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IBM Cognos vs SAP Analytics Hub 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
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
136
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (5th)
SAP Analytics Hub
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
30th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (50th)
 

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 SAP Analytics Hub is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
SAP Analytics Hub0.8%
Other97.9%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2648136 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Nitesh Agrawal - PeerSpot reviewer
Director & Co-Owner at InfraBeat Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Integration and security have improved, but search functionality and clarity of future direction need enhancement
The search function in SAP Analytics Hub is not effective. When speaking about integration with various analytic sources, for example, if I wanted to send the data from SAP BW or B4HANA to a data lake, we used to earlier use the Open Data Hub or Analytics Hub. Nowadays, we are using the Data Sphere integrators available with Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud. The search capability could be better, and SAP needs to come out with a clear roadmap for the solution going ahead, as they have not yet provided that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"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."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"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."
"For report scheduling, I always prefer SAP because it has the most powerful scheduling features, like sending reports to more than 1,000 customers per day. That option is not as good in Microsoft BI and in Tableau it only exists as an add-on option."
"Data consistency is also a notable feature; the system takes care of data consistency, so you don't need to handle it manually."
"SAP Analytics Hub offers a user-friendly interface with effortless configuration, seamless updates, and real-time availability of information. It avoids the complexities associated with batch processing, providing a smooth and efficient experience."
"As a partner, I can mention something positive about SAP Analytics Hub: its products are tightly integrated, so the business context of data is retained in the analytics solution, and that's the main advantage."
"What I like best about this solution is that it is built into the SAP line, making it easier to integrate with other SAP products."
"This product provides good reports using a single pane of glass."
"The platform's main benefit is its integration with SAP ERP data. It’s effective for data integration and integrity."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"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."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Pricing and support are integrated into the system. However, the support process can be challenging, particularly when navigating the SAP support site, which lacks user-friendliness and ease of access."
"Faster implementation of new functions for the new product is an area of improvement in SAP Analytics Hub."
"The analytics part of SAP has not been that good up until now. They're still in the infant stage and development is still going on. SAP has some cloud analytics and they're trying to configure it in Lumira, but it's not that good at this point."
"The technical support for Analytics Hub is limited and could be improved."
"The interface can be simplified because it is not a user-friendly experience."
"The platform could easily integrate with other ERP data solutions. Additionally, it should be faster compared to competitors in the cloud space."
"The search capability could be better, and SAP needs to come out with a clear roadmap for the solution going ahead, as they have not yet provided that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing should be improved."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"It is pretty expensive."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"It is an expensive solution."
"They are pursuing a highly assertive approach to target businesses of all sizes within the industry."
"The product is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Transportation Company
7%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

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?
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Analytics Hub?
The product is expensive. The cost starts from $1,000,000 per year. Moreover, there are additional costs involved for customization.
What needs improvement with SAP Analytics Hub?
The search function in SAP Analytics Hub is not effective. When speaking about integration with various analytic sources, for example, if I wanted to send the data from SAP BW or B4HANA to a data l...
What advice do you have for others considering SAP Analytics Hub?
When speaking about integration with various analytic sources, for example, if I wanted to send the data from SAP BW or B4HANA to a data lake, we used to earlier use the Open Data Hub or Analytics ...
 

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.
STIB-MIVB
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. SAP Analytics Hub and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.