos. When you get to the right Cognos people, their support is very good. We often find that the difficult PMRs that are submitted are resolved by our Georgetown staff before the issue is properly routed and solved by IBM. This becomes frustrating.
Yes
They are typically good about identifying solutions for product defects. Typically, these are rolled into a fix pack.
We recently had an issue when upgrading from 10.1 to 10.2.1. Many images on our reports were broken, although the images were properly loaded on the server. Cognos support was able to jump in, recommend a solution, and ultimately held a screen sharing session with us to fix the issue.
  • Basic reporting
  • Data exporting
  • Cognos Mobile
  • Report and Query Studio are easy to use, but require training. It would be more difficult to pick up these tools without any prior experience.
Yes
It's a good app - and a bit ahead of the competitors. It integrates nicely with your Cognos credentials and has the capability of saving your content across devices. We utilize Cognos behind a corporate VPN. As a result, we had to teach users how to setup a VPN connection on their mobile devices. That was more challenging than using the Cognos Mobile app!
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.
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.
Cognos' services need to be restarted from time to time, but they are stable and require little maintenance.
In the right architecture, the performance of Cognos is great. We find that our firewalls and VPNs limit the performance, but are a necessary evil.
  • We have integrated data from numerous systems in Cognos
  • Ellucian Banner
  • Ellucian ODS
  • PeopleSoft Financials
  • Workday HCM
  • Sage Milennium
For each data source, we had to setup a corresponding data connection to the database. We typically do this via a service account. We then create a Cognos package which is then setup in each report using that data.
  • Workday Financials
Workday supports data extraction via their API and custom reports. We intend to use these supported methods of data extraction.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
  • ETL tools
As a reporting product, Cognos integrates well with a wide variety of data sources. In version 10.2.1, they added support for MS SQL 2012 which was nice.
Do what is required to meet your business needs. Keep maintenance and upgrades in mind during every integration or customization.
Their sales team is sharp, and sometimes pushy. They are rigid in the way they price their product.
The sales team remains in touch, but they are always after 'the next big sale'. Support staff is adequate, but we often solve the issues prior to their support staff.
IBM has some nice higher education discounts; however, the pricing remains very expensive to comparable products. For renewals, sometimes working through a business partner (such as CDW-G) can yield a better price and assist you to avoid the typical annual 5-7% increase for simply owning the product.
Meet with them in person. Clearly articulate your position and your budget. They'll work with you, but you may need to wait until the end of the month or quarter to properly negotiate.
Yes
The upgrade went fairly smoothly. We upgraded the product from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and also rehauled the underlying architecture. On a few of the packages, the governor limit was reset to zero. We had to manually change this as most of our packages were running with a higher limit. We also had a few issues with images on several reports. It turned out to be an SSL issue as the images were trying to render in HTTP vs. HTTPS. Ensure that you have the SSL certificate applied to each machine in the stack - not just the gateways.
  • Report output is now not stored in the Content Store.
  • 32-bit to 64-bit performance improvements
  • Visualizations
  • Improved Workspace functionality
  • Extended Excel output capability - spreadsheet maximums to 16,384 columns by 1,048,576 rows. Cognos 10.2.1 also brings a brand new Excel output format called Excel 2007 Data which is perfect for lightweight data transfer to Excel without any report formatting.
  • Improved performance
  • Better visualizations
  • Extended Excel output
No
No
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