IBM Cognos Reviews

• Scheduling options
• Bursting (each staff member gets feedback regarding their own duty shifts): We might have hundreds of report recipients who need to have their own data (and only their own data). Doing similar work manually would take very long time, or could be impossible. I guess Cognos Burst was originally designed for large sales organisations, having a need to send sales figures for certain sales reps. For example: sales rep in Asia needs his/her figures (Asia), Europe rep European figures, etc. This functionality can be used for, e.g., staff performance, as long as the data can be joined with staff IDs. In other words, with Cognos Burst, we are able to provide personalised reporting / analytics, without manual work.
• Possibility to save report output history to the Cognos portal
• Possibility to use the same report object for various outputs (e-mail, Cognos workspace = dashboard, screens)

It results in less manual work, process performance improvement and improved real-time data availability.

It is also possible to check the report utilisation via Cognos audit reports.

The tool is complex, and I would not recommend it to small companies, because you need to have expertise for Framework Model development, access rights issues, licensing, etc.

New functions, e.g., external data import, do not work as smoothly as they should. New visualisations using RAVE take a long time.

Unfortunately statistics are not available for Cognos 10.2 (as in 10.1), and that has been a disappointment, when Lean Six Sigma-type calculations are done.

Additionally, even after four years of using Cognos, it is sometimes difficult to understand how the tool works, e.g., which calculations are processed locally, etc.

I have used Cognos 10.2 for one year and Cognos 8.4 for three years.

We encountered stability issues, but most likely related to our network and AD issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

From IBM, technical support is OK; other domestic service providers also work OK, but their hourly rates are high!

Finnair has been using IBM tools for a long time, but I personally have used other SQL tools.

Our IT department has taken care of this, thus I do not know.

If you need to send scheduled reports to third parties, you need to have a PVU server.

We have had PoCs regarding QlikView, SAS Visual Statistics, Tableau, etc.

Appropriate data modelling is a must, if you want to increase self-service.

Robustness:

• The environment is super stable, once you have the right environmental resources (CPU, memory, etc.), the platform will be rock solid.
• BI on BI: You will get KPIs out of the box in the Cognos administration about the usage of your environment.
• Audit: plenty of user information regarding running, modifying reports and other objects.
• Granular security and degree of access control.
• Lots of logging information, this will help you diagnostic any issues you might encounter.

Scalability:

• You can size the environment specs and configuration from 10 all the way to thousands of users.
• You just have to add more resources (CPU, memory, etc.) or another component (Application Server, Content Manager).
• And if you have the right design and architecture, you can achieve multi-tenancy.

It is a very complete solution: versatile, flexible, robust, and scalable.

It is serving as the single source of truth, consolidating information from various systems.

At the moment ,the metadata tool (Framework Manager) is client based, meaning, you have to install the tool itself in a workstation. You will also need any ODBC/OLDB and database drivers installed on that computer to access data and start modeling. This tool design and the way it works is already outdated. Your models can get corrupted for numerous reasons; that's why it is always good to back up and save your work. The tool does NOT support multi-user development, meaning only one developer per model is allow at any given time. You also rely on the file system all the time. A cloud-based / multi-user solution would be more than welcome.

IBM Cognos and the entire suite does NOT come with any source/version control capabilities out of the box. If you made a change to a report and, for whatever reason, you want to go back to the previous iteration, you will need to restore a backup or an export; if you didn't make a backup, you will be out of luck. Same with every single object in the environment (packages, queries, security, administration, settings, etc).

They also need to take more advantage of new in-memory technology, and have better integration with other visualization tools.

It would be nice if we could use standard XML as a data source.

I have used it for 11 years.

After going to a full distributed environment (Content Manager, App Server, Gateway), we have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good, solid. They gotten better lately.

We previously used Crystal Reports; a more powerful platform was needed, plus IBM Cognos is easier for front-end/business users.

Setting up a full-fledged distributed environment is not for the inexperienced administrator. On a scale from 1 to 10, the complexity level is definitely above 7.5. You need to have low to mid-level network knowledge; need a sense of how database connective and security works. Your average system admin might be able to do a single-server installation.

Don’t be cheap; try the product and scale accordingly. Pricing is a lot more competitive these days.

It was already in place when I was hired, but I had already have seen various products, such as OBIEE, Crystal, MicroStrategy, Qlik, etc. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Make sure you try this product well before implementation.

Accommodate resources.

Also make sure your users and internal assets (administrators, developers, and architects) get formal training.

Hiring professional services is always a plus during implementation and the first wave of development.

Ability to create canned reports with some ad-hoc capability: Canned reports are important because users are able to get the data they need on a daily basis with minimal effort. However, I have found most people have been downloading the canned reports into Excel and manipulating and adding data. So the ability to have ad-hoc reporting would enable users to get at the information easier, as well as have control over what information they pull. We can provide data quality and integrity on their data sources which they would not get from pulling data randomly.

We are able to launch Cognos reporting across thousands of stores and have them access the status of their stores and products.

I would like to have the ability to drill down to the lowest level of granularity and still do it with speed. Cognos is unable to get down to the lowest level of grain in our data. The solution slows down to an unreasonable level or completely comes to a halt. So if the lowest level of grain is a single customer order or serial number level amongst millions of data points, we are forced to use other solutions to get at that data.

Also, Cognos has no ability to integrate with other reporting solutions.

I have used it for three years.

We have encountered stability issues; every so often, Cognos will hang and needs to be reset.

We have encountered scalability issues, depending on the hardware that the system runs on.

IBM’s technical support is fine.

I did not previously use a different solution; we have been using Cognos.

The complexity of initial setup depends on the hardware platform used and the level of skill of IT.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Tableau, SAP BOBJ, Qlik, and OBIEE.

Understand what level of granularity the users need and the speed of reporting. There may be other solutions that are better. Also, be aware that Cognos is not able to integrate with tools such as Tableau and many reporting solutions that would improve the product. So, you are pretty much stuck with the tools IBM provides.

Active Reports are valuable for the organization because you can save it with the .mhtm file extension and can open it as an offline report at any time; it does not need an internet connection. Also, it does not need any further customization when you present the report for Cognos mobile, and it's faster.

Creating dashboards for sales and suppliers for about of 1.4 billion EGP of income and about 55 distribution locations

There is room for improvement regarding installation of the visualization plugin for Cognos reports to enhance the colours of your dashboards. There are plugin charts from IBM for Cognos to incorporate Web 2.0 colors into charts and also add some animation. For example, feed-in and feed-out animation to add some action to the report when you open it for first time or when you refresh the report page.

I have used it for about four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. It’s very stable; more so than Oracle BI.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. You can install other software and this product can integrate with it – for example, Cognos Metrics, Mobile, PowerPlay and Transformer. This product can also integrate with IBM FileNet, WebSphere, Cognos Data Manager, and MS SharePoint 2010 and 2013.

Technical Support is very expensive and internet resources for many issues are very poor, similar to QlikView and Pentaho. But I think Oracle OBIEE and MS BIare very good in this area.

I did not previously use a different solution, because the company bought it before I joined.

Installation is straightforward. Configuration is complex if your database is AS/400, but it’s easy if your DB is Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL Server.

I think the price and license cost is very expensive, especially for Oracle BI and IBM Cognos. It’s because here in Arab world, it depends on software houses that work for governmental projects are looking to retain their partnerships with IBM and Oracle.

I think QlikView and SAP BO are better because their licenses are available for about 500$ per user and include two years of support. However, I don’t think the QlikView reporting tool is as good as Oracle and IBM. I don’t know SAP BO because I don’t use it enough to judge it.

I use both solutions IBM Cognos and Oracle BIEE. I use either of them, depending on the business needs.

This product is very useful and good to implement, but you must know that you need good support from IBM, if you face any particular problem.

• ETL
• A lot of features
• Performance

These are important to big clients with big data.

For our clients, this product helps them make decisions faster, based on high-quality data.

The new version’s web interface isn't easy to use by 'regular' users. You must have technical skills to build reports. The product is not like QlikView or Tableau, where 'regular' users can build their reports on their own.

I have used it for four years.

I have encountered a few stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was complex; many servers.

It is expensive.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated MicroStrategy and SQL Analysis Services.

You need an IT team to support the users. It is not a BI-as-a-service app.

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.

We are able to combine data from multiple sources across the organization and report on the information as a single source. This allows us to provide insights we could not easily determine before our BI implementation. It is fairly easy to use provided you have a good data structure/framework under the hood.

Our company was able to do a profitability analysis previously unavailable to us due to the nature of our data. We were able to save approximately $650k per year after cutting unprofitable areas of business.

Additionally, Cognos BI provides us "one source of the truth." Everyone uses the same data and can access the same reports, so everyone is on the same page.

The visualizations are nothing flashy, but they can be customized (with some extra work). I think the new version might help a bit with this. Report authoring can be a bit overwhelming for new users, but the new version helps with this as well.

Our company is currently on version 10.2.2, but there is a new version available called Cognos Analytics (aka version 11). We are in the early stages of upgrading to Cognos Analytics. The newer version has an updated interface that looks and feels much more modern. Charts, graphs and other visualizations are fairly basic in both versions, but you can create custom visualizations using JSON thanks to the Cognos Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE). I believe Cognos Analytics makes it a bit easier to create and customize RAVE visualizations, but I can’t confirm that because I have not tried it.

In version 10.2.2, Report Studio (used for authoring complex reports) can be a bit overwhelming for new users because of all of the buttons and options available. Cognos Analytics still has all of the buttons and options, but the interface is smarter and more streamlined. You’ll only see relevant options for the part of the report you are developing.

I've used IBM Cognos BI in some form for over 12 years.

The only issues we have ever encountered are in small details like making sure IIS is set up exactly as needed and making sure all of the images/files our company has added or customized are in the correct folder location on the server.

The product is extremely stable. Unless someone develops and tries to run a "runaway" report, we rarely have any stability issues.

We have not had to scale yet.

Customer service has always been responsive and helpful, and most of our tickets have been resolved very quickly.

They are very perficient in their work.

It is pretty straightforward, but it needs to be planned out in detail and executed a few times to make sure there are no hiccups.

I have done both. The original implementation was done by a vendor team (before I was hired), and I have since performed two upgrades myself. The vendor team was capable, but they didn't understand our needs as completely as I have come to know them.

We were able to save in excess of $650k per year using reports created through Cognos BI. In addition, we have achieved significant time savings from many of our end users. That ROI can't really be measured.

Don't hesitate to ask for a better price, especially on new licenses. The more you buy, the steeper the discount that can be offered. Also, it seems like you can get a better deal by going through a third-party vendor than directly through IBM many times.

• 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.