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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
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (6th)
Oracle Business Intelligenc...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
28th
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 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 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.
SM
User-friendly solution but data modelling could be simplified
So far, it looks stable for us. One other good thing is that the platform is software as a subscription, and Oracle regularly releases updates. They are quarterly and are fairly updated; they don't really introduce any new features without informing customers in advance about the upcoming releases. So they're constantly improving it, and there is a regular upgrade. I'm like, "You know, you need to do a version upgrade and optimize. Maybe we do it once in three years or five years." But the cloud solution is where there are constant updates and ticketing releases every quarterly. So that's something which is very good. You don't have to wait for, you know, the version upgrades or something where the new features are expected only in the new version and whatever it is here. It is continuous development and also continuous releases of new features. That's something good in terms of their cloud solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"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."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It is a stable product."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The solution effectively integrates with third-party products."
"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."
"Initial setup was straightforward."
"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 rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"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."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"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."
"Quality of support varies."
"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

"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"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 licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"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."
"It is averagely priced."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"It is pretty expensive."
"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
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
13%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
7%
Legal Firm
6%
 

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: July 2025.
862,289 professionals have used our research since 2012.