IBM Cognos Reviews

New project to leverage enterprise-wide reporting and analytics. Serving as a standard report and application needs as well as any self-service BI needs.

Numerous large data sets (more than 150 MIO records) are in the data warehouse, self-service BI required (self-serve analysis), Netezza as back-end and Cognos Analytics 11 as front-end.

• Extremely fast solution using IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes. Aggregate aware querying providing a fast-on-fast solution (in combo with Netezza). In addition, the interactive viewer of Cognos Analytics and dashboards provide for a unprecedented experience of key users with their data, enabling them to change visualizations on the fly, applying different sorts, filters, etc. This enables them to do further analysis than what is possible with a predefined application.
• Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive.
• Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.
• Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc.

• Dynamic Cubes provide fast analytics through aggregate awareness querying on aggregate, fact tables.
• Dashboards providing an easy interface to build interactive dashboards. 
• Watson Analytics suggests visualizations, which helps users to build visualizations for data exploration.
• Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers.
• Interactive viewer enabling live interaction with standard reports, filtering, sorting, changing visualizations, etc.

• Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool.
• Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures (also being aggregate aware).

Response times should fall in seconds, not minutes. Visualizations should be strong. System should be capable of guiding users in their data exploration.

Cognos Business Intelligence (BI) 10.x is a web-based, integrated BI software suite owned by IBM. It provides a toolset for reporting, analysis, scorecarding and the monitoring of events and metrics. The software consists of several components which are designed to meet the different information requirements in a company.

I have many clients using Cognos for their ad-hoc query and standardized reporting needs. It fits the category of an “enterprise” business intelligence platform very well. It also integrates seamlessly with IBM’s Cognos TM1 financial performance management solution for corporate planning, budgeting, and forecasting needs.

One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability. Its flagship Report Studio component allows BI developers to transform data in many ways, create pixel perfect objects and standard reporting applications.

One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics. This is something IBM has recognized and addressed in order to more effectively compete against other leading visualization products like Qlik Sense and Tableau. They have made major improvements in their latest release of the Cognos v11 platform also known as “Cognos Analytics”. This version of the product has been redesigned with a more intuitive interface and offers complete guided and business self-service capabilities designed to quickly identify and gain insights from your data.

I have not experienced many issues in terms of stability. The product is fairly stable, especially if you are keeping up with the latest releases of upgrades and fix packs.

With the proper end-user training and internal support, the product seems to scale well. As stated before, it fits the category/need of an “enterprise” business intelligence platform very well.

If you pay for IBM software technical support and work with a “supported” version of the product, then support is usually very helpful. Depending on how business critical the case is, they are fast in their response times.

I work with customers who have multiple BI solutions in-house. I position Cognos where I see fit, utilizing the application for its strongest assets and where I see the most value-add.

Depending on customer needs, complexity and size of the BI environment, the initial setup can be tailored to either being very straightforward or robust/complex.

If you are going to invest in a reputable quality BI solution, be prepared to not be frugal in terms of pricing/licensing. IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market.

Many organizations are using a blend of different BI solutions and there are many products/solutions on the market today. I encourage my customers to evaluate different products. Based on their business/project needs, they can then choose the best solution that fits their criteria and culture.

I would give the same advice as I would with implementing any BI tool/solution. Focus on building a stable and scalable foundation that’s built to last and also intuitive to the end-user. Place an emphasis on data governance/quality, change management and continuous product training for developers and consumers. This is extremely important when implementing any new BI/Analytics technology.

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.

It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports.

It forced us to look into the data warehousing of our entire existing products that we were using to better evaluate data retrieval.

It takes a very long time to learn the product. It requires specialization for different functions. It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it.

Eight years using different versions.

No.

No.

Not applicable.

It was quite complex.

Learn the overview of the product first before the investing time and effort on features which you may not use.

This is an all-in-one solution that provides reporting for a lot of different reports and visualizations. It provides one tool that works for 90% of situations.

Cognos has a lot of tools such as:

• The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers.
• The Query Studio that is aimed at business users.
• The Event Studio that is used to check conditions before triggering an action.
• The PowerPlay transformer to build cubes.
• The Analysis Studio to report against cubes and others such as planning.

So it covers a lot of the areas that are required for reporting. As far as visualization is concerned, Cognos is trying to keep up with the others. Cognos version 11 has a lot of new charts but still not as good as the other tools that are dedicated for visualization like Tableau, Spotfire etc.

This product has helped to provide basic reporting for reducing manual work as well as some dashboard visualizations for executives to see what's going on in one glance.

Performance and visualizations are aspects which need to be improved. Cognos doesn't have all the charts that are available in the other tools such as Tableau, Spotfire etc. Cognos is trying to keep up with the others and Cognos version 11 has a lot of new charts but still it has a lot of room for improvement.

Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode). I think these are the two main reasons why a lot of companies are using Tableau/OBI/ Spotfire even when they have Cognos.

I have used this solution for eleven years.

Cognos is very stable, after tweaking server settings.

Cognos has different licensing models. PVU license limits CPU and there is need to add that for more users.

It's a mix. Some support agents are very good while some don't have a clue of what's going on.

We did not use any other solution.

The initial setup is very straightforward. The basic installation is very easy and you can start reporting.

Make sure to assess the number of concurrent users and the type of users, i.e., studio vs viewers. Also, there is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties.

This product is easy to install and you can start reporting off. However, it needs a lot of tweaking according to the different setups and also has a lot of components that need different skill sets.

It's all consolidated in one solution, so it doesn't have a few things that the other small tools do better.

Cognos is easy to learn and I see a lot of the new consultants in this field, more than in any other BI tool. However, becoming an expert takes a lot of time.

FM – though it lacks some of the previous version's features: dimensional and sorting.

We're thinking about a different product.

There are a number of things, but I would start with just a few...

Framework Manager:

1. Query subjects sorting in a model are absent.
2. DMR model in FM is currently decommissioned, but basically needed.
3. Cubes – requires my time to explain, but cannot work properly with a big dimensions.

I've used this solution for three years.

Yes.

Yes.

Bad.

Not applicable.

Some issues, though not many.

Not matching the product quality.

Started working with what was used by the organization.

If you choose a Cognos product, be aware to wait until at least the second or third fixpack appears.

There are several valuable features of Cognos. In this review, I will be concentrate more on the Automating Cube Building and Deployment without any manual intervention.. even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'.

IBM Cognos Transformer cubes are one of the widely used OLAP data sources. Normally, a PowerCube contains calculated and aggregated data that is organized as dimensions and measures, which can be viewed and analyzed in Analysis Studio and Report Studio (versions 10). Users find it easy to use and quick to access aggregated summary data which help in better analysis. IBM Cognos PowerCube data is static, and building a PowerCube naturally becomes a repetitive process. At my work place, cube data is refreshed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Since the data volume and the number of dimensions and measures in the cube are big, the build process takes 3-4 hours to complete. In order to ensure the most benefit from the cube, having a scheduled and automated cube build is essential.

Deployment and Activation a new feature which was introduced in version 8.4 that allows the cube file to be automatically copied over to a specified local or network location, activated and/or archived depending on the requirements.

Basically one needs to set the Deploy properties on the .mdl file using Transformer.

– Deployment Strategy: select the “Copy to available locations, then activate” option. This will copy the cube .mdc file to target server location.

– After building the cube: select “Automatically copy and active”.

– Deployment location: add a path for production and/or a place that .mdc file should be deployed too. You can select multiple locations. For instance, the same cube may be deployed to both the Development and Production servers.

– Check “Enable automatic PowerCubes deletion”

Once the changes are made, we need to use the Cognos Transformer command line is capable of performing certain modeling and cube-building tasks on the Windows, UNIX or Linux platforms.

The general syntax for using windows command line is as follows:

cogtr -n -lcognostr10=

Notice that after the cube build completes, Transformer automatically deploys and activates the newly generated cube. It doesn’t require any changes to the data source connection. The live cube swap is effective immediately.

Just a few more steps (on Windows environment), you can now schedule the cube build via a job scheduler application, such as Windows Scheduled Tasks. Here once the ETL process is complete, a Flag file would be sent to Transformer box to trigger the cube builds. You will not need to manually rebuild or deploy the cube any more as everything will be done automatically on schedule.

- Need improvement towards Visualization.

I've used Cognos in some form or the other past 10+ years

Yes, since we were implementing VB Script batch file process on the Transformer server. We had to do some testing to ensure success. Later worked like a charm.

Cognos is extremely stable... Unless someone develops and tries to run a huge data set.. Its all about educating users.

No

Customer Service is good and quick answering.

Yes, Technical Support is very good to some extent.. They would try the initial knowledgebase solutions ( which we would have already tried) .. but they do work along with us to solve issues... sometimes it is quick, some time it takes time reproducing the issue and solving..

Always been using different versions of Cognos - right from the Impromptu.

It was a mix of both.

In-house. I have implemented most of the solution specific to user requirements.. One of them is the automate cube build and deployment.

Cognos Analytics, or CA for short, is an enterprise level reporting platform. At the most basic level you can use it to build reports. But taking a broader look allows you to see that it covers a vast amount of ground through many different modules.

The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools.

Framework Manager allows you to build relationships between physical database tables, and even a ROLAP solution. Great for detailed or minor aggregation.

Transformer is a basic cube modeling software. Best for building dimensional models over smaller datasets (a few dozen GB), it works extremely well.
Dynamic Cubes is a more advanced ROLAP solution that has intelligent aggregate, query, data, and result set caching. In my experience this works best with larger data, in the TB or PB ranges.

Data Modules. This is an advanced user level modelling. It allows end users to build and cache datasets which they can then use in ad-hoc dashboards and reports.

On the reporting side it, again, has a few tools.

Report Studio is the professional reporting environment. This allows BI Developers to create advanced reports, dashboards, analytical applications. While it does take some training, the effort is well worth it.

Dashboards work against the data modules. T allows advanced users to work with the data modules they've built previously to build dashboards. Users can quickly drag in fields directly onto the canvas to make graphs, prompts, data grids. Interactivity is automatically defined (but can be defined manually) to allow users to filter one group of objects by clicking on another.

Story is a tool used to create presentations. You can use elements from other reports to make a slide show or "guided journey".

There are a few other tools, like Event Studio which can be set to automatically perform actions based on query outputs. There is a graph building tool that allows you to build graphs that developers can use in their reports.

As a consultant, I've had the pleasure of working with a very wide range of clients with very specific needs. So far, Cognos has not failed to meet their needs, and surpass their expectations. The beautiful thing about Cognos is its flexibility.

One client, a government research organization, uses the tool to track specific incidents. When certain criteria occur, specific reports should be emailed. An SMS should be delivered. The researchers needed to be able to view the incidents from as many different perspectives as possible, and quickly go from one perspective to another without losing the context. Dynamic filtering and linking prevailed here.

Another client wanted to expose Cognos to the general public, embedding report outputs in their own portal system. This required a heavy security presence, with redundant levels of data and object security. Even if a report developer did leave a hole in the report, malicious end-users would never be able to get any data they weren't permitted to see. Cognos withstood the probing of professional pen-testers with admirable results.

As with all products, I have run into bugs; some severe enough to derail the project until IBM provided a patch. IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner. Fortunately, show-stopping bugs are few and far between.

I have worked with IBM Cognos for many years, across several different product versions. The most recent being IBM Cognos Analytics 11.6.

Cognos presents interesting scaling opportunities. Additional servers can be loaded and unloaded as needed, and there are many ways of routing report runs. For larger organizations, it's possible to optimize report runs by having one branch of an organization always run reports from a single server.

Support is not cheap, and consultants (hello!) generally charge a few appendages. This is, of course, a matter of getting what you pay for.

The best piece of advice I can give to companies considering Cognos is to factor in the cost of training or consultants. Cognos, despite what some sales people may say, is not an easy tool to start with. It requires a hefty amount of investment to implement. But with proper training, and working with the tool's strengths, the return is well worth the price.