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IBM Cognos vs Oracle Analytics Cloud 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
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (6th)
Oracle Analytics Cloud
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.2%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Analytics Cloud is 2.5%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.
Enrique Pacheco Salinas - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced analytics facilitate strategy development but demand specialized expertise and better support
Oracle Analytics Cloud is not very user-friendly, however, it is robust and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. However, skilled personnel are needed to operate it effectively due to its complexity. In addition, the brand name carries significant value as many large companies and banks are familiar with Oracle.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"Mobility is the most valuable feature for us. All employees can access it from anywhere. It is a big advantage for us."
"Oracle Analytics Cloud's most valuable feature is its visualization."
"The technical support services are good."
"The solution can scale."
"The product is easily customized."
"The specific capability I find important in Oracle Analytics Cloud is that it allows the basic user to easily drag and drop data. I also like that the solution allows the user to decide what to measure and what to see in the reports."
"The advanced calculations by the tool are highly effective"
"The scalability is acknowledged as pretty good, although my evaluation is limited because I used the tool for a short period."
 

Cons

"The solution's support could be better."
"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"The migration of older dash tools from the classic interface of Oracle BI prior to OAS launch to the newer Data Visualization and Oracle Analytics Cloud interfaces, including dashboards and metadata, is currently a cumbersome process. Improvements in this area would be highly beneficial. Additionally, the administration of the cloud, particularly the startup of services and linking of the WebLogic server and integrated components, takes longer than desired. In today's enterprise landscape, waiting forty minutes for the server to be operational is quite lengthy; ideally, this process should take a maximum of four minutes. It would be excellent to incorporate metadata management as an integral part of the Oracle Analytics Cloud. When dealing with integrated data from various sources, tracking data lineage and the entire data life cycle, from sources to report development and the mapping of reports to specific dashboards, should be seamlessly managed within the Oracle Analytics Cloud. This would eliminate the need for additional tools. Drawing a comparison, tools like Tableau have a feature enabling metadata management, making it easier to trace the complete data lineage of reports. Managing over seven hundred and thirty-six business dashboards, the metadata management capability within Tableau simplified the process of understanding how reports were developed, including details like associated tables, users, linked views, materialized views, data segmentations, ETL jobs, and the data warehouse stages. Enhancing metadata tracking within the Oracle Analytics Cloud layout would facilitate easy and practical management of the complete data life cycle, encompassing user accessibility and report permissions."
"The solution could be more flexible."
"The product could benefit from increased flexibility compared to other vendors."
"Its machine learning and visualization capabilities can be improved. There should be more visualization options."
"The learning curve should be improved, and I'm uncertain if tutorials are readily available or easily accessible. We may have resorted to looking on YouTube for such information. Having easily understandable documents or guides for new users would be beneficial. AI integration would be an interesting feature to add in the next release."
"It should simplify data connectivity and modeling, making data extraction more streamlined and adaptable for diverse use cases."
"One of the major issues is that Oracle Analytics Cloud is not user-friendly, requiring skilled people with proper certifications to work with it successfully."
"It is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is averagely priced."
"The solution is affordable."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"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."
"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."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"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."
"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."
"The product’s pricing is expensive. However, feature-wise, it fits the requirements of enterprise customers."
"I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The price is reasonable; it's quite a bit lower than Tableau and Spotfire."
"It is an expensive platform."
"A highly cost-effective solution"
"I would rate it a five out of five in terms of the value received for the price charge."
"The tool's pricing is not unreasonable or non-competitive."
"Bottom line, the cost is really, really cheap compared to other solutions. Oracle has made a huge effort on the pricing."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle Analytics Cloud?
The ability to quickly search for and access relevant data is crucial.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Analytics Cloud?
The pricing of Oracle Analytics Cloud is quite expensive, fitting for a premium tool. However, the cost raises expectations for partner support that are not met, especially for smaller companies wh...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Oracle Analytics Cloud Service, OAC, Oracle Data Visualization, Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service, ODV
 

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.
Sejong Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.