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Pentaho Business Analytics vs SSIS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Reporting (4th)
Pentaho Business Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (21st), Cloud Operations Analytics (4th), Reporting (15th)
SSIS
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Integration
 

Q&A Highlights

PS
Apr 10, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 27, 2022
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 16, 2022
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
It's a data warehouse for finance and central bank reporting purposes, and an ETL tool in this environment It's easily understandable. The product is quick and flexible, with very good steps to make data transformation possible.  The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The repository should…
Sakiru Dosumu - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 1, 2024
Its ability to transform and transport data is extremely valuable
We use SSIS for data extraction, transformation, and loading processes. This includes extracting data from various sources like Oracle and SQL Server, and then transforming it for use in reporting tools like Power BI dashboards. While we haven't directly migrated data between databases using SSIS…

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."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The simplicity of the solution is great. The solution also offers excellent integration."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"The main value of any Microsoft product is the ease of use. You can achieve more with less time. That's what's beneficial for me. With many competitors, you might need to spend more time coming up with a solution because you have to focus on taking care of the product."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the fast insert and fuzzy logic matching."
"The most valuable feature of SSIS is that you can take data from other servers which are not MS SQL Server or Oracle."
"The solution is stable."
"I like that this solution is very scalable, accommodating large datasets and various types of servers. It integrates with most common database servers and allows for customization through coding, including complex scripts. Compared to Alteryx Designer, SSIS offers more customization. Its data cleaning capabilities are highly accurate because we can run tests as data is loaded, ensuring it meets all requirements before reaching the final destination. The ability to write custom SQL and C# code within SSIS packages is its greatest feature."
"It's already very user-friendly and has a good dashboard."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"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."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"The repository should be improved."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Logging capability is needed."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Performance could be better."
"SSIS should be made a little bit more intuitive and user-friendly because it needs an expert-level person to work on it."
"At one point, we did have to purchase an add-on."
"We In upgrading SSIS, we encountered challenges fixing SQL Server and performance issues, including problems during a failover in our data warehouse."
"The solution should work on the GPU, graphical processing unit. There should also be piping integration available."
"The solution could improve on integrating with other types of data sources."
"The high prices attached to the product can be an area of concern where improvements are required."
"You have to write push down join & lookup SQL to the database yourself via stored procedures or use of the SQL Task to get very high performance. That said, this is a common complaint for nearly all ETL tools on the market and those that offer an alternative such as Informatica offer them at a very expensive add-on price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing should be improved."
"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."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"It is pretty expensive."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
"All of my clients have this product included as part of their Microsoft license."
"I'm not involved in licensing details, but SSIS provides value to our organization by simplifying data management tasks."
"t's incredibly cost effective, easy to learn the basics quickly (although like all ETL tools requires the traditional learning curve to get good at) and has an immense user base."
"Depending on the arrangement that a certain company has with Microsoft, it may supply the permanent license that is included in the SQL server license, or it may be a time-bound license if it is a partner license or other enterprise license."
"The solution comes free of cost."
"People have to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model."
"The solution is economical. You don't have to worry about the pricing as long as you're installing both services on the same server."
"It comes bundled with other solutions, which makes it difficult to get the price on the specific product."
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Answers from the Community

PS
Apr 10, 2020
Apr 10, 2020
Product recommendation depends on the business requirement and use case. Both are good products and well established in the market. Parameters to look for at the time of product selection : 1) License cost 2) Type of data to be handled and integration with source database 3) Are we looking for cloud implementation or on-premises 4) Volume of data that we are looking at with possible transfo...
See 2 answers
Rahul Sahay - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 18, 2020
Product recommendation depends on the business requirement and use case. Both are good products and well established in the market. Parameters to look for at the time of product selection : 1) License cost 2) Type of data to be handled and integration with source database 3) Are we looking for cloud implementation or on-premises 4) Volume of data that we are looking at with possible transformations 5) Data Quality framework 6) Scalability 7) Customer experience ie support. I am from MS background and have worked both on cloud version and on-premises version. I was able to achieve my solution using MS.
RS
Apr 10, 2020
MS SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a part of the commercial MS SQL Server product. It is not a freeware. Probably Pentaho offers an open source/ freeware edition. Below may be useful: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/13199248-e246-47aa-bab3-b2b73112d991/ssis-as-a-etl-tool-related-query?forum=sqlintegrationservices https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/47aeed76-8466-4e9f-bb48-b912c07145df/ssis-tool-evaluation?forum=sqlintegrationservices Nowadays SSDT (SQL server data tools) is also getting popularity: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/sql-server-data-tools?view=sql-server-ver15 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/release-notes-ssdt?view=sql-server-ver15 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/sql-server-data-tools?view=sql-server-ver15
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
58%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
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?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
The organization has both options based on their needs and budget constraints. The Enterprise Edition is expensive wi...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The product to me is not as user-friendly as other players in the market. It also still needs improvement in the repo...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called ...
What do you like most about SSIS?
The product's deployment phase is easy.
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
SQL Server Integration Services
 

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.
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
1. Amazon.com 2. Bank of America 3. Capital One 4. Coca-Cola 5. Dell 6. E*TRADE 7. FedEx 8. Ford Motor Company 9. Google 10. Home Depot 11. IBM 12. Intel 13. JPMorgan Chase 14. Kraft Foods 15. Lockheed Martin 16. McDonald's 17. Microsoft 18. Morgan Stanley 19. Nike 20. Oracle 21. PepsiCo 22. Procter & Gamble 23. Prudential Financial 24. RBC Capital Markets 25. SAP 26. Siemens 27. Sony 28. Toyota 29. UnitedHealth Group 30. Visa 31. Walmart 32. Wells Fargo
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