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IBM Cognos Dashboard vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

IBM Cognos Dashboard
Ranking in Data Visualization
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Visual Analytics
Ranking in Data Visualization
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos Dashboard is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Visual Analytics is 2.1%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAS Visual Analytics2.1%
IBM Cognos Dashboard1.2%
Other96.7%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

SM
Freelancer at 0
A tool that helps create creative dashboards while offering high performance and stability
For reporting and data visualization, the tool is mainly used based on the data dimensions, which are stored in the data warehouse since it is where IBM Cognos Dashboard is used to bind the data and visualize the reports. The integration with our company's business intelligence workflows is based on the existing connectors that IBM Cognos Dashboard has. I am not aware because I do not manage that in the application, but what I see is that it is mainly through the connectors that the tool is connected to the data warehouse. The editor in IBM Cognos Dashboard is the most beneficial for creating an interactive dashboard. The dashboard customization and the flexibility in the IBM Cognos Dashboard enhance data analysis since it has a graphical builder that is quite user-friendly for creating different dimensions. I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it. The tool is effective when it comes to integration with other data sources because it has the connectors to connect to different data sources. The real-time data refresh in Cognos impacted my decision-making since the tool ensures more business benefits in areas around all the financial reporting or marketing trends of the users or customers, including the billing analytics to know what the RPU or to know the areas that can help in the marketing decisions while being able to create new portfolios or new products for the market. The tool is mainly for marketing and financial reporting. I rate the overall tool a ten out of ten.
AN
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
Enables effective data management and reporting with a straightforward setup
SAS Visual Analytics is helpful as it allows us to perform any queries we need. The ability to query information from our Excel data into SAS to view specific data is invaluable. In terms of reporting, it is easy to extract quick reports and provides graphical representations of the data, which is a great feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main feature that is useful is the on-demand report generation through the dashboard."
"The product helps us update the KPI automatically."
"The tool's valuable features are that it is easy to use and stable."
"It is a pretty stable solution."
"The product is stable, reliable, and scalable."
"The alert generation feature also helps in sending out ad hoc messages to the business users if business thresholds have been crossed."
"I use Visual Analytics for enterprise reporting."
"I like SAS Visual Analytics for its ability to provide an initial understanding of data through exploration, even before deep analytics."
"The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps with quality assurance processes."
"I believe that the possibilities for exploring data and formulating visual results are quite good because it allows the business analyst to have different perspectives on the data."
"Data handling is one of the best features of SAS Visual Analytics."
"It's a stable, reliable product."
 

Cons

"Visualization is an area where the product lacks."
"The price point is one of the major areas to be improved."
"The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"They should include proper documentation to learn more about the product."
"There is room for improvement in anti-money laundering prevention and operation monitoring, as well as operation monitoring surveillance."
"There are scalability issues. It depends on the data volume and number of end-users. VA requires a lot of hardware resources to move volumes of data."
"SAS Visual Analytics could be more user-friendly."
"The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."
"Better connectivity with other data origins, better visualization, and the ability to create KPIs directly would all help."
"There are a few little things that are predefined and can be done out of the box immediately. There is no business intelligence application that is predefined, which is something some customers or prospects would love to have. Small and mid-sized companies would struggle with it because they prefer something standard that has been predefined by somebody else."
"The visualization should be better in SAS Visual Analytics. It is easy to use but when compared to other solutions it is lacking and the support is not very good."
"I haven't come across any missing features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive for small businesses compared to other vendors."
"Licensing is based on individual usage, and it is more expensive than other providers."
"$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
"The product is quite expensive."
"Licensing is simple."
"The product is expensive."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
"Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos Dashboard?
The tool is good enough to serve the purpose of what it is meant in our company. The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are req...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cognos Dashboard?
In my company, the solution is mainly used for business reporting where the organization or the business team, especially the marketing department, or even data scientists can actually draw reports...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?
It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.
What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?
In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI. It may be that our current subscription does not include AI-enabled features, but I wo...
What is your primary use case for SAS Visual Analytics?
I started to work with SAS Visual Analytics ( /products/sas-visual-analytics-reviews ) in 2015. We use it for analysis on ICT expenditure information and ICT personnel information. The analytics ar...
 

Also Known As

Cognos Dashboard
SAS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos Dashboard vs. SAS Visual Analytics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.