IBM Cognos Analytics, in my opinion, legacy leader modern laggard
Primarily used for Dashboard and Report development with some level of self service capabilities.
Starting at $10 per month per user
View PricingOverview
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.
Recent Reviews
How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors
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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
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
Product Demos
IBM Cognos Analytics Product Tour
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Features
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Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- 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
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
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).
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(579)Attribute Ratings
- 9.7Likelihood to Renew
- 8.6Availability
- 9Performance
- 8Usability
- 10Support Rating
- 8Online Training
- 8.7In-Person Training
- 7Implementation Rating
- 8Configurability
- 8.3Product Scalability
- 7.3Ease of integration
- 7Vendor pre-sale
- 7Vendor post-sale
- 2.5Data Visualization
- 8.3Data Sources
- 8.6Data Sharing and Collaboration
- 8.7IBM Cognos Reporting 4.14.21
- 8.3IBM Cognos Data Modeling 4.14.21
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 16, 2016
IBM Cognos
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos offers numerous tools called studios which help meet different business information needs and challenges. We use this for one of our customers. The dashboard built on report studio provides a one eye snap to the performance of departments of different business unit and active reports help mobile users to look at the performance as desired on the go. The cubes provides multi-dimensional analysis to make a faster decision and shorten decision making life cycle.
- Active report dashboard for Tablets and Cell Phones
- Multi-Dimension Cubes
- Metric Studio Models to analyse and monitor the metrics across organization
- Drill from Totals in Analysis Studio
Business Object, Pentaho, Tableau
- Decreases in turn around in almost all the departments
- Financial Performance improvement
March 16, 2015
Meghdeep
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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.
- Single version of truth. We have centralized all reporting to one tool.
300
Energy Marketing, C-store, Terminal & Refining.
1
- Market Basket Analysis.
- Email canned reports.
- Single version of truth.
Six years back we switched from Microstrategy to Cognos.
- Implemented in-house
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
IBM documents are good to learn all by yourself.
No
In last 6 years, we have used limited support.
- Various .Net based applications.
- SAP ECC 6.0.
Integration with .NET applications works well. Integration with the transaction SAP ERP systems also works pretty well, but integration with the SAP Business Warehouse is a different matter. We tried twice to integrate with the BW and failed each time. We have now abandoned that effort as it was a waste of time and money.
- Amazon cloud.
We negotiated CPU based licensing instead of core based.
February 25, 2015
An Analytics Consultant's Perspective
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Dynamic Query Mode with a large number of Relational and OLAP database compatibility such as Oracle and Essbase, Microsoft SQL Server and Analysis Services, SAP BW, IBM DB2, Teradata, etc. makes for efficient backend queries no matter if the front end metadata is relational or multidimensional.
- Compatibility mode queries allow for custom ODBC and JDBC connection to made, so even if there is no native compatibility other databases can still be used as a source if needed.
- Dynamic Cubes are capable of querying against millions of rows in seconds when properly set up with sufficient hardware resources.
- Standard Reports are snappy, returning data and rendering quickly, as long as the pagination is kept to reasonable quantities.
- Active reports can be run offline and incorporate animation and dynamic filters. Keep in mind that the data doesn't refresh until the report is retrieved from the server again.
- Great interoperability between the different studios in the suite. Something made in Analysis or Query Studio can be converted to Report Studio easily. Workspace Advanced natively creates and opens Report Studio reports as well.
- Report Studio can convert a regular report into an active report. The reverse is not possible though.
- Workspace can take in individual charts or whole reports from other tools as widgets and even customize them for the specific dashboard being built.
- End users can make their own copies of a pre-built dashboard and adjust things such as changing conditional color labels or adding new calculated members.
- Interoperability with other IBM Cognos tools allows TM1 and SPSS to be used as data sources for reports, as well as directly used as widgets in Workspace dashboards.
- Centralized content store allows the different desktop tools to use the same logins and access the same shared resources as the server, such as data sources.
- Framework Manager is a very powerful tool that can create both dimensional and relational models simultaneously from the same underlying database.
- Framework Manager can work on any database design, it does not have to be a Kimball star schema.
- Framework Manager has built in tools for validating a model without having to do a complete publish
- Security for roles, users, etc. can be built directly into the model without any need for extra programming
- Framework Manager is a visual tool, and only requires rudimentary SQL knowledge to use effectively.
- Localization is supported natively and can be added to any model.
- Dynamic Query Manager can automatically create aggregation for Dynamic Cubes to optimize runtime.
- Reporting Bursting can be set up to send prefiltered reports via mail or some other means on regular intervals or when triggered by certain events, such as a particular number being too low.
- Administration for Multi-tenanted environments is built directly into Cognos
- Connecting multiple LDAP and AD systems simultaneously is supported, allowing users to use their normal company usernames and passwords
- Mobile support add on allows standard and Active reports to be displayed with a mobile device friendly interface automatically without requiring creating a separate version.
- Cognos Mashup Service can be used to embed reports in outside applications or provide data for external visualizations and tools.
- All tool interfaces are designed with the standard IBM patterns, so users already familiar with other IBM tools should be able to pick it up quickly..
- The server can run in most typical server environments such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc.
- Clustering across multiple machines is supported.
- Real Time Monitoring add on allows for visualization of up to the second data feeds.
- Drill down/up can be automatically implemented on reports using a Dimensional data model
- Drill through definitions can be set up to allow users to find related reports and automatically open them on the highlighted data.
- Reports and models made for the more lightweight Cognos Express can be fully utilized by the full Cognos server if upgraded later.
- Cognos Insight can be deployed via the server and individual Insight dashboards can be stored on the server. Insight may even be included as part of the particular licenses purchased.
- Initial setup isn't as simple as running the installer and turning it on. Adjustments to the server setup may be necessary before it is up and running.
- Browser support can be touchy. Compatibility is best with Internet Explorer, but certain browser setting changes can cause issues. Other browsers' compatibility can be questionable due to their significantly more regular updates.
- The technology that allows active reports to be packaged into .mht files is a proprietary Microsoft format, so other browsers cannot natively open them. There are 3rd party extensions for firefox and chrome.
- Standard reports are rather flat and bland to look at to keep them efficient and clear. It makes it hard to really "Wow" someone when presenting it compared to other products.
- Due to Active Reports packaging all of the data in the file and prerendering charts, file size can get quite large (easily several megabytes) and the initial load time can be quite long when opening it. It is best used for basic overviews and other times when some "flash" is needed, but not a large amount of data.
- Configuring the interoperability with TM1 and SPSS is a little more on the technical side than most other tasks.
- You could call the development process "Front heavy" meaning most of the development will be modeling. This means that it will take longer to end up with visualized data than other tools.
- It works best with actual databases, and not so well with csv or other file formats. Using an ODBC or JDBC driver can be used to treat files like databases, but native support is rather limited.
- The desktop tools such as Framework Manager that are part of the suite are all built for 32-bit windows only, despite the availability of 64-bit and other operating systems for the actual server.
- Using external ODBC drivers can be done with 32-bit drivers only.
- Because of the way Cognos installs on a system, trying to keep a sandbox environment on a developer's personal machine isn't feasible.
- Dynamic Cubes are very hardware intensive, so when dealing with large data sets (millions of rows and up) the amount of memory and resources that need to be dedicated to a single cube to keep the query time within seconds can get high (possibly hundreds of GB of memory).
- SpagoBI
- Qlikview
- Tableau
- Completeness of tool's capabilities
- End-user ease of use
- Development ease across a wide variety of scenarios
- Quality of support for both us and client
- Cost effectiveness for its capabilities
N/A
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93.33333333333334%
9.3
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4
Professional Services, Management, Finance
0
Our team of analytics consultants essentially share the load of maintaining any non-personal Cognos configurations. No one is dedicated specifically to it.
- Reporting
- Visualization
- Data Exploration
- Dashboarding
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
We have demo VMs provided by Avnet, our partner.
- Online training
- Self-taught
Coming in completely as a blank slate is very difficult with this suite, and the training classes are invaluable for getting over the initially steep difficulty curve. People familiar with the UI designs that IBM products all tend to employ and already have an understanding of the design methodologies in this field should be able to tackle this suite without much difficulty just by using the online manuals and the occasional tutorial from around the web.
Pricing is generally based on the number and type of users. Licensing is a one time fee, never expires, and includes any minor releases. Upgrading to another major release eventually will require the purchasing of new licenses (such as 8 to 10), but there are no requirements to upgrade. This causes the overall price to generally be more affordable than something like a yearly subscription model. There are other less common pricing plans such as per CPU available.
IBM offers a 0% APR loan to qualified businesses that allows it be paid out in monthly installments over the course of a year. Any work bought as part of the Cognos licensing can also be put under the loan. Individual resellers may offer their own loans or payment plans as well.
OEM pricing is more flexible and can be tailored more towards the pricing models of the system that Cognos is intended to be embedded in.
IBM offers a 0% APR loan to qualified businesses that allows it be paid out in monthly installments over the course of a year. Any work bought as part of the Cognos licensing can also be put under the loan. Individual resellers may offer their own loans or payment plans as well.
OEM pricing is more flexible and can be tailored more towards the pricing models of the system that Cognos is intended to be embedded in.
December 04, 2014
Cognos
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Mobile Capabilities: Cognos 10 Mobile supports multiple mobile platforms - iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry. The mobile platform is able to filter and report data based on GPS coordinates.
- Integrated Search: Both report content and metadata are searchable and this capability is included in the toolset, and available at no additional cost, in version 10.
- External Data: Data from external sources can be imported, combined with warehouse data, and used in reports without saving the external data in the warehouse.
- Offline Reports: Active Reports allows users to save interactive dashboards that can be viewed offline. Disconnected use of complex reports is a feature many large organizations ask for.
- Microsoft Excel Compatibility: Cognos Analysis allows end users to pull in and analyze data into Excel which may then be imported back into standard Cognos reports and dashboards. What’s more, reports and analysis can be directly pulled into other Microsoft Office products such as Word and PowerPoint.
- Limited options for charts, graphs and other visualizations.
Business Information Management
12
- Used extensively for enterprise reporting.
- Executive KPI dashboards.
- Implemented in-house
- Professional services company
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
Yes I found it intuitive.
Yes
Reporting is a mission-critical function that requires a high level of support.
- Internal Website.
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.
- 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
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
- In-person training
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).
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 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
Do what is required to meet your business needs. Keep maintenance and upgrades in mind during every integration or customization.
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