

Features: IBM Cognos features robust enterprise reporting, dynamic dashboards, and extensive data integration. It also helps improve decision-making speed and accuracy. SAP Business Data Cloud offers seamless integration with SAP systems and AI and machine learning capabilities that are beneficial for businesses within the SAP ecosystem.
Room for Improvement: IBM Cognos could improve flexible data connectivity and real-time data handling, alongside a better mobile experience. SAP Business Data Cloud faces visualization limitations and is viewed as costly.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cognos offers various deployment options like on-premises and hybrid cloud but has mixed customer service feedback. SAP Business Data Cloud focuses on cloud integration but shares similar customer service challenges.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Cognos targets medium to large enterprises with competitive pricing, providing ROI through time savings in reporting. SAP Business Data Cloud is expensive but adds value for existing SAP users through seamless integration.
I have seen a return on investment through improved decision making, as automated distribution and uptime, along with scheduled report delivery and bursting, have eliminated various manual emailing and delays, thereby saving time and cost.
Management can now drill down and view executive summaries for new products and fraud analytics quickly, resulting in less red tape during the decision-making process.
This demonstrates that it requires a lesser number of people. You do not need a huge team for maintaining or working with IBM Cognos.
We have saved a lot on the number of employees, and implementation time for the projects has reduced significantly since we started using the standard features of SAP Business Data Cloud.
Once the content is available, then it is a faster go-live with lesser cost in implementation, and that would give an ROI.
It will definitely reduce the need for more staff to handle this technology.
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
The customer support has been proactive, solution-oriented, and helpful whenever I have needed to reach out.
Customer support for IBM Cognos is very responsive.
The technical support is a very well-organized service, with a lot of tools for me as a consultant and for the end user on how to contact SAP support and get issues solved.
For example, when I provide a set of instructions, they often simply ask me to implement those steps without checking whether they are applicable.
In SAP's policy, for the first couple of years, the product team is also part of the support team.
IBM Cognos displays good scalability, as it handles increased data growth well.
It works across small teams to enterprise-level deployment.
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
The scalability of SAP Business Data Cloud has been strong, as it has handled growth in data volume, user demand, and reporting requirements without significant performance issues.
SAP Analytics Cloud can be used by a small company, and it can be used by a large corporate.
Since SAP has consolidated everything on one platform, there is ample room to expand as much as needed.
IBM Cognos is stable and very flexible.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
In my experience, IBM Cognos is stable, as I have not experienced any downtime or lagging issues.
You have a chance to test it on your test tenant in small increments, so it should not break your productive reports and productive environment.
It has been reliable for reporting, analytics, and data integration activities.
This really allowed virtual access to data, which means there was no heavy replication of data involved, greatly improving performance.
I would also suggest enhanced predictive analytics to move from more reactive to proactive decision-making.
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing its limited real-time data connectivity, as well as enhancing the endpoint experience and mobility, which currently is not satisfactory due to limited data blending.
IBM Cognos could improve by introducing different role types, such as viewer roles, user roles, and admin roles, along with assigning minor modules to specific individuals.
On the other hand, it is perfectly fitting to the SAP environment, with seamless integration to all SAP modules, not only ERP but also SuccessFactors and other tools from the SAP family.
If SAP can come up with innovative options to reduce licensing costs, many customers would incline toward SAP Business Data Cloud.
If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.
Our central team negotiated a different price because multiple teams within our organization use IBM Cognos, bringing the price down to around $10 to $11 per user per month.
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive, as the price is relatively competitive and affordable.
If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.
From a planning license perspective, SAC on that side is very expensive if you need developer features.
Frankly, pricing, setup cost, and licensing seem a bit high compared to other hyperscalers.
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
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.
Our dedicated cybersecurity team ensures that sensitive data does not become public, making it crucial that data stored in IBM Cognos remains secure throughout the entire data cycle, which is where these enterprise-grade security measures prove invaluable.
For SuccessFactors and S/4HANA Cloud, there are pre-built reports available which are commonly used by customers.
SAP Business Data Cloud has positively impacted my organization by federating SAP data, which is now available for all to use.
The main standout feature is BDC Connect, as it is very useful for sharing data without replicating to third-party tools such as Enterprise Databricks, Snowflake or even in the near future, Google BigQuery as well as Microsoft Fabric.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| SAP Business Data Cloud | 2.7% |
| IBM Cognos | 1.4% |
| Other | 95.9% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 37 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 24 |
| Large Enterprise | 92 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 43 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 21 |
| Large Enterprise | 60 |
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?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.
SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) is a unified, intelligent data platform — part of the SAP Business AI Platform — that governs SAP and third-party data through a business data fabric. As an evolution of our industry-leading data, analytics and planning solutions, Business Data Cloud brings together Datasphere, Analytics Cloud, and Business Warehouse with a unified experience that delivers transformational insights across all lines of business. By harmonizing mission-critical data with the business processes and logic that give it meaning, SAP BDC delivers a trusted foundation for analytics and AI, empowering data teams and business leaders to make faster, more confident decisions.
What are the most important features of SAP Business Data Cloud?
What benefits or ROI should users look for in SAP Business Data Cloud?
SAP Business Data Cloud is a key component of SAP's vision for the autonomous enterprise. By unifying data connectivity, governance, semantic modeling, and analytics in a single cloud-native platform, SAP BDC eliminates fragmentation and complexity — serving as the connective tissue that ties your entire enterprise together and positioning organizations for long-term success in an AI-driven world.
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