IBM Cognos Reviews

• Metadata modelling using Transformer and Framework Manager
• Visualization using Dashboard

Normally for BI implementations, these are the critical aspects.

I have not worked for an organization who is a direct beneficiary of the product. I have worked for vendor companies who have implementation expertise or have worked for OEM.

• Data discovery-related features
• Visualizations
• Speed of interaction with end-user

There are no problems with these areas. IBM Cognos has been working on them, but they are not yet on par with other vendors who are leaders in data discovery. For example, features like Lasso, dynamic pivoting, etc. are not yet available.

I have used it for 11 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I encountered scalability issues while reporting across multiple data sources.

Technical support is very good.

I previously used a different solution, and switched because of ease of development and the rich set of features for most use cases.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I do not have much exposure to pricing. I understand it is on par, in terms of delivered value with respect to price, with other BI vendors.

Before choosing this product, I also evaluated Qlik and PowerBI.

Please evaluate other BI vendors available in the market to make sure that you pick the right tool for your use cases.

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.

• Good reporting features: TM1 (for planning, plans vs actuals analysis, what-if analysis) and SPSS (for predictive analysis and other type of analytics).
• Integration capabilities: broad enterprise integration feature set, useful APIs and SDKs.

Self-service analysis features have improved a lot, even with new subversions of version 10, but I feel business users can't really utilize these features as they are not too intuitive and they easily find themselves lost among Cognos Studios. Query Studio is easy to use, but you can easily reach its limits. Analysis Studio is for OLAP analysis and it's quite easy to use, but OLAP needs a predefined multi-dimensional data source. Report Studio has lots of power, but it's too complex for a business analyst to use. Cognos Workspace aims to provide some self-service capabilities, but it's good for dashboarding only. Cognos Insight has been designed to close this gap, but it's quite a new solution; therefore, it lacks some complex analysis features.

Another area for improvement is error messaging. When an error occurs, the user has two options: the user gets a message that an error occurred, logged and please contact the admin, OR you get a long Java exception that you don't understand if you are not both a Java developer and a Cognos architecture expert (so there is a big chance that you will never know why the error happened).

I have been using Cognos BI version 10 since 2011, and previous versions since 2003.

Stability depends on many things, e.g., the quality of the Cognos model, the stability of the data source, the stability of the Cognos server environment, the stability of the network between the server and client application, the amount of data in the report/analysis, etc. Stability can be increased with a good initial setup and a thorough stability test of the Cognos BI environment. But it might happen that a user receives a strange and unidentifiable error message due to stability issues.

Scalability depends on the scalability of the source database system and the BI system, as well. Cognos BI can be scaled well, but the scalability of the source database system is more important in most cases, especially when a huge amount of data should be reported/analysed.

Technical support has two levels: first-level support is provided by an IBM support partner. So the quality of the first level of support depends on the experience and the quality of service of the support partner. Second-level support provided by IBM can be slow, especially when a competent IBM technical expert can't be found in your country.

I have seen some cases when an existing BI solution has been replaced by Cognos. It had various reasons but in most of the cases, the existing BI solution was outdated or the customer was disappointed with the existing BI product or simply the IBM salesperson performed well.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the product variant itself (for. ex., Cognos has an Express version, which can be set up really easy), and it depends on the planned BI architecture as well. So it can be really easy and it can be really complex, too.

Cognos BI has role-based licensing, so think well about which BI role you really need, and whether you should buy user- or CPU-based licences.

I always advise to use the right product to your specific needs, and evaluate some other options as well. Cognos BI can be a good fit for you in one case, but it might not be the best solution in another one.

Look for a good implementation expert who can help you make it a success. And don't spare on trainings; it's a complex, enterprise BI product.

Powerful Report Studio and Event Studio: We have stringent requirements for the reports that go to investors. Report Studio helps us to deliver pixel-perfect reports in both HTML and PDF formats. Event studio is such a powerful tool: We have over 400+ reports going out every day based on different conditions; a few are periodic, a few are based on availability of data, etc. Without Event Studio, it would be a nightmare to maintain these huge jobs.

Even though I identified Event Studio as one of the most valuable features, it still has room for improvement. Sometimes events get stuck; we need to restart Cognos services and do clean up in order to clear the queue. Error messages are not that straightforward.

The other area that needs improvement is Cognos Workspace. When we add multiple reports to the workspace, the performance is not up to the mark.

Another area of improvement is ‘interactivity’. Cognos is not even comparable from the interactivity perspective with other reporting tools such as Tableau.

I have used it for over 7+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. Cognos is very scalable. We could have a distributed installation (which we are already using) with multiple content managers and application tier components; we have never faced scalability issues.

I would say technical support is good, not great. We have contacted support for a number of issues. The main thing tech support needed was to replicate the issue at their end, which is not always possible. We still have issues that tech support is unable to address.

We were using Microsoft reporting services as our reporting solution.

Initial setup was quite complex. We started with a single-server installation, and faced performance issues; then, we tried a distributed installation. A distributed installation is quite complex, especially when the requirements are high, such as AD integration, load balancer support, enabling single sign on, etc.

It is a very good product. I feel the price is OK, as it is not just a tool but it is a reporting platform.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options. However, we did evaluate a few others recently for some other requirements. We figured out that MicroStrategy is also at par (or even on a bit higher side in some features), but considering the tradeoff between the features, price and effort to migrate, we felt it is better to go with Cognos.

This is a best-in-class reporting platform. But keeping in mind the high price of this tool, it is better to evaluate it before going for it. You might not need all the features provided by this tool, in which case you end up paying more. Also, it might not be suitable for small firms.

It is very powerful, it is a lot easier to use and the new version has a very nice look and feel.

It also has the ability to simply create a dashboard and the data module lets you easily create many data models.

We have the ability to create reports that monitor the organization in a very easy way.

I have used it for one year.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 8/10.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was straightforward, especially with the new version.

The price is very low for the SaaS edition.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It can do anything; you just have to study it a bit.

Workspace Advanced and Workspace are very intuitive and simple to use for a basic user.

It improved sales monitoring, the enterprise business unit performance (costs, revenue, human resources, etc.) and other financial aspects. It also improved the responsibility for the data input into the transactional applications.

Report authoring is sometimes difficult for authors without specific computer knowledge with regard to concepts related to database, i.e., join, union, etc.

I have been using IBM Cognos BI since version 10.0 in 2012. IBM Cognos BI 10.2.2 was released on December 2014. So, I have been using IBM Cognos 10 for four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I rate technical support 7/10, because the first help response is fast, even if the whole resolution of the problem might be slow. In any case, tech support is good.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was simple. YouTube is a rich way to learn tips & tricks.

I'm a Cognos consultant. I work using only this solution.

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.

It is great for delivering self-service BI to our end users. It provides great flexibility in the types of BI output formats that can be delivered.

It has allowed end users to explore data without having to copy it into Excel first.

The upgrade process is always a challenge, as it is basically a reinstall each time.

I have used it since 2010.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support from our vendor partner is great.

We previously used Oracle Discoverer, but it reached end of life.

Initial setup was complex in the sense that there were different ways to deliver BI: relational models, DMR, and cubes. When you first start using it, it is difficult to know which is the best.

Haggle and buy near the end of IBM’s financial year.

Before choosing this product, we looked at SAP BusinessObjects, OBIEE, Pentaho, Jaspersoft and QlikView; all in 2010.

Get a good local partner or take on an experienced Cognos contractor to help get your local team up to speed and be productive.