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Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon QuickSight
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
3rd
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon QuickSight is 8.3%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Anoop Jose - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for visualization purposes but delayed drill-downs feature
Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area where we found QuickSight lacking. Especially for root cause analysis, the ability to drill down from a high-level problem to its root is crucial. Aside from that, QuickSight is a good service.
Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like that with Amazon QuickSight, you don't need to install an app to use its services. With other BI tools, you need to install the app, so Amazon QuickSight is better for me in this area."
"The graph charts, pie charts, and box plots are valuable."
"From an analytics perspective, it's really good for self-service analytics."
"Amazon QuickSight has introduced a new functionality called Q bar, which allows the user to do natural language queries and get additional insights using some built-in generative capabilities."
"The solution is very quick to turn around and integrate."
"The product is easy to learn."
"The query and dashboard capabilities are entirely good."
"One of the most valuable features of Amazon QuickSight has been the speed at which visualizations can be created."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
 

Cons

"It can be made more user-friendly as some users might find this solution hard to implement. Qlik Sense, for example, is very user-friendly."
"The cost of queries is very high."
"Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area where we found QuickSight lacking."
"Right now, you can't use Amazon QuickSight on other cloud providers, so I'd like it to have availability on other cloud providers. This is an area for improvement in the product. What I'd like to see in Amazon QuickSight in the future is a distributed centralized system where I can manage all reports in one place, and for Amazon QuickSight to become reporting as a service."
"Lacked connectivity with other third-party tools and data sources."
"I just want a few more features to be added."
"The number of features in the product is limited in comparison with the other tools in the market, like Power BI."
"The product is quite expensive because the price is too close to QlikView's prices but it does not ring as well as QlikView."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"It could have more options for themes."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Amazon QuickSight licensing model my company's on is pay-as-you-go, but I wouldn't be able to give the figures because that's handled by the finance department."
"The standard edition is free to use for exploration purposes while the enterprise edition needs to be paid for. The pricing for this solution is very reasonable."
"Amazon QuickSight you subscribe and you use the service."
"The solution is not affordable."
"I'm using a paid version of Amazon QuickSight, paying about $22 monthly. As I have yet to learn about the pricing for other tools, such as Power BI, I won't be able to compare."
"I rate the price of Amazon QuickSight a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The product pricing is better than other vendors."
"It's affordable compared to other long-term contractor business tools available in the market."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon QuickSight?
The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon QuickSight?
Competition pricing is high for query processing, however, the Data Lake cost is nominal as it is on top of S3.
What needs improvement with Amazon QuickSight?
The cost of queries is very high. Improvements in drill-down ability and evolving it as an OLAP tool would help more.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great f...
 

Also Known As

QuickSight
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com
More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon QuickSight vs. IBM Cognos and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.