IBM Cognos Reviews

Workspace Advanced and Workspace are very intuitive and simple to use for a basic user.

It improved sales monitoring, the enterprise business unit performance (costs, revenue, human resources, etc.) and other financial aspects. It also improved the responsibility for the data input into the transactional applications.

Report authoring is sometimes difficult for authors without specific computer knowledge with regard to concepts related to database, i.e., join, union, etc.

I have been using IBM Cognos BI since version 10.0 in 2012. IBM Cognos BI 10.2.2 was released on December 2014. So, I have been using IBM Cognos 10 for four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I rate technical support 7/10, because the first help response is fast, even if the whole resolution of the problem might be slow. In any case, tech support is good.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was simple. YouTube is a rich way to learn tips & tricks.

I'm a Cognos consultant. I work using only this solution.

It is used for customized reports. It is the only tool supported by our IT group for user reports.

Customized reports are valuable because you can probably create any report you could imagine with it. It has features we are constantly learning how to use. It does allow the users to pull their own data, provided they are given a good framework/datasource that has been created with the options they need to use.

Currently, we just use it for user-requested reports. It has more features that, if we had the manpower, we could better set up the tool so users could do their own reporting. IT here are just getting around to letting users do their own reporting.

More flexibility for joining data sources within reports would be nice. It seems to be a feature IBM is slowly developing.

We have several framework/packages created. For example, we have one for sales, one for shipping, one for manufacturing, etc. You go to create a report in sales, but the one table that you need is defined in the manufacturing package. You can’t join the two packages in Cognos. Someone has to create the table on the sales package in Framework; then, it can be used in the report.

I have used it for three years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

We purchase support from a vendor because support from IBM is more complicated and seems to take longer. Our vendor knows us and can respond faster.

My company was using this software at least 10 years prior to me joining.

I wasn’t at my company for initial setup. We have consultants do the upgrades, because they do tend to be complex and we are short on manpower.

It is very expensive… You have to determine if the complexity of software you are getting is worth the price you are paying; how many bells and whistles do you need for what price. And if you don’t have the manpower to implement all the features, is it worth the cost?

I wasn’t at my company when they chose it, but I think it might be beneficial to re-evaluate the options.

Make sure you realize the scope of the product. It is not easily maintained by one or two people. It involves more than just Cognos for report writing; you also need to use Framework to create the data models/packages to use with it. I have done IT for 30 years; it is one of the more complex report writing tools I have used.

Also, make sure you are in it for the long haul with the costs that are associated with maintaining the software.

It is great for delivering self-service BI to our end users. It provides great flexibility in the types of BI output formats that can be delivered.

It has allowed end users to explore data without having to copy it into Excel first.

The upgrade process is always a challenge, as it is basically a reinstall each time.

I have used it since 2010.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support from our vendor partner is great.

We previously used Oracle Discoverer, but it reached end of life.

Initial setup was complex in the sense that there were different ways to deliver BI: relational models, DMR, and cubes. When you first start using it, it is difficult to know which is the best.

Haggle and buy near the end of IBM’s financial year.

Before choosing this product, we looked at SAP BusinessObjects, OBIEE, Pentaho, Jaspersoft and QlikView; all in 2010.

Get a good local partner or take on an experienced Cognos contractor to help get your local team up to speed and be productive.

Dashboards and visualizations are the product’s most valuable features. Most of my customers are moving from reporting to dashboards and mobile. They are keeping reporting only for daily/weekly/monthly basic reports. All other communication of metrics/KPIs and operational information are moving to dashboards and visualizations and many are looking for mobile solutions.

• Better collaboration

There is room for improvement in the user interface, which might simply be a learning curve issue. It has changed dramatically and some of the functionality is very different. For example, getting a list of reports requires some extra clicks to get the full list and the entire file name is not visible in all views.

Some important bugs still exist in the product, including:

• Not being able to change packages on a published report
• Some issues with Framework Manager in Cognos 11 not connecting properly when the 10.2.2 version is still installed

I have used it for two months.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good.

We previously used Cognos 10.2.2; upgraded for new features.

Initial setup was complex. Cognos is a very complex tool to configure.

Get bulk licensing if at all possible. IBM has a very structured pricing model.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

Make sure you have good IBM support in place before installing, and read all associated documentation. Third-party or IBM installation would be recommended.

• Common metadata repository: The most valuable feature is a single and integrated view of any number of heterogeneous data sources through a business perspective. In short, for any attribute or metric defined, a common definition is stored as metadata and available for all other components of Cognos.
• Scalability
• Stability
• Performance

The Cognos Analysis Studio and Cognos Query Studio user interface has room for improvement in the area of user experience. Some of the functions are hard to find and complicated to use, but we're talking about advanced functions rarely used.

I have used it for two years.

The product is very stable.

The product offers enough capabilities for a proper scalable setup.

Technical support is adequate.

We previously used Oracle Discoverer. Cognos' HTML user interface was the main reason we switched.

Initial setup is straightforward, with minor problems in the area of configuring data source connectors. Because the product uses a JDBC data interface, the administrator needs to be familiar with JDBC.

The licensing model had changed from the past and currently needs more flexibility in the area of advanced users. Other products make no difference between the user types. The licensing model should be usage based.

QlikView and Oracle OBIEE were tested.

• Scheduling options
• Bursting (each staff member gets feedback regarding their own duty shifts): We might have hundreds of report recipients who need to have their own data (and only their own data). Doing similar work manually would take very long time, or could be impossible. I guess Cognos Burst was originally designed for large sales organisations, having a need to send sales figures for certain sales reps. For example: sales rep in Asia needs his/her figures (Asia), Europe rep European figures, etc. This functionality can be used for, e.g., staff performance, as long as the data can be joined with staff IDs. In other words, with Cognos Burst, we are able to provide personalised reporting / analytics, without manual work.
• Possibility to save report output history to the Cognos portal
• Possibility to use the same report object for various outputs (e-mail, Cognos workspace = dashboard, screens)

It results in less manual work, process performance improvement and improved real-time data availability.

It is also possible to check the report utilisation via Cognos audit reports.

The tool is complex, and I would not recommend it to small companies, because you need to have expertise for Framework Model development, access rights issues, licensing, etc.

New functions, e.g., external data import, do not work as smoothly as they should. New visualisations using RAVE take a long time.

Unfortunately statistics are not available for Cognos 10.2 (as in 10.1), and that has been a disappointment, when Lean Six Sigma-type calculations are done.

Additionally, even after four years of using Cognos, it is sometimes difficult to understand how the tool works, e.g., which calculations are processed locally, etc.

I have used Cognos 10.2 for one year and Cognos 8.4 for three years.

We encountered stability issues, but most likely related to our network and AD issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

From IBM, technical support is OK; other domestic service providers also work OK, but their hourly rates are high!

Finnair has been using IBM tools for a long time, but I personally have used other SQL tools.

Our IT department has taken care of this, thus I do not know.

If you need to send scheduled reports to third parties, you need to have a PVU server.

We have had PoCs regarding QlikView, SAS Visual Statistics, Tableau, etc.

Appropriate data modelling is a must, if you want to increase self-service.

Robustness:

• The environment is super stable, once you have the right environmental resources (CPU, memory, etc.), the platform will be rock solid.
• BI on BI: You will get KPIs out of the box in the Cognos administration about the usage of your environment.
• Audit: plenty of user information regarding running, modifying reports and other objects.
• Granular security and degree of access control.
• Lots of logging information, this will help you diagnostic any issues you might encounter.

Scalability:

• You can size the environment specs and configuration from 10 all the way to thousands of users.
• You just have to add more resources (CPU, memory, etc.) or another component (Application Server, Content Manager).
• And if you have the right design and architecture, you can achieve multi-tenancy.

It is a very complete solution: versatile, flexible, robust, and scalable.

It is serving as the single source of truth, consolidating information from various systems.

At the moment ,the metadata tool (Framework Manager) is client based, meaning, you have to install the tool itself in a workstation. You will also need any ODBC/OLDB and database drivers installed on that computer to access data and start modeling. This tool design and the way it works is already outdated. Your models can get corrupted for numerous reasons; that's why it is always good to back up and save your work. The tool does NOT support multi-user development, meaning only one developer per model is allow at any given time. You also rely on the file system all the time. A cloud-based / multi-user solution would be more than welcome.

IBM Cognos and the entire suite does NOT come with any source/version control capabilities out of the box. If you made a change to a report and, for whatever reason, you want to go back to the previous iteration, you will need to restore a backup or an export; if you didn't make a backup, you will be out of luck. Same with every single object in the environment (packages, queries, security, administration, settings, etc).

They also need to take more advantage of new in-memory technology, and have better integration with other visualization tools.

It would be nice if we could use standard XML as a data source.

I have used it for 11 years.

After going to a full distributed environment (Content Manager, App Server, Gateway), we have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good, solid. They gotten better lately.

We previously used Crystal Reports; a more powerful platform was needed, plus IBM Cognos is easier for front-end/business users.

Setting up a full-fledged distributed environment is not for the inexperienced administrator. On a scale from 1 to 10, the complexity level is definitely above 7.5. You need to have low to mid-level network knowledge; need a sense of how database connective and security works. Your average system admin might be able to do a single-server installation.

Don’t be cheap; try the product and scale accordingly. Pricing is a lot more competitive these days.

It was already in place when I was hired, but I had already have seen various products, such as OBIEE, Crystal, MicroStrategy, Qlik, etc. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Make sure you try this product well before implementation.

Accommodate resources.

Also make sure your users and internal assets (administrators, developers, and architects) get formal training.

Hiring professional services is always a plus during implementation and the first wave of development.

Ability to create canned reports with some ad-hoc capability: Canned reports are important because users are able to get the data they need on a daily basis with minimal effort. However, I have found most people have been downloading the canned reports into Excel and manipulating and adding data. So the ability to have ad-hoc reporting would enable users to get at the information easier, as well as have control over what information they pull. We can provide data quality and integrity on their data sources which they would not get from pulling data randomly.

We are able to launch Cognos reporting across thousands of stores and have them access the status of their stores and products.

I would like to have the ability to drill down to the lowest level of granularity and still do it with speed. Cognos is unable to get down to the lowest level of grain in our data. The solution slows down to an unreasonable level or completely comes to a halt. So if the lowest level of grain is a single customer order or serial number level amongst millions of data points, we are forced to use other solutions to get at that data.

Also, Cognos has no ability to integrate with other reporting solutions.

I have used it for three years.

We have encountered stability issues; every so often, Cognos will hang and needs to be reset.

We have encountered scalability issues, depending on the hardware that the system runs on.

IBM’s technical support is fine.

I did not previously use a different solution; we have been using Cognos.

The complexity of initial setup depends on the hardware platform used and the level of skill of IT.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Tableau, SAP BOBJ, Qlik, and OBIEE.

Understand what level of granularity the users need and the speed of reporting. There may be other solutions that are better. Also, be aware that Cognos is not able to integrate with tools such as Tableau and many reporting solutions that would improve the product. So, you are pretty much stuck with the tools IBM provides.