No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Cognos vs Longview Analytics comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

IBM Cognos
Ranking in Reporting
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
140
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (12th)
Longview Analytics
Ranking in Reporting
31st
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (18th), Financial Close Software (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 2.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Longview Analytics is 1.3%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos2.9%
Longview Analytics1.3%
Other95.8%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user221853 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead Onsite at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The database setup is a pain initially, but once it's done everything works fine.
The ability to report multi-dimensionally and the scalability This tool is mainly used for forecasting, and it will, for sure, help all the organizations that need data/reports on expenses and headcount forecasting. This could be made more developer friendly, and could include the ability to…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Framework Manager is the best Metadata Modeling Tool and also Report Studio."
"This is a best-in-class reporting platform."
"The entire process can be created in the IBM tool from source, to reporting, to administration."
"It's a stable solution; it's very strong, and with Software Assessment Services you can forget about the infrastructure because the servers and everything related to deployment are easy on the IBM Cloud, so you can focus your attention on using it instead of the technical side of things."
"The upgraded visualizations and more user-friendly interface have increased the acceptance rate of this tool."
"The abilities are so wide and amazing that a lot of times people take a solution which is not the best, because they do what they know and they don't think, "Hey, I can do something much better.""
"Quality of data, flexibility and the performance of the tool(s) are the critical aspects of BI."
"Very powerful toolset with many products and options."
"This product offers a wide range of corporate performance management tools for powerful financial consolidation, planning and reporting."
"This tool is mainly used for forecasting, and it will, for sure, help all the organizations that need data/reports on expenses and headcount forecasting."
"Well certainly this product has helped many finance users in the organization as this product enables them to see the numbers for any cost center and business unit and also get a consolidated view of group level numbers."
"Khalix is a simple tool that builds on existing data sources to develop solutions in forecasting, planning and consolidation needs."
 

Cons

"The Cognos Suite needs improvement in a number of areas."
"Big data support came very late into Cognos and the product is too costly, I would say."
"IBM Cognos has been working on data discovery-related features, visualizations, and speed of interaction with the end-user, but they are not yet on par with other vendors who are leaders in data discovery."
"Customer Service: 6/10 as they usually get back quickly but rarely have a solution."
"It definitely needs better data visualization."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"This is an easy one: visualizations. While being able to use them to provide client-side filtering in Active reports is great, they are so far behind the functionality offered in the basic Cognos charts, it is almost laughable that they even offer them in the product."
"Cognos can improve in some database basic connections (should be easier), mainly migrations in version 7.x to 8.x 10.x."
"If you compare it with Oracle then Longview isn't that user friendly."
"The initial set up was complex and painful, both with respect to database setup and the execution script."
"The original cost is set to use enterprise wide but the users growth is too slow to justify the cost. That's one of the reasons we stopped using this tool."
"Web based reporting can have better user interface and functions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"The solution is affordable."
"Pricing should be improved."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
13%
Insurance Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise92
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
Regarding improvements for IBM Cognos, I think nothing yet about functionality, but I find the costs to be quite high for the enterprise system. However, since we need it, we continue to renew our ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cognos?
My main use case for IBM Cognos at my place of work is primarily for business intelligence (BI), mostly for serving, and we appreciate it because it covers the full BI stack, including dashboards, ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
arcplan, Longview Close, Longview CPM, Longview Tax
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
ADAC, Acuity Brands, Akzo Nobel, Allegheny Energy, Allianz, AluNorf, Amcor, BASF, Banco Central de Chile, Baerlocher, Bauhaus, Bayer, BMW Financial Services, BNI, Bosch, Bristol-Myers Squibb, B/S/H/, Charmer Sunbelt, China Cargo Airlines, City of Edmonton, Commerzbank, Dachser, Daimler, Darling Ingredients, Deichmann, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, DFS, EnBW, Faber Castell, FPT, Fraport, Fritz Egger, Guohua Wind Power, Griesson - de Beukelaer, GS Retail, GT Solar, Hailo, Haniel, HCA, H.C. Starck, H-E-B, Hella, Henkel, Hermes Fulfilment, Hitachi, HORIBA, Hunan Tobacco, Hyundai, Iberia, Intersport, Kaiser + Kraft, KDVZ Frechen, Knorr-Bremse, Lanxess, Leifheit, LG Electronics, Liberty Mutual, Lowe´s, Lufthansa, Lupin, Martin Marietta, Media-Saturn, MetLife, Merck, Migros, NKD, Nobilia, Nokia, Novartis, OBI, Oman Oilfields, Ottobock, Petco, Philip Morris, PSCU, Reitan, Robert Bosch, Roche, RWE, Samsung Electronics, Scripps Health, Siemens, Sinopec Shandong, SMS Group, Sodexo, Southwest Airlines, Stadtwerke Bremen, Swiss Post, Takeda, Telefonica, ThyssenKrupp, TNT Express, TrustX, Turner Broadcasting, T¾V Rheinland, UBS, Veolia Water, Vigor, Vodafone, Voestalpine, Wacker, Waste Management, Wegmans, Wirtgen, World Economic Forum, Yunnan Tobacco, ZFV
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Longview Analytics and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.