IBM Cognos Reviews

• Metadata modeling: Easy and efficient
• Reporting: Generally quick
• Online report studio: Generally works well

• Automating common reports
• Standardizing metrics and reports utilized through the company
• Enabling efficiency through reducing manual report creation via Excel
• Offline data source use

Data visualization could use improvement as many competitors offer more robust options for charts. More interactivity could be useful here.

The speed in which reports run can also be a large issue unless servers are very well appointed. Queries must be optimized in some cases.

However, overall speed hasn't been a huge issue since Cognos, Version 10.

We have used Cognos in general for eleven years, and this version for over a year.

We encountered some stability issues. Often application servers need to be recycled once a month. Unless report writers are writing very clean queries, database cache cleanups and server recycles are necessary.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10. Usually support is good, but it all depends on the technician you get. I've had great experience with some people, but less than stellar experience with others.

The one thing that has been consistent with IBM Cognos support is if you have a very large issue affecting many users, they are quick to respond and support your issue.

At one company, we switched to SAP BI/BO due to wanting an all-encompassing solution.

The initial setup was not complex. There is great documentation. It has gotten better as Cognos has matured, but some documentation isn't updated as fast as you'd like if you're utilizing one of the latest versions.

I don't have any advice about these issues.

We evaluated Tableau and SAP BI/BO.

Always plan for a scalable implementation that allows for a growing user base. Bump the server memory and processors up as much as you can so you're over and above what is suggested for each version.

Look at the IBM documentation on the server setup and organize the step by step guides for each server in a distributed environment.

Ensure that the security setup and groups are well thought out before starting.

It is an enterprise solution. It provides scalability, reliability, security, and performance for large scale organizations. Without these features, it would become a useless tool for large organizations.

The tool identifies trends and anomalies before it is too late, i.e., before the end-of-the-year results. This prevents customers from getting angry and provides savings opportunities.

For versions 8 and 10, I would like to see better visualizations and geo-mapping.
Version 10 has out-of-the-box charts and maps that are very outdated, look old, and are static (not interactive).

There seems to have been major improvements on visualizations in Cognos Analytics (Version 11).

I have used this solution since 2001, with versions 6.6.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Sometimes technical support can be hit and miss. However, IBM has some very good technicians.

I used a different solution in a prior organization. They switched from Cognos to Business Objects. The decision was made due to the ERP provider (Epic) having some pre-built BI solutions. In order to keep the certification, my organization had to use their reports.

Cognos has come a long way. Fifteen years ago, the installation and setup was very complicated.

It is not difficult nowadays. However, the tune-up is still tricky.

Clearly define the levels of access and user groups to give access to tools and data. It is hard to change once something is in place.

The reporting feature is the most valuable feature.

For Cognos, reporting is the widely used feature for both my clients and for most of the US-based banking organizations.

The product is the main reporting tool for our clients.

I would like to see improvements in mobile reporting. When it comes to mobile/offline based reporting, Cognos is not really capable of handling medium to heavy data volume.

The above limitation has been hampering its penetration into health care and other industries which are heavily dependent upon mobile devices for day-to-day operations.

We have been using this solution for over five years.

No stability issues. The product is one of more stable reporting solutions.

No scalability issues. Scaling is fairly straightforward.

Technical support is quite satisfactory.

The initial setup is very straightforward for a technical person.

If you need enterprise grade reporting, Cognos is a very economical solution for organizations.

I have never been involved in the decision making for selecting reporting tools. I have been on the report development side using Cognos for multiple clients.

The product is very strong for an online reporting based solution.

However, if someone is looking for complex mobile based reporting, they might want to weigh other options for their organization.

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.

• Active Reporting: Users can access the reports offline.
• Visualization: IBM Cognos has a variety of charts. It has options to customize any kind of chart using the JSON editor. This helps clients to visualize and analyze the data in a very effective way.

This product has a wide variety of options to present data. The solution has improved our organization in the following ways:

• Builds different kinds of report like lists, crosstabs, and charts.
• Sends the report output to users.
• Offers mobile dashboard options. Client executives and directors can pull the reports to their mobile phones. They can view all kinds of data related to their organization.

I would like them to reduce the cost of the user licenses.

We have used this solution for over six years.

We sometimes have to restart the application.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

I used the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. I switched to IBM Cognos because some of the customization options were not available in that tool.

The installation can be a little complex. It depends on the environment. If it is a Windows environment, the setup will be easy. If it is a Linux environment, it will involve scripting.

If the organization is big enough, I would recommend this product.

We evaluated other options, such as Tableau.

The product has a wide range of data presentation options. If an organization has too much reporting to do, then I would definitely suggest this product.

Almost all of the features are valuable. We have users who fit into different stacks of reporting capabilities.

Every day-to-day decision is driven by data. With this tool, we are able to provide it to relevant parties. They are happy with the data and the way it is presented.

We have users who can build ad-hoc reports on their own. They don't have to reach out to technical teams. This reduces dependencies and eliminates the turn-around time.

I would like to see more robust scheduling capabilities. Advanced audit information should be readily available, rather than pointing us to use a SDK each time.

We have been using this solution for eleven years.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 4/10. IBM technical support should be improved and their turn-around time should be reduced.

We have used in-house tools before. However, we switched to Cognos because we needed something readily available and catered to different user bases.

The installation was pretty straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation that comes with it. It covers everything.

It’s an enterprise tool and different stacks of tools are beneficial for small, medium, or large companies.

We looked into Business Objects, Actuate, and Microsoft SSRS.

You need to know the details of the product to love it. This product caters to all sizes of companies and easily accommodates growing companies. It can be used across an enterprise.

The solution connects to all data sources easily. There is an express and an enterprise version.

As a consultant, I build complete business decision reports with Cognos.

For the current dashboard, it would be nice to have a better layout and more functions.

We have been using this solution for fifteen years.

Each product that I have worked with has bugs, and Cognos is no exception. There will be new releases that will fix these bugs.

Scalability is fine. I never came across any major issues

IBM has a complete knowledge base and support setup.

The installation was straightforward.

Pricing and licensing have many forms and possibilities. Take a good look at the number of users and the profiles needed. This will increase or decrease the price accordingly.

I worked with several BI products. The choice depends on the business size and preferences.

Check all BI products, such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Cognos. Check the pros and cons before making the choice.

The most valuable features are activity reports and visualization. Visualization is fast and very powerful for a quick answer. It provides an interactive user experience.

It allows manually derived reporting via the DB and excel dumps to automated reports and dashboards.

In the report studio, the basic functionality requires more development.

I have been using this solution in different companies for over 10 years.

It is not very user-friendly with unstructured or direct DB connected data.

No scalability issues, but the data retrieval times of live data can be horrible.

Technical support was good until IBM took over.

I wasn’t involved with installation directly, but the consulting group set it up for us and supported it, so it was OK.

It is very costly, now that IBM has taken over.

Depending on one’s needs, I would push for Tableau more than this solution.

There are plenty of other cost effective and efficient solutions available, such as Tableau, cloud based solutions, and big data options.