IBM Cognos vs Meraki Location Analytics comparison

IBM and Cisco are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.5, while Cisco is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 1.4% mindshare in BIT, compared to Cisco’s 0.8% 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

10,967 Views
6,471 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Meraki Location Analytics

Read 6 Meraki Location Analytics reviews

1,797 Views
1,635 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: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Meraki Location Analytics

August 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

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

140

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (6th)

Meraki Location Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

27th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.4%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki Location Analytics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM Cognos	1.4%
Meraki Location Analytics	0.8%
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

"Moving away from a manual, Excel-based consolidation to a largely automated one has enabled us to reduce our reporting timelines."

"The icons and jobstreams provide a lot of structure, and are a lot easier to read and interpret than large scripts which can be hundreds of pages long."

"We have found this software to be insightful in finding and defining true performance of products and services."

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."

"Cognos gives a consistent single source answer for many users to retrieve easily."

"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."

"It provides scalability, reliability, security, and performance for large scale organizations."

"Allowed the organizations I've worked for to standardize the information they deliver to hundreds of decision makers."

More IBM Cognos pros

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

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

"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."

"If you can afford this solution, it's worth every dime in terms of what you get out of it."

"The initial setup process is easy."

"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."

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

Cons

"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."

"Vendor technical support could be improved. It used to be really great, however, it seems like the focus now is on newer development and the support may not be that good for the more difficult issues."

"Customer Service: It's poor. Technical Support: It's fair."

"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."

"Complex to learn and use. Need technical team to build solutions."

"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."

"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."

"Almost all the time, we have a problem with Cognos stability and even our maintenance vendor can’t do anything to resolve it."

More IBM Cognos cons

"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. That's the most complicated part, but the product is worth it."

"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."

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"It is averagely priced."

"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The solution is affordable."

"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."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"Pricing should be improved."

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

13%

Insurance Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

24%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	37
Midsize Enterprise	24
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 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 ...

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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, ...

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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...

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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...

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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 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Cognos

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

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Microsoft Power BI vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 15% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

JReport vs Meraki Location Analytics

Compared 6% of the time

More Meraki Location Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

August 2026

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Meraki Location Analytics

August 2026

Download Meraki Location Analytics product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

Overview

IBM Cognos provides a powerful toolset with AI-driven data exploration and robust reporting for efficient data-driven decisions. It supports seamless data integration and user-friendly dashboards for flexible report creation.

IBM Cognos enables organizations to leverage AI-enhanced analytics, integrating data from multiple sources to create comprehensive business insights. It supports complex report creation, dashboards, and predictive capabilities, enhancing decision-making through customizable reports and connectivity with multiple databases. The platform is recognized for strong security, scalability, and integration capabilities, but may require more intuitive visualization and documentation improvements.

What are the key features of IBM Cognos?

AI-Driven Data Exploration: Harnesses AI to uncover insights from data.
Robust Reporting: Delivers comprehensive and customizable reports.
Data Integration: Connects seamlessly with multiple data sources.
User-Friendly Dashboards: Offers dashboards for intuitive navigation.
Strong Security: Provides robust security features for data protection.

What benefits can users expect from IBM Cognos?

Efficient Decision-Making: Facilitates data-driven decisions with accurate insights.
Comprehensive Analytics: Enhances analysis capabilities through extensive data integration.
Customizable Reports: Offers flexibility in creating tailored reports and visualizations.
Scalability: Supports growth with scalable solutions for expanding businesses.

In specific industries, IBM Cognos is used for financial reporting, operational dashboards, sales performance monitoring, and fraud analytics. Companies leverage its predictive capabilities for proactive planning and risk assessment, benefiting from its integration with IBM Watson for enhanced AI-driven analysis.

IBM

Meraki Location Analytics delivers sophisticated trend monitoring and geofencing capabilities, aiding sectors like retail and airlines in network management and device location. Though expensive for mid-sized enterprises, its operational advantages are significant for many environments.

With comprehensive tools for trend analysis, Meraki Location Analytics provides insights that support efficient network management. It proves essential for industries that rely on accurate device tracking and interference identification. While beneficial, improvements in pricing and technical support are desired by users. The platform plays a substantial role in diverse sectors, enabling the identification of traffic patterns, locating equipment, and managing network services effectively.

What are the top features of Meraki Location Analytics?

Trend Monitoring: Offers insights into traffic patterns and network interference.
Geofencing: Facilitates easy management of devices over large areas.
Device Location Tracking: Assists in finding misplaced devices with precision.
Network Management: Streamlines the control of network services for administrators.

What ROI and benefits should be considered when evaluating?

Operational Efficiency: Enhances capability to manage networks effectively.
Device Tracking Accuracy: Provides reliable location data for equipment.
Interference Identification: Delivers tools to locate and mitigate interference.
Large-Scale Management: Facilitates managing high volumes of devices seamlessly.

Meraki Location Analytics finds applications in settings like retail, airlines, college campuses, and retirement businesses. It enables the analysis of traffic trends and locating devices, which is crucial in manufacturing facilities. Users deploying a full Meraki stack benefit from comprehensive data insights, supporting the management of missing devices and hotspot detection.

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

August 2026

Free Report: IBM Cognos vs. Meraki Location Analytics

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