IBM Cognos Reviews

We have one separate team who are handling IBM Cognos, however, I've also worked on it. We use it for auto mails and keeping reports just to provide data extraction activities on daily basis.

In Cognos, we use is the auto-mail functionality. 

The dashboards are great.

Our team, the BI team, has implemented Qlik as well, and currently, we are using Qlik for visualization. It allows for many visual reports.

For smaller reports, the summary works well.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

I don't manage much in the backend, however, we see a lot of issues in Cognos in terms of storage as well as a lot of failures on a daily basis. 

There are separate people managing all these things. It's my understanding that these issues are very frequent. There are some gaps in Cognos. For example, our data volume is huge. Whenever our users try to download reports, the main user used to avoid data extraction requests so that users could actually go into Cognos and download the reports. When it comes to the size, long reports take a lot of time and the performance is not that so good. Finance or marketing reports, for example, are longer and take longer to download. 

When it comes to analytics, we'd like to see some manual data capabilities. 

The scalability could be better.

They should provide improved visual reporting. 

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability is okay, however, sometimes we are not able to utilize all the features due to some performance issue.

The scalability of the solution isn't ideal. There are a lot of aspects of scalability that need improvement. 

We have 700 users on the solution.

In my organization, I didn't directly interact with IBM, however, it is my understanding that support is good whenever you are facing trouble. Our team had connected with them and had success. 

Postgre and Cognos were chosen initially. Right now, for the BI tool, the company has migrated to Qlik. We are still looking for a database.

The deployment was easy and very straightforward. The deployment was not difficult. 

I'd rate the solution at a four out of five. 

We have around three members who are maintaining Cognos. On a daily basis, they monitor schedules and all those things, such as maintenance, storage, et cetera.

We handled the implementation internally. We did not need any outside assistance from integrators or consultants. 

I don't deal with the licensing aspect of the solution. I can't speak to the exact costs. 

We currently have plans to switch to Qlik. It's better for visualization. 

We're an IBM customer and end-user.

With less volume, potential users should definitely go with Cognos. It's great for automating emails and other smaller duties. Cognos is better in those endeavors.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I am using  IBM Cognos for enterprise reporting.

The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting.

In IBM Cognos it always takes too long to build enterprise reporting, but I don't think that making another product can be solved.

Tableau and PowerBI is a tool, but enterprise reporting is a platform where you put all kinds of information together.

I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page.

I have been using IBM Cognos for many years.

The stability is good.

IBM Cognos is very scalable.

One of our customers has 1,000 users using the solution and 300 unique users every week running reports.

IBM has a good support when you have concrete technical questions.

My company decided to build a data warehouse and they wanted to have the best reporting solution on top of it. That was the reason we are using IBM Cognos.

I started with Portal Play and then moved to IBM Cognos which made the installation straightforward because I have known the history of these solutions and I had a lot of time with it. However, the challenge is to get people to build their own reports and to understand data.

The time for installation depends on a lot of factors. The last time we did an integration with an API, it took five months to build the dashboard, in IBM Cognos it took one hour. It took five months to get the data and one hour to build the dashboard.

We did the implementation ourselves. We used the Azure platform to receive the data from an API and we send it up to IBM Cognos for the database.

For maintenance of the IBM Cognos service, we have one person using 12 days a year, for patching or the install of new releases.

There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost.

My advice is if you are able to solve your problem with an easier tool than IBM Cognos, you should use it. However, if you have a complex problem and you want to distribute a lot of information about the users it is important to get the users to build good reports, then I think is the best tool in the market.

I rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

Cognos includes a framework manager concept that allows you to build a framework model. Once you've built the model, you have to release the package and then it's available for reporting.

Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos.

I have been using Cognos for a few years.

In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager. 

Cognos is scalable.

Installation and configuration-wise, Cognos is more complicated than Tableau and Power BI — it takes more time. You have to install and configure it, then make the data available before you can do reporting. With Tableau and Power BI, the initial setup is very quick; you can just directly connect to Excel or a file on the desktop. Unlike Cognos, Tableau and Power BI eradicate dependency on a framework model. 

Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cognos a rating of eight. 

• Data modeling allows for better management and flexibility in exposing data from a single data model to diverse users.
• Flexibility of customization allows for designing custom solutions with ease.
• Scalability: It is very easy to add/remove a node in the Cognos cluster.

We have several reports that users access on a daily basis. We have also created multiple custom solutions to access reports from within an external application, as well as execute and deliver reports in a batch to a network location.

I think that IBM has done a great job with regularly improving this product and keeping up with the competing products. A couple of areas of improvement could be made in alerts for the application monitoring. It is hard to set up alerts when a servicer becomes unresponsive. The other improvement would be in improving the audit capabilities (including the database) of the application. The audit database is somewhat complex in developing good system usage reports.

I have used it for eight years.

I encountered stability issues, but it was more a problem in version 8. Starting from version 10, the stability issues have significantly reduced.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. Cognos scales very easily and we have several options for scaling the environment.

Technical support is 6/10, more for the IBM partner from which we purchased the Cognos licenses. The challenge has been that most of the time, when you purchase it through IBM partners, because they are not the developers of the product, they have to go back to the IBM support and get the information and then relay it back to their customers; that adds extra time to solving the problem.

We have used this solution from the beginning, as it was part of the ERP purchase option.

Initial setup was straightforward. Cognos was very easy to install and configure and the documentation provided by IBM was very user friendly.

Cognos licensing is comparable to other competing products. IBM provides several licensing options such as named vs CPU licenses, and it is better to understand the current and future reporting needs before opting for any licensing option.

IBM Cognos was part of the ERP bundle that we purchased. Cognos was part of the package and was sold through an IBM partner.

Understand your current and future BI needs. Understand the information/insight you are looking to get from your BI application. Understand how you would calculate your ROI on your BI investment. Tool selection should be the last step in the development and deployment of any BI environment.

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.

• 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.

Our primary use cases for IBM Cognos are operational and other reports. 

The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson. 

I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information. IBM Cognos could be improved with some analytical solutions that could help us make predictions.

I have been using IBM Cognos for five years, I think. 

We have 700 individuals using the solution and plan on increasing that number. 

I think the IBM Cognos tech support is good. 

I don't know what the initial setup was like because I wasn't with the company at that time. 

I can't say much about the licensing costs because I am not privy to that information. However, I do know we are sharing a global license. 

On a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, I would give IBM Cognos a nine for overall performance. 

Report Studio is most valuable to me, mainly for the active reporting feature as our CEO loves the instant reporting.

The product takes away the need for mundane reporting via Excel spreadsheets freeing up the business areas to concentrate on growing the business.

Every product on the market can be improved, but I would like IBM to stop trying to compete with the smaller players in the market, rushing out versions that nobody wants to migrate to because the version seems unstable.

I’ve been using the Cognos product since 2006; since the old ReportNet days.

We did not encounter any specific stability issues. Like every product, you need to carry some sort of monthly maintenance to make sure that the platform runs smoothly.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. As long as you are following the guidelines set by IBM you should be ok.

If you have a contact within IBM then things are great, but some of the IBM partners (in my opinion) don’t offer the same high standard, (there are gaps in their knowledge).

We never used another solution.

The installation was quite straight forward. But the webserver setup can be a bit tricky.

Recently, IBM have changed the way they package the licensing (which so far seems to give us a better understanding of what we are paying for). The product can seem quite pricey compared to other suitors in the BI arena.

We looked at Microsoft SSRS. But on look and feel, it didn’t give us that professional outlook.

If you are new to the product and want to implement a reporting tool that will be free from issues, get an experienced consultant.