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AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
42nd
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (5th), Data Governance (36th), BI on Hadoop (6th)
IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.2%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…
AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
 

Cons

"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"The solution's support could be better."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is pretty expensive."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"It is averagely priced."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
24%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
 

Also Known As

AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.