IBM Cognos Reviews

Good mix of abilities for reporting for both technical and non-technical users.

Dashboarding presentations of key metrics.

• Ability to easily manage source code and environment deployment
• Pricing model is frequently changing and hard to manage
• Maintenance fees were based on a percentage of the base cost, not the discounted price we paid which was a surprise the first year

Five years - Cognos BI 8 and 10

Because the configuration options are wide, there are typically minor issues with an installation.

Not once it is configured correctly.

No issues encountered.

6 out of 10.

6 out of 10.

Previous solution was built on an old technology and updates continue to be built over the same engine rather than an updated technology. Caused issues with programming.

Complex, many options and variations available which is both good and bad.

Through a vendor. Very good expertise.

Brief evaluation of other products, selection was based on discounted pricing at year end and high rating from Gartner.

If you don't have staff with previous experience in this product, it's worth engaging a partner you help you with installation and configuration options, training and early implementation.

• Report Studio (ability to make pixel perfect reports and interactive dashboards)
• Framework Manager (the layer between the database and the user)

With Cognos we are able to present and analyze the KPI's and outcomes our hospital needs to take decisions.

• Adding workflow functions to the reports could close the PDCA cycle
• Speed of report-execution.

7 years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Moderate,.

Good.

No previous solution used.

Initial setup can be straightforward but expertise is needed to fully benefit from the capabilities of Cognos.

One day was needed to implement the product, and this was done by an experienced consultant from the vendor.

No other solutions were evaluated.

Be willing to build up in-house knowledge of Cognos.

Framework Manager.

IBM Cognos is a Decision Supports Tool that draws an organization's picture and gives you a general scene overview of your organization.

4 years.

Yes, Report Studio's charts are not flexible size so you have to give constant size to chart.

Yes, It was the IBM Cognos mobile application server performance issue. We have to restart everyday.

No I did not.

In Turkey, IBM Customer Service and Sales strategy is very bad. Their level of customer service quality is very very low.

Their technical support method is wrong because they only give technical support to partners that are consultant firms . The partners' priority is money so it reduces the quality of service.

Now, my organization is switching IBM Cognos to OBIEE because of IBM Approaches.

IBM Turkey signed a project that is Legal Reporting with my organization but they could not finish the project. However they wanted to take their money out of the project so my organization decided to never use IBM's products.

The initial setup is a complex one that needs an administrator.

Both of them according to the project. We rated their level of expertise with POC.

We compared products with Gartner Reports.

Framework Manager is the best Metadata Modeling Tool and also Report Studio.

Report Studio.

Any area for which developer has requirements can be improved, streamlined e.g. Marketing, Compliance, Surveillance, Hotel Accounting, Casino Accounting .

• -Pulling images directly from database with Report Studio
• Graceful ways to consume / report on XML or JSON structure received as a result of API call
• Timely bug fixes

13 years.

I would say IIS configuration is more complex than expected

Possibly but there could be multiple reasons for the environment being unstable especially on virtual servers.

Not really.

It depends on sales rep. It may vary. Judging on we experienced it could be 6-8 on scale 1-10 (10 is the best).

It depends on sales rep. It may vary. Judging on we experienced it could be 6-8 on scale 1-10 (10 is the best).

No previous solution.

The first time ever setup is always more complex. After that it is pretty much "known road." Again, IIS configuration may be more complex than it should.

It has always been in-house implementation.

I do not have answer on this but in some areas it may be very high.

Yes. Business Objects, Crystal Reports (while back).

Go ahead, you will not regret.

The Reports and Query Studio functions have been very valuable.

It enables me to see trends of data we have from different angles and each end-user can run ad-hoc queries themselves.

Framework Manager, Map Manager, and Reporting Database Connectivity features should all be free.

3 years including previous version

I was unable to use oracle 64 bit client to connect with oracle 64 bit databases. However, because of Linux I had to use 32 bit anyway.

Not much

We had some minor issues with scalability.

7-8 out of 10

8 out of 10

We changed because of the offer of more features and technical support than our previous solution.

For us it was complex to do it for the first time and too much R&D had to be done. Later on it was easier. It may have been complex as it was our first time setting up the Cognos.

Implementation was done by an In-house team who learned from scratch.

Good. It helped the purpose for which we used it.

I have little knowledge of this but I think we pay for each report we deploy

We looked at three other solutions, Netezia, Xplore, and Netcool.

Go for it but it will require training.

- The ease of use and ability to create things.

- The security provided by IBM Cognos compared to other tools.

- Reduced time for answers on business panels; highly visual and interactive control without long waits.

Users used to have to wait long times to see information but can now view their information quickly and easily with IBM Cognos and also given the availability you can create your own reports.

I have been using IBM Cognos for about two years.

No, deployment is all right.

No, no problems were found.

No, no problems were found.

We were given good service, fulfilling all the requirements that were requested.

The technical support provided by IBM is good, helps you with any problems with the tool.

No.

IBM Cognos is a good tool for viewing reports, allows us to use the tool in an interactive and easy way, with the option to display it on various mobile devices.

The report designer, Report Studio, is incredibly versatile and easy to use. Reports can be served in multiple formats, such as PDF, HTML, Excel, or even as a JSON data source. The meta-modeling tools allows for a complex security system which can automatically filter data, in any report or ad-hoc tool, based on a user's roles or groups.

The use of ad-hoc tools, like Workspace, has reduced the number of design requests, freeing the reporting team for more pressing and difficult problems.

Dashboards are slow compared to other tools currently on the market. Visualizations are improving, but still difficult to get just right. The default mapping solution included is only useful for the most basic requirements.

9 years.

Some users are afraid using adhoc tools. Migration projects which fail to take into account the different strengths of Cognos, demanding 100% pixel perfect migrations, will often fail.

The querying engine occasionally chokes on very large or complex datasets. Poorly designed meta-models can also cause trouble. Cognos will occasionally create dump files that can be larger than a gig each.

International distributed systems can have latency and consistency issues. The default round-robin load balancing works well, but the admin needs to remember to configure the weighting correctly.

Enhancement requests take a very long time to get into production. IBM works on the "squeaky wheel" principle.

IBM technical support can usually solve any problems. If it's not something they've run into previously, it can take a long time to get a straight answer. They provide hotfixes for really urgent bugs that are affecting production.

Most of my clients are long time Cognos users. Some of them are migrating away from Hyperion Brio because of lack of support.

At the most basic level, Cognos is a "next-next-next" install. While this works for very simple, low usage systems, in order to really get the most out of it it requires a great deal of tuning.

As a consultant, the vast majority of my clients hire out the development team. A few times I've been brought on to provide additional temporary support or training.

Hire experts to come in and do the initial setup and meta-model. Learn from them. Get training. Training is invaluable when it comes to using the various tools.