Item: IBM Cognos Analytics
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

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.

Data Integration

10

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.

Collaboration and Sharing

6

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.

Other Software Used

Jaspersoft, Microsoft SQL Server

Likelihood to Recommend

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).

Users and Roles

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

Support Headcount Required

Cognos Report Studio
Cognos Query studio

Future Planned Uses

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.

Business Processes Supported

Analytical solution for our customers.

Innovative Uses

Dashboard reporting solutions.

Products Replaced

No

Key Differentiators

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.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

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.

Implementation Rating

7

Cognos is a great dashboarding product but implementation needed some key brains with past experience with Cognos implementations/roll outs.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

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 Lessons

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.

Implementation Issues

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)

Support Rating

7

There are certain scenarios where the resolution has been not being offered as a new service pack was available.

IBM Cognos Analytics Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team Support cares about my success	Escalation required

Pros	Cons
Well integrated	Unnecessarily complex Requires technical support Cumbersome Lots to learn

Easy Tasks

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.

Difficult Tasks

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.

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

No

Cognos the Congo!!!

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cognos