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IBM Cognos vs Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service 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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
Oracle Business Intelligenc...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.4%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service is 0.5%, up from 0.5% 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.
AP
Highly scalable with very good configuration, customization, and migration
Technical support assists us all the time and has a good response time depending on the case or severity. For a severe issue, support helps us a lot and continues to coordinate until our issue is resolved. Severe issues are ranked as a three or four technical level. Responses depend on the technical level, the questions asked, and what we discuss regarding the issue. The support person you get plays a role but overall the support team is excellent. Support is rated a eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"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."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The solution effectively integrates with third-party products."
"Initial setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable features are user-friendly and self-service tools. Users can define their reports based on available data sets, with multiple dimensions and slide and dice data capabilities."
"Its ease of use and the ability to drill down into detail are the most valuable. Executive dashboarding features are the most commonly used ones."
 

Cons

"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"It could have more options for themes."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"Quality of support varies."
"The dashboard could be improved and include additional features."
"When looking at web-based BI or cloud-based BI vendors, there should be abilities for power users to build deep analysis. If they are not data science tools, they are not for power users."
"In terms of data modeling, it could be simplified. Sometimes, it seems complicated. Also, the response time for data set refreshes could be faster to enhance the user experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty expensive."
"It is averagely priced."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"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."
"Oracle products are always going to be on the higher end of your price scale. You have to kind of accept that going in."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
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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
Educational Organization
47%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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 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.
What do you like most about Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service?
The most valuable features are user-friendly and self-service tools. Users can define their reports based on available data sets, with multiple dimensions and slide and dice data capabilities.
What needs improvement with Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service?
In terms of data modeling, it could be simplified. Sometimes, it seems complicated. Also, the response time for data set refreshes could be faster to enhance the user experience. In future releases...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service?
We are using this intelligence for management reporting and analysis. We have certain KPIs and dashboards derived from Oracle Cloud Analytics. We also use OBIA for reporting and analytics with tran...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

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.
Grant Thornton, FORTH, Anthem
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
853,271 professionals have used our research since 2012.