IBM Cognos vs Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service comparison

IBM and Oracle are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. IBM is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.3, while Oracle is ranked #23 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 1.3% mindshare in BIT, compared to Oracle’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 136 IBM Cognos reviews

5,536 Views
2,879 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Oracle Business Intelligenc...

Read 5 Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service reviews

723 Views
680 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

Oracle Business Intelligenc...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

IBM Cognos and Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service are competitors in the business intelligence domain. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service has the upper hand due to its cloud-native advantages, offering flexible scalability and integration efficiency.

Features: IBM Cognos is known for its robust reporting and data visualization capabilities, enabling advanced analytics and report customization. It offers tools like Query Studio for ad-hoc queries and Report Studio for complex reports. Cognos also integrates with various platforms, ensuring comprehensive data handling. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service delivers comprehensive analytics with seamless integration across Oracle applications, real-time insights, and advanced predictive analytics thanks to its cloud infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: IBM Cognos could streamline its setup process and enhance cloud integration to meet modern business demands better. Improvements in user interface and customer support speed could also add value. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service may benefit from expanding its feature set to match the depth of on-premises solutions, enhancing offline accessibility, and offering a wider range of data connectors for non-Oracle applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service excels in straightforward cloud deployment and integrates smoothly into Oracle's ecosystem. Its efficient support services are tailored for quick turnaround times. While IBM Cognos offers strong on-premises deployment options, it often involves more complexity and longer setup durations. Oracle's agile cloud service offers a responsive support structure ideal for fast-paced business needs.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Cognos typically has a higher initial setup cost, particularly for on-premises deployment, which can delay ROI. In contrast, Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service benefits from subscription-based pricing that provides cost flexibility and a quicker ROI due to reduced infrastructure investments. Oracle's solution is favored by organizations seeking scalable, cloud-centric investments with attractive returns over time.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

December 2025

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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

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

136

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (5th)

Oracle Business Intelligenc...

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

23rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 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 Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Cognos	1.3%
Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service	0.7%
Other	98.0%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

reviewer2648136

EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Centralized reporting has supported university-wide regulatory dashboards and secure data access

From my experience, we use regular dashboarding with IBM Cognos for producing scheduled reports and for mandatory regulatory reporting. All our departments use IBM Cognos, with each department developing their own reports while our corporate IT team provides the data. Some people use the interactive dashboards feature of IBM Cognos, and there are also other tools in use. I think some users utilize Power BI and Tableau, but our IT organization only provides IBM Cognos as an enterprise business intelligence and reporting tool. IBM Cognos is evaluated and complies fully with all our security standards. In my opinion, IBM Cognos is very stable. It has been around for many years and many users are familiar with it, ensuring it performs well in its intended capacity. The benefits of choosing IBM Cognos, aside from cost savings, include having institutional knowledge for maintaining this infrastructure and a reliable solution that enhances developer productivity, given our team's extensive experience with IBM Cognos.

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Ram Alla

BI Consultant at KPI Partners

Has supported secure report building and simplified data visualization for non-technical users

The features I find most useful in Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service include data visualization desktop for self-service reports. We can export using Excel and CSV files by dragging and dropping the columns to create reports. The drag-and-drop interface in Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service helps create dashboards for non-technical users as it is easy to use. By dragging and dropping columns, it creates a tabular view by default. We can convert these into many graphs and views such as pivot tables and other interactive graphical representations. I use self-service analytics in Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service.

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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

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."

"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."

"IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting."

"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."

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

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

More IBM Cognos pros

"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."

"The solution effectively integrates with third-party products."

"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

"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."

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."

"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."

"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."

"It could have more options for themes."

"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."

"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."

"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."

More IBM Cognos cons

"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."

"Quality of support varies."

"The dashboard could be improved and include additional features."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"Oracle products are always going to be on the higher end of your price scale. You have to kind of accept that going in."

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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

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	86

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...

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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.

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What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve. The more I use this platform, the more ...

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What needs improvement with Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service?

As an expert, I can recommend that improvements could be made in Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service regarding cost. Compared to Power BI, it is significantly more expensive. I think the pri...

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What is your primary use case for Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service?

The main use cases revolve around analytics which helps us with configured reports for AP, AR, and General Ledger. We have created several reports in Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service as R...

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What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service?

I really recommend Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service itself. I recommend it because we can secure the data compared to other tools. We can connect with a self-service portal and create new...

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Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 11% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SQL Server vs IBM Cognos

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Oracle Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

Compared 36% of the time

Salient vs Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

Compared 27% of the time

Domo vs Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

Compared 22% of the time

Knowage vs Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

Compared 15% of the time

More Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

January 2026

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

January 2026

Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service report

Download Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service 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

Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service enables all users to tap into the most pertinent data, whenever and wherever they need it. With BI Cloud Service, robust analysis is accessible to everyone, from individuals to large workgroups, across the enterprise.

Oracle

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

December 2025

Free Report: IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

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