IBM Cognos Reviews

• Ease of use
• Reliability of product
• Ability to build models with Framework Manager
• Cube build utility
• Ability to build prompt pages for on-demand reporting
• Report distribution facilities: ease of providing multiple report outputs and to write those report outputs to the file system

We use it mainly to augment / replace the reporting deficiencies in the reporting tools that ship with the vendor products.

This is an easy one: visualizations. While being able to use them to provide client-side filtering in Active reports is great, they are so far behind the functionality offered in the basic Cognos charts, it is almost laughable that they even offer them in the product. As the legacy charting has all the functionality I need, I know they can see how far behind the visualizations are, but still have done nothing to improve that part of the product. Filtering client side allows me to offer much more data to the client, but without decent charting it is not very useful.

I have used it for 10+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. It pretty much just runs every day. I reboot the report server maybe once every two months, but it is rarely ever necessary. This is one of the big selling points for me.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. I put a lot of thought and effort into report run times. The biggest problems with scalability are usually with concurrency, so I endeavor to limit this.

I rarely use technical support.

The organization switched from Crystal Reports to Cognos. Crystal Reports is just a poor version of Cognos in my opinion.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward. Initially, we had the Content Manager and the report server on the same box, but moving the Content Manager to a SQL server box and having the report server on its own box really helped performance.

I do not like the PVU licensing model. It is nice to not have to worry about handing out individual licenses, but I feel it is terrible to then be limited to the hardware you licensed at the time. I think it is easier to charge business units for adding new users rather than trying to get a big chunk of money all at once to upgrade the hardware.

Spend a lot of time on your data model and then the Framework Manager model before starting any reporting. Also, before starting any reporting, set up report templates both for the prompt page and for the report page. Adding in a table, hidden with a conditional style, to track report changes is a good idea.

It has the ability to model OLTP data sources with Framework Mgr. instead of building a data warehouse. Building a Framework metadata model takes weeks, while building a data warehouse takes 12-24 months.

The Framework model won't perform as fast as a properly designed and optimized DW, but it will give you accurate results with a much lower investment. Then, when your company is ready to invest in the DW, it can take the structure of the Framework model and map it to the DW tables, and all of your reports still work.

We are a Cognos-only training and consulting company so our business depends on Cognos.

The one that sticks out in my mind is the ability to search the relational data tree for query items (fields). I believe this functionality has been added in v11 (Cognos Analytics). The user interface in v10 is a little dated and not as tablet-friendly as some of the other viz tools. This has been greatly improved in v11.

I have used it for three years.

There are no stability issues as long as the image is properly built and fix packs are installed.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Over a few years, we have opened only a couple of tickets with IBM and all have been handled professionally and promptly.

We have always used Cognos. We recently demo'd trial versions of Microsoft and Tableau against Cognos v11 and we still think Cognos is the better product for medium and large enterprises.

Building the image for a new version takes several hours. Of course, IBM has cloud options that eliminate the need for keeping your own images.

Like any enterprise software product, make sure you negotiate. IBM simplified the licensing in 2014, so I can't suggest any improvements there.

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

Make sure your CFO understands the investment required for a successful BI installation that will give you one version of the truth, whether it's Cognos or another vendor. The investment is not only in software and hardware, but in the people who use it.

We have found this software to be insightful in finding and defining true performance of products and services. The numbers give the details and there is no place to hide.

This software identifies normal product sales, margins and costing, which are basic key performance indicators. We then use this to identify service of customers and vendors. Recently “COST TO SERVE” reporting has been a “HOT” supply chain tool because this identifies the business activities and overhead costs. This reporting is NOT your (ABC) activity-based costing reporting, but a mixture of costing drivers, which usually provides surprising results.

We have also seen improvements in manufacturing processes because the tool identifies bottlenecks quickly. Most recently, the ability to have mobile reporting to our user site has been very important to drive down information.

We are excited about more features for cloud and web analytics:
- Cloud: Companies are really starting to embrace the cloud for running their business intelligence software. There is so much to choose from for supporting and servicing cloud users than 1-2 years ago.
- Web analytics: For me, this is where you see who is searching for your products and services. You can find out where in the country/world and know more about the user too. This gives you insight on your web presence and how your social media and marketing campaigns are performing. Also, who’s talking about your products and services and why? You can see what the issues are and what you are doing well.

We have used Cognos Project for 20 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

Once the users are trained on the product, everyone wants to use it, so it’s best when defining your in-house server or cloud that you incorporate future needs.

Technical support is excellent and very responsive. They have different levels of support for response time that can be purchased in addition to web help.

We had training but were able to do the install in-house.

Buy the software and licenses that you will need for the next 12-15 months.

We tried Microsoft’s offerings but found them not as full featured as Cognos.

Take time to understand your data. Decide which reporting must be from live data and what data could be taken from a data repository. Prioritize your reporting needs. Add proper time for validation and training.

• The jobs, which can be used easily, to place the right SQL-statement in the required order, makes monitoring them a lot easier
• The jobstreams, makes it possible to group the jobsteps effectively, and in the right order
• the scheduler, which makes it easy to run the jobs and jobstreams at any convenient moment
• The lookups, if working correctly (they can be unstable), provide a good way to ensure referential integrity between fact tables and dimension tables

It gave the organisation the possibility to have a closer look a the data in a more organized way. If they would have had the stability to see it through, they probably would have required insights in their (in)efficiencies that greatly would have improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the core activities (it was a callcenter).

The stability of the lookups is not very good, and really needs improvement. The tool forces you in the direction of a datamart/Kimball architecture. If that is not the architecture that you want, it requires a lot of tricks to fold it to your needs. When you use hierarchies and dimensions, you are basically more or less forced into building these first, before building the fact tables. If these dimensions need adjustment or modifications, implementing these is a very complicated delicate and a faultridden operation.

The most effective way to get a sturdy result in the Cognos Datamanager, is to leave out the fancy stuff. Only use the jobs and jobstreams (and of course the scheduler to run them). Guard referential integrity by making the correct joins in the queries which are in the jobs (and putting these of course in the right order). Then, Cognos Datamanager can be very useful, sturdy, and flexible.

I understand from fellow forum user that the Cognos Datamanager will not have technical support from IBM anymore starting from 30th September 2015. If you haven’t made a choice yet for a datawarehouse solution, choosing the Cognos Datamanager could give you serious support issues in the not so far future.

In a more general sense, why do you want a datawarehouse? If you want to resolve issues with data quality, a datawarehouse can make these visible, but there are a lot cheaper ways to achieve this. And, of course, knowing about the problem, but taking no steps to tackle these, won't solve anything. If you want a sturdy, reliable, comparable, standardized and well organized data, a datawarehouse is a good option. However, it takes time and effort. However, quite a lot of organisations use the Cognos Datamanager. Migrating to another environment is a costly and potentially risky undertaking. I expect that a lot of Cognos Datamanager applications will probably be in use for many years to come. Some useful dinosaurs, such as COBOL, still survives. I think the Cognos Datamanager can easily go that way too.

• Data modeling
• Back end delivery options
• End user device options
• Report designer
• Scalability

There've been no improvements since implementation.

• More graphic options
• Its UI needs to be more 21st century

I've used it for 10 years in various versions.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It's poor.

It's fair.

It was straightforward.

We used an IBM partner who were good.

Look at the TCO not just the sticker price.

No other options evaluated.

1. Read
2. Try
3. Ask
4. Repeat

There are too many features I like in Cognos to mention, but the most valuable one is a tool has a new set of features called Cognos Insight. It need a separate article to talk about.

As a consultant, I have seen many cases where Cognos has helped organizations to increase business performance, and support managers in decision making.

The main improvement required is to help users with the full vision about the product according to their need. Also, the scale of the stuff on their website that is hidden needs to be changed. They also a need technical person who is very interested in the product, and understands it. The technical stuff is improving too fast, and the IBM lab is working too hard.

I have been using it for more than five years.

I can't remember any issues I have faced that I have not been able to resolve through their website.

I believe that Cognos is the most stable BI environment.

Cognos has the most scalable options in the market. It has options for all, from personal users, to the most complex enterprise organizations.

Customer service is fair compared with the abilities and size of the product.

I would rate it as 7/10 as it is rare to find unknown issues that have no resolution, but if you find one, or you did something wrong, and try to get help it will take some time.

I used Microsoft BI and I switch to Cognos when I found that I wasn't able to satisfy some customers needs.

The setup now is straightforward. The complexity decreased by time until it reached a very good level, but it gets far too complex for advanced setup.

We also looked at Microsoft BI.

Before you start, request advice so you can select the most suitable option for you. You should do this because there are too many options in this product and you may pay for features that you will never use.

The molap cube file is valuable.

We shared the molap cube file, which means can do analyses on their desktop.

Cognos is a good product with bad performance. We had licenses for all the features but users almost exclusively used the molap cube file.

I've used it for 12 years, since v7.

It has poor integration with other IBM products. In v7 (not in the IBM family), I overrode their upfront UI to integrate it into a websphere portal. In earlier versions, I still find these kinds of problems.

Almost all the time, we have a problem with Cognos stability and even our maintenance vendor can’t do anything to resolve it.

I think Cognos have problem with their dispatcher performance. In v7, I overrode their impromptu options, to catch performance requirement, while in v8, again, I had to override their dispatcher management with our code. Finally, in v10, we didn’t make any changes to improve Cognos, and now our users leave it.

It's good.

We are more expert than they are.

We used Infobeacon and now we are using Cognos and Microsoft BI. We are currently looking for a better product and are evaluating Tableau.

In 2003 It was very complex, and we must survive by ourselves because we can’t find any technical support for us.

We always implemented it through a vendor, but until now, we are more expert than they are.

We evaluated Microstrategy as another option.

Quality of data, flexibility and the performance of the tool(s) are the critical aspects of BI. Test the critical aspects by doing a proof of concept using a huge amount of data.

• Jobs
• Schedules
• Auditing
• Report Studio

Cognos gives a consistent single source answer for many users to retrieve easily. It allows for prompted value, so many questions can be answered.

Auditing the SQL to determine if there are any particularly slow points. Also allowing jobs to send email notification when complete with links to all the reports within the email.

Seven years.

There are always some errors, but typically user errors.

It is pretty stable, but bad queries can cause problems.

No issues encountered.

6/10 as they usually get back quickly but rarely have a solution.

6/10

I used MicroStrategy before, but I changed jobs because Cognos is a bigger company and would have more job opportunities.

It is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take an expert to set up, but consultants will try to make it seem more complex than it is.

We used a vendor team. They talked a good game, but I would rate them at a 6/10.

Don't know, but it's not cheap.

It's not as good a MicroStrategy for data analysis, but better for static reporting.