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CA Deliver vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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

CA Deliver
Ranking in Reporting
41st
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Cognos
Ranking in Reporting
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of CA Deliver is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.5%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

it_user837525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us one repository for various output formats and retention periods
A common theme with all CA products is they state compatibility with new technologies when it has not yet been proven. Much like other technology companies that have fallen into this trap, let feature and compatibly releases be controlled by the technical group, instead of the marketing and/or management people. I cite the example that CA mainframe products were deemed to be compatible with Extended Address Volumes (EAV) - larger sized disk volumes - when they were not. I have been doing this for 37 years and see it all too often, sometimes to the detriment of the company itself (Storage Technology Corp. and its Iceberg array comes to mind).
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

"Flexibility of report configuration; allows for quick and simple amendments to definitions."
"Having one repository for various output formats and retention periods. Provides the flexibility to establish hundreds of different retention entries, based upon business need, and then group the like retention period outputs together on the same media. It is very efficient."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"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."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
 

Cons

"A common theme with all CA products is they state compatibility with new technologies when it has not yet been proven. I cite the example that CA mainframe products were deemed to be compatible with Extended Address Volumes (EAV) - larger sized disk volumes - when they were not."
"Needs ability to allow export to xls/pdf, etc. (Note: this is available in add-on product CA – OM Web Viewer)."
"I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Pricing is reasonable, licensing model suitable for large enterprises."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"Pricing should be improved."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"The solution is affordable."
"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 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."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
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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
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ERGO
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 CA Deliver vs. IBM Cognos and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.