IBM Cognos Reviews

Itis easy to use, and web based.

With BI in place, our staffing department is able to review staff assignment and quickly adjust resources in near real time.

There is room for improvement with the GUI. The product is a web-based application; it is easy to build basic style. However, at a certain level, it lacks support for advanced web programming capabilities, such as JavaScript, Ajax, etc.

I have used it for 12 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. The product is built to be an enterprise solution.

Technical support is 8 out of 10. The product has quite a few components. When issues arise, it is not very straightforward to identify root cause, thus difficult to find right support resources for help. My personal experiences are, if you know where the issue occurs and ask the right question, IBM tech support typically can get the answer for you very quickly. Otherwise, it might take some time to get things straightened out.

Other tools were used before, but Cognos provides better functionalities.

It was easy to set up; good documentation.

Cognos offers middle-market and enterprise solutions. The middle market is a great value package for companies with less than 500 users.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated OBIEE and SAP Crystal Reports.

• Understand your needs first.
• Bring in good experts for initial implementation.
• Gradually grow internal resources to be able to do self-support.

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.

I am an IT project manager. We take the commercial data of one of our operators and use this information traffic as our ticketing service. These are very traditional and static needs that are being deployed.

We are able to automate annual reports.

We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time.

it avoids wasting time in repetitive actions such as monthly, quarterly and annual activity reports

I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers.

It would also be nice to be able to export the dashboard. Some dashboards can be deployed and seen by everyone. But the problem is, I have to go through the Cognos server to define each user. There is no flexibility to do it as a report that can be published as a web report or something like that for many users.

I think the solution is stable.

We utilized an IBM expert for support.

Implementation was done by an expert, we did not have any issues with the setup.

It is pretty expensive.

We looked at Tableau. This tool is fast and easy to use because it uses the desktop. Tableau is better for the advanced users in my opinion.

I think that Cognos is very efficient for the matured enterprise.

I also believe that the functions for the BI are not mature yet. I would advise asking for assistance whenever implementing a new function so that they can properly handle the configuration, adjustment, and tuning of the servers which will make it easy on you as the end user.

One of the features I find most valuable in the latest release is the Visual Storytelling functionality and being able to tell stories visually with your data. While stories are similar to dashboards in that they use visualizations to share insights, they differ as they provide a description over time and are actionable in nature.

This product has improved the way our organization and our customers truly interact with information, really putting the capabilities into the hands of the key decision makers and not having to rely on IT resources that do not have the business knowledge to do this for them; true self-service analytics.

The key areas for improvement are the administrative capabilities that are largely the same from the series 8/10 versions and the ability to use Framework Manager packages and models on new dashboards, etc. The introduction of data sets in the latest version demonstrates that this functionality is going to be offered around the corner.

While IBM Cognos Analytics has been on the market for under a year, I have been using the Cognos platform for nearly 15 years and have seen it continue to grow and mature.

I have not encountered any stability issues. The IBM Cognos platform has been around a while and with the right people doing the install/configuration/management of the environment, it is pretty rock solid. IBM is coming out with new minor releases every 2-3 months, which is great for customers as you can tell the commitment to excellence with the product is there.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support has been pretty responsive. I run an IBM Cognos professional services organization and we become the front-line support for many of our customers.

I have been installing/configuring IBM Cognos BI environments for years and I will have to say the documentation for the first iteration of IBM Cognos Analytics 11.0.0 was not complete and created a few challenges. The subsequent releases have been more complete and the latest version is pretty solid.

Pricing and licensing really comes down to what customers are looking to achieve, as there are lots of options out there. IBM Cognos Analytics offers a fully managed SaaS Cognos in the cloud offering, where a customer does not have to deal with infrastructure, maintenance, administration, or provisioning. This is a great option for many SMBs out there. For other larger customers, it comes down to the number of users, what roles they will have, and internal IT capabilities that they have. One of IBM Cognos’ greatest strengths is the ability to cover the whole spectrum of customers at a price point that is acceptable to all.

I led a large vendor selection process at a former company around 13 years ago where I had 10 vendors come in and do a product demonstration based on our business requirements and from there, I was able to narrow the field down to Information Builders and SAP BusinessObjects. For the flexibility, self-service capabilities, and in-memory OLAP functionality, Cognos was the clear winner for us.

I am a strong believer in having the right tool to do the right job. I believe IBM Cognos BI has been and continues to be a solution that I have seen great results in and continue to recommend. However, I recognize that there are strengths that other vendors bring to the table and solutions that could be a better fit in some circumstances.

It does a fantastic job of promoting true self service and allowing line of business users the ability to load their data without the need for IT involvement. Non-technical people can easily upload their data and start to perform analyses of their business creating attractive dashboards and asking key questions based on empirical data.

We use it as our main reporting tool for implementing BI solutions. We have been using the whole Cognos suite for a while now.

The upgraded visualizations and more user-friendly interface have increased the acceptance rate of this tool.

• Ability to connect to a number of databases
• Framework manager modelling
• Data modules
• Building ad hoc reports from CSV files.

The latest visualization doesn't give much flexibility to the users in terms of what can be changed. For example, there are fixed palettes. The dashboard interface needs tremendous improvement as it's not very fast as compared to Tableau and the likes.

It has improved things in a lot of areas, such as in better decision making for the company. People are relying more on the reports coming out of Cognos, or a BI tool, rather than their own spec sheets. It gives them time to invest in other activities.

Developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source.

What we have noticed is that it's lacking a few things which we want, especially on the visualization side of things. We want Cognos to improve, IBM to improve. But functionally, it has been working fine.

One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map.

It's a quite stable environment. I have used technical support with the 10.1 version of Cognos, but not with the latest version. Anything after 10.1, it has become a quite stable environment.

Scalability is okay.

We were not using anything previously. We have been with Cognos for a long period of time.

But with the inquiries and the market requirements and the new tools coming into the picture, and the customers who see all these beautiful presentations, they want those tools to be implemented in the company. That's how we started looking into other opportunities.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are that the product is scalable, provides ease of use requiring less dependency on IT, and is user-friendly, providing end-users the power to actually create their own dashboards, reports, or any kind of analysis of the fly.

I was hands-on in setting up the environment for our company. It was pretty straightforward. It's a bit fiddly on a few things, if you want some extra components installed, but overall, the basic installation is pretty straightforward.

If you are looking into BI tools, you need to go through how scalable and dynamic the tool will be, and how you're going to actually use it, how the users are going to use the tool in the end. There are various tools on the market. One can do one thing and another can do the other thing. There is not much of a comparison. If you look at Cognos, or if you look at other tools, Cognos is really good when you're looking for credibility of data. But if you're looking at other aspects of usability, then it's not that great. Investigate thoroughly is my advice.

Cognos is an eight out of 10 because it's still lagging behind in some of the capabilities which other BI tools in the market are providing. Images are one of those things. Otherwise, it's really good, it does the job. Still, people have the impression that Cognos still has that dependency on IT.

Cognos is a MOLAP BI tool which covers cubes, dimensional and relational reports, along with different types of complex functions across all databases available in the market. It is a complete analytical solution including all BI combinations. Within it, Report Studio is one single powerful tool which works across all concepts like slicing and dicing, drill through, drill up and down, advanced filtering/prompts, master-detail, report bursting, and conditional formatting/rendering. Also, the advanced visualizations from versions 10.2.2 and 11 are valuable. The Report Studio feature supports all types of complex and analytical reporting, making it a useful tool.

Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users.

Risk analytical reporting has become easy as there is more compatibility. Also, in the future, a Cognos analytic version will be launched that works well with advanced features like cloud, big data and machine learning (Watson analytics).

The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions.

In Cognos version 10.2.1 RAVE visualizations are still coping to become an easy user interface for developing advanced charts compared to Tableau/QlikView (as it is a BI tool) . As of now, only active reports are available. In Cognos version 10.2.2. and 11, the analytics feature seems to be upgraded and on par with other competitive tools in the market.

I have used this product for three years.

deployment and migrations can be easily handled using clipboard or import/export method

In regards to stability, the performance aspect needs to have more enhancements.no

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

4/5

I would give their technical support a 6/10 rating (actually, it varies from 6-8 level).

IBM or any other vendor resolves documented errors but ultimately the application development / admin team should be able to identify the root cause of the issue and resolve it. IBM can only suggest best practices, so in general a 6-8 rating is quite good for any vendor. IBM has a good PMR system and a decent support reference available online.

IBM also has deals on client partnerships based on the organization licenses where they will be on field at times to help their customers (this is service may require additional payments).

We have consistently made use of the same solution with older versions.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

in-house

60-70%

The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market .

I did not evaluate any other options prior to choosing this product.

It is a BI tool that covers concepts namely BI, visualization, mobile, cube and all modern concepts.

• The ability to burst. It allows us to control the prompting activity and automate monthly reporting to our end users as we mass distribute to almost 900 end users.
• The GUI design interface is intuitive.

• We are able to rapidly communicate financial reporting and statements for reconciliation purposes.
• People are able to self serve with the provided authoring tools.

• The visualization tools have greatly improved but the active reports still need help.
• The build process of linking the variables can be a bit complex, especially for newbies.
• The ability to secure on the downloaded dataset that feeds the active report is prohibitive of its widespread use.

We have used the solution for seven years.

I would rate the technical support at about 5/10. We continue to struggle with IBM provided first or second time correct responses to cases we have open. Cases can drag on for months before resolution.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

The setup was complex. We built scripts to create and configure at a redundant server level.

The prodict is expensive.

We evaluated Oracle OBIEE and Jaspersoft.

Investigate the cloud option for savings in maintenance and patching.