IBM Cognos vs Meraki Location Analytics comparison

IBM and Cisco are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. IBM is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.6, while Cisco is ranked #24 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 1.3% mindshare in BIT, compared to Cisco’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 140 IBM Cognos reviews

6,332 Views
3,419 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Meraki Location Analytics

Read 6 Meraki Location Analytics reviews

993 Views
894 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

Meraki Location Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

IBM Cognos and Meraki Location Analytics compete in data analysis and location-based services. Meraki Location Analytics has the upper hand in location-based insights, while IBM Cognos is superior in reporting and analytics capabilities.

Features: IBM Cognos offers advanced data analytics, robust reporting capabilities, and strong data integration options. Meraki Location Analytics provides impactful location-based insights, real-time data visualization tools, and effective space optimization solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cognos requires complex deployment, often needing dedicated IT resources, which can be a challenge for smaller organizations. In contrast, Meraki Location Analytics features an easy-to-deploy cloud-based model, allowing quick implementation. Its customer service is known for being fast and reliable due to comprehensive cloud integration.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Cognos involves higher initial setup costs, leading to a longer ROI period, though its features may justify the cost for larger enterprises. Meraki Location Analytics offers a cost-effective setup, with a shorter ROI timeline, beneficial for businesses focusing on location-based strategies.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Meraki Location Analytics Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Meraki Location Analytics

March 2026

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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 BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

140

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (3rd)

Meraki Location Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

24th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki Location Analytics is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM Cognos	1.3%
Meraki Location Analytics	0.9%
Other	97.8%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Rawen Lawrence

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.

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Richard Bradley

Senior Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Locating equipment within facilities is now straightforward and efficient

We mainly use Meraki Location Analytics to locate equipment within our manufacturing facilities. We're not a public-facing organization, so our use case involves finding devices like printers or scanners that need maintenance The best aspect of Meraki Location Analytics is its ease of use.…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable, and it is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."

"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."

"Cognos provides a multitude of reporting options and I love working with it."

"We get to create customized solutions for many users, and in our organization, we reach 40% of the employees with information from the data warehouse."

"Technical support is very good."

"We were able to save in excess of $650k per year using reports created through Cognos BI."

"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."

"Very powerful toolset with many products and options."

More IBM Cognos pros

"Technical support has always been very good."

"The pricing and licensing for Meraki are good, and I would rate it as a nine out of ten."

"The initial setup process is easy."

"The stability of the solution is excellent, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"I like Location Analytics' geofencing features for devices. You can manage thousands of devices with just a push of a button and deploy applications in seconds. For example, in schools, you can deploy an app update for thousands of iPads in just two clicks."

"I use Location Analytics to identify rogue hotspots and find the last location of missing devices."

"In general, it is helpful because it allows administrators to see where the Wi-Fi and network services are being most used."

More Meraki Location Analytics pros

Cons

"Some of its components are not very stable (for instance the lookups)."

"No scalability issues, but the data retrieval times of live data can be horrible."

"Metadata documentation could be improved. While IBM Cognos tools allow you to document most aspects of the metadata layer, the way this information is stored and exposed for metadata management is too basic."

"It's hard to change built-in options."

"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."

"Need to integrate Data Discovery capabilities"

"It could have more options for themes."

"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."

More IBM Cognos cons

"There are no specific areas for improvement as everything is working very well."

"My biggest complaint with Meraki Location Analytics is the lack of visibility into the back end. Everything we do is through a customer GUI, and there's limited access to CLI functions."

"The technical support before implementation could be better for premium partners."

"I would like to see all of the features included in a single package."

"The pricing is a pain point for us. It's a bit expensive."

"I would like to see all of the features included in a single package."

"The technical support before implementation could be better for premium partners."

"The biggest issue is negotiating the price with a client."

More Meraki Location Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"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."

"It is pretty expensive."

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The product is less expensive compared to other vendors for gold partners."

"They have different tiers of pricing including one-year, three-year, five-year, seven-year, and ten-year."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Insurance Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

18%

Insurance Company

16%

Retailer

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	92

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

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...

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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.

See all answers

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki Location Analytics?

The pricing for Meraki Location Analytics is comparable to other solutions in the market. When we moved to Meraki Location Analytics, we benefited from not needing to buy outdoor-rated AP enclosure...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Meraki Location Analytics?

My biggest complaint with Meraki Location Analytics ( /categories/location-intelligence-platforms ) is the lack of visibility into the back end. Everything we do is through a customer GUI, and ther...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Meraki Location Analytics?

We mainly use Meraki Location Analytics ( /products/meraki-location-analytics-reviews ) to locate equipment within our manufacturing facilities. We're not a public-facing organization, so our use c...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 11% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

SQL Server vs IBM Cognos

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 27% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 18% of the time

Oracle Analytics Cloud vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 14% of the time

JReport vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 13% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 13% of the time

More Meraki Location Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

March 2026

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Meraki Location Analytics

March 2026

Download Meraki Location Analytics product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

IBM

Cisco Meraki's location analytics and engagement solution displays real-time location statistics to improve customer engagement and loyalty across sites. Data collected by intelligent Meraki APs is synced with the Meraki cloud, automatically reported in the dashboard, and exported to third-party applications via the Cisco Meraki Location Analytics API.

Cisco

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.

Ladbrokes, Neinver, Westwind School Division, The Salvation Army, Queensland Airports Limited

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Meraki Location Analytics

March 2026

Free Report: IBM Cognos vs. Meraki Location Analytics

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