IBM Cognos Reviews

The report designer, Report Studio, is incredibly versatile and easy to use. Reports can be served in multiple formats, such as PDF, HTML, Excel, or even as a JSON data source. The meta-modeling tools allows for a complex security system which can automatically filter data, in any report or ad-hoc tool, based on a user's roles or groups.

The use of ad-hoc tools, like Workspace, has reduced the number of design requests, freeing the reporting team for more pressing and difficult problems.

Dashboards are slow compared to other tools currently on the market. Visualizations are improving, but still difficult to get just right. The default mapping solution included is only useful for the most basic requirements.

9 years.

Some users are afraid using adhoc tools. Migration projects which fail to take into account the different strengths of Cognos, demanding 100% pixel perfect migrations, will often fail.

The querying engine occasionally chokes on very large or complex datasets. Poorly designed meta-models can also cause trouble. Cognos will occasionally create dump files that can be larger than a gig each.

International distributed systems can have latency and consistency issues. The default round-robin load balancing works well, but the admin needs to remember to configure the weighting correctly.

Customer Service:

Enhancement requests take a very long time to get into production. IBM works on the "squeaky wheel" principle.

Technical Support:

IBM technical support can usually solve any problems. If it's not something they've run into previously, it can take a long time to get a straight answer. They provide hotfixes for really urgent bugs that are affecting production.

Most of my clients are long time Cognos users. Some of them are migrating away from Hyperion Brio because of lack of support.

At the most basic level, Cognos is a "next-next-next" install. While this works for very simple, low usage systems, in order to really get the most out of it it requires a great deal of tuning.

As a consultant, the vast majority of my clients hire out the development team. A few times I've been brought on to provide additional temporary support or training.

Hire experts to come in and do the initial setup and meta-model. Learn from them. Get training. Training is invaluable when it comes to using the various tools.

Cognos Reports, Dashboards

Fast KPI tracking, Complex data analysis for decision making.

Versatility, Performance (speed)

5 years

It's hard to change built-in options.

Rarely had issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Customer Service:

Depends on the support structure.

Technical Support:

Depends on the support structure.

In-house team

Well, I liked the split Cognos- used to have 2 differents products for reporting. One very friendly for user (query studio) and other one more for super user or tech user (Report studio).
The AdHoc reporting (query studio) are very easy with query studio but this happens only if the package is well done by the modeler. The most valuable feature in query studio is Develop/ Reduce group in a list. For Report Studio, the possibility to create report from SQL Query direct, easy, simple and efficient :)

We reduced IT requests for reporting and improved reports standards. High quality reports.
We used templates and reuse components so it's easy to change lots of report quickly.

Administration and security.

I'm with Cognos's products since 1997. (First products I used was Impromptu, Transformer and Power Play). Last version I have used is 10.1 (Query and Report Studio).

Well, developing packages makes deployment a bit long in case of emergency.
Also, for performance issues, avoid to connect the package's data on OLTP databases. Always use de-normalised databases, (ODS) or OLAP databases.

Server not responding some times

No

Customer Service:

With IBM it is too complicated, I used a partner.

Technical Support:

With IBM it is too complicated, I used a partner.

No

Not too complex.

At that time I was implementing with the Cognos team and in-house. People from Cognos were very experienced.

I can't remember. But now I'm looking to go around looking at BI Tools to advise my customers which ones are best according to theirs needs. I will go deeper in Microsoft (for the price), Tableau for the visualisation and easy deploy and of course Cognos because it can do all BI needs (but it's expensive).
PS. Cognos Express is welcome with lower licensing price.

If you are looking for an all integrated, scalable and high quality reporting tool, Cognos is a solution to consider. But, the price is a factor too.
You need to define well your needs for reporting, chose the right component you want to start first and start small.

Drill through reporting, ease of use, ease of design, and functionality.

This BI tool helped automate and centralize production reports. It provided intuitive navigation for end users. It helped to positively change the reporting landscape while addressing customer needs

It definitely needs better data visualization. I needed to couple Cognos with Tableau to provide a complete reporting environment.

2 years for Cognos BI series 10; 2 years for Series 8 and 7 years for Series 7

No, the company I worked for had a Corporate user (many end users) license which enabled license costs to be minimal.

Customer Service: I did not work directly with Cognos support.Technical Support: I did not work directly with Cognos support.

The IT group in my organization was responsible for the set-up. On version 8, Cognos seemed very unstable. Cognos 10 was much improved.

In house

IT group handled this aspect.

Yes. Our company had many BI tools to choose from but Cognos was the most sustainable and scale-able.

There are many BI tools out there to choose from. Cognos might be the right solution for you but this decision needs to take into consideration the size of your user group, the cost per license, the functionality needed for your reporting infrastructure, and the in-house BI knowledge of the BI tool that you choose.

Graphical interface is good

Ad hoc reporting

Basically, our support to enhancement was our corporate team. Where the Oracle Quality module has more flexibility to develop internal tables to gather data. The Cognos BI team doesn’t have this dynamic approach to do the enhancements. So, Corporate decided to replace this application with Oracle OBIEE.

5 years

No

No

Yes, When it’s integrated with Oracle for Quality reports

Customer Service: 9 out of 10Technical Support: 9 out of 10

Never before.

Straightforward

In-house

No

Consider other alternatives.

Data Manager is a great ETL tool, Query Studio is a great tool for ad-hoc queries, simple but powerful. Report Studio is a bit more complicated but also very powerful for complex reports.

Dashboards and reports bring all the needed figures to our direction on a daily basis and it's available from various devices (apple, android, windows 8.)

The reporting tool can be tricky and you'll need to get used to it but it's worth the effort.

4 years

Yes, there may be compatibility issues but as long as you read the requirements and do not apply the latest Fix Pack blindly as soon as they are released, it's pretty stable.

Yes, as with many 3-tiers applications you rely on a web server, an application server and a database, so for example- a huge load of connections can bring down the app server when using LifeCycleManager, a great tool for assistance in the upgrade process.

Not so far.

Customer Service: Better, but I must say that it's not as good as my experience with Oracle's.Technical Support: Good.

I tried (very briefly) Business Object and QlikView but my company has been running Cognos since the beginning.

As usual it requires a lot of reading and it can get a bit complex since there are a lot of different technology involved (web server IIS or Apache, app server TOMCAT, java and Oracle RDBMS as the content store).

It was a mix, the vendor usually has good skills on the subject. Support can be sometimes be disappointing.

Yes, we did look at Microstrategy, Qlikview and Oracle BI which may have been good choices if we started from scratch but there was no point in changing the tool we were already using.

You need the resources and the budget but it's a great set of tools that can bring value to your business.