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Dremio 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Dremio reduces manpower costs, enhances efficiency, and eliminates infrastructure concerns, improving operations by accessing multiple data sources.
Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Cognos enhances productivity and decision-making, with significant savings, improved reporting, and ROI depending on implementation.
Dremio surely saves time, reduces costs, and all those things because we don't have to worry so much about the infrastructure to make the different tools communicate.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
I have seen a return on investment through improved decision making, as automated distribution and uptime, along with scheduled report delivery and bursting, have eliminated various manual emailing and delays, thereby saving time and cost.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Management can now drill down and view executive summaries for new products and fraud analytics quickly, resulting in less red tape during the decision-making process.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have seen a return on investment with significant time savings in report distribution through automation, ease of administration, and savings by keeping things secured.
Digital Marketing Manager at AT&T
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.2
Dremio's customer service is responsive and helpful, facing staffing challenges as demand grows, requiring more integrators for support.
Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support receives mixed reviews, with praise for resources but concerns over costs and response times.
We have had to reach out for customer support many times, and they respond, so they are pretty supportive about some long-term issues.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The customer support has been proactive, solution-oriented, and helpful whenever I have needed to reach out.
Senior Project Manager at BD
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Dremio scales well, offering flexibility and built-in capabilities, though community users face scaling limits due to licensing.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Cognos scales efficiently, handling large data volumes and integrating seamlessly, meeting medium to large enterprise needs.
Dremio's scalability can handle growing data and user demands easily.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
Internally, if it's on Docker or Kubernetes, scalability will be built into the system.
Senior Software Architect at USEReady
I would say it is very scalable because it has continued to handle my organization's growth perfectly.
Digital Marketing Manager at AT&T
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
IBM Cognos' scalability is very effective because it can handle a large volume of data effectively and fast.
Product Manager at PwC
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Dremio is generally stable, scoring high ratings with occasional performance issues, especially with large datasets, requiring maintenance restarts.
Sentiment score
7.3
IBM Cognos is stable and reliable, with minimal issues, especially when maintained well with updates and optimizations.
I rate Dremio a nine in terms of stability.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
In my experience, IBM Cognos is stable, as I have not experienced any downtime or lagging issues.
Senior Project Manager at BD
 

Room For Improvement

Dremio struggles with Delta connector support, performance issues, SQL limitations, high costs, and fewer connectors than competitors.
IBM Cognos needs a more intuitive interface, improved visualizations, and better integration for competitiveness against Tableau and Power BI.
Starburst comes with around 50 connectors now.
Senior Software Architect at USEReady
It should be easier to get Arctic or an open-source version of Arctic onto the software version so that development teams can experiment with it.
Senior Consultant - Data Analytics at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
I see that many times the new versions of Dremio have not fixed old bugs, and in some new versions, old problems that were previously fixed come back again, so I think the upgrade part could use improvement.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing its limited real-time data connectivity, as well as enhancing the endpoint experience and mobility, which currently is not satisfactory due to limited data blending.
Senior Project Manager at BD
IBM Cognos could improve by introducing different role types, such as viewer roles, user roles, and admin roles, along with assigning minor modules to specific individuals.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing limited real-time data connectivity.
Digital Marketing Manager at AT&T
 

Setup Cost

Dremio's pricing, though costly for scaling, is seen as valuable compared to competitors, requiring careful evaluation based on needs.
IBM Cognos offers versatile yet expensive pricing, justified by features and scalability, suitable for medium to large enterprises.
Our central team negotiated a different price because multiple teams within our organization use IBM Cognos, bringing the price down to around $10 to $11 per user per month.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive, as the price is relatively competitive and affordable.
Senior Project Manager at BD
 

Valuable Features

Dremio offers efficient data management and visualization with seamless integration, native SQL, and role-based access control features.
IBM Cognos excels in reporting, dashboards, data integration, AI insights, user-friendly interface, scalability, and comprehensive business intelligence.
Having everything under one system and an easier-to-work-with interface, along with having API integrations, adds significant value to working with Dremio.
Senior Consultant - Data Analytics at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Dremio has positively impacted my organization as nowadays we are connected to multiple databases from multiple environments, multiple APIs, and applications, and Dremio organizes everything in an amazing way for me.
Data Analyst at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
You just get the source, connect the data, get visualization, get connected, and do whatever you want.
Senior Software Architect at USEReady
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Our dedicated cybersecurity team ensures that sensitive data does not become public, making it crucial that data stored in IBM Cognos remains secure throughout the entire data cycle, which is where these enterprise-grade security measures prove invaluable.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Dremio
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (10th)
IBM Cognos
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
141
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Reporting (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Dremio is designed for Data Science Platforms and holds a mindshare of 2.3%, down 4.3% compared to last year.
IBM Cognos, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.3% mindshare, down 3.6% since last year.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dremio2.3%
Databricks8.3%
Dataiku5.9%
Other83.5%
Data Science Platforms
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
Microsoft Power BI8.1%
Tableau Enterprise6.0%
Other84.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Corrr Moray - PeerSpot reviewer
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
Has simplified complex data integration workflows and supported consistent reporting across multiple sources
We also have a close relationship with the team that does the Dremio maintenance for the database, like upgrading the versions and they know about some specific problems we had in the past, such as a memory leak. We had a memory leak on some versions, which sometimes stopped the service. Since we are using Dremio installed like a server, not a SaaS solution, many times we need to stop and restart the service to clear all the cache and all that, and this is the thing I should add. I see that many times the new versions of Dremio have not fixed old bugs, and in some new versions, old problems that were previously fixed come back again, so I think the upgrade part could use improvement. I remember using some features in the past, like pivot tables, which proved to be really difficult, but I know this is a fault also for other vendors. Pivoting, transposing, and unpivoting are often not so good. CTEs also many times prove to be not so good, so I think these two main items could be improved significantly if they standardize them.
RL
Senior Project Manager at BD
Data insights have transformed reporting speed and support faster, informed decisions
IBM Cognos makes it simple to create visually appealing products, and we are able to run about 1,000 reports on a daily basis while another 1,000 are run through the scheduler built into IBM Cognos Analytics. It offers triggering through the scheduler, which we use to confirm the completion of other processes needed to be available before the job is scheduled to run, allowing us to make data-driven decisions easily. Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis. We are able to use the drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualizations. Additionally, I find the AI-powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input to be very useful for a non-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheets data to get a quick answer. Building insights for accurate decision-making has been great. Moreover, we can package reports with data-backed insights for stakeholders in PDF and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting, and strategic recommendations on relevant tasks. Of all those features, the visual graphs, predictive analytics, and data cleansing feature makes the biggest difference for my team. IBM Cognos is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud setup with Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.
report
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dremio?
I don't have information about pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dremio, so I am not entitled to discuss it.
What needs improvement with Dremio?
I wouldn't say there is anything Dremio can be improved on. If I could change something, I would say many developers and programmers, when they are starting to work in this specific field or area, ...
What is your primary use case for Dremio?
I have been using Dremio for a year and a half. My main use case for Dremio is that I am able to access multiple databases and I can easily and quickly connect Dremio with my dashboards. In my rece...
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?
One area where IBM Cognos can be improved is that customer service sometimes is not very responsive, and I would love to see the user interface improved, especially to look somehow updated. In addi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Dremio AWS - BYOL
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UBS, TransUnion, Quantium, Daimler, OVH
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 Databricks, Dataiku, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Data Science Platforms. Updated: March 2026.
886,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.