Amazon QuickSight vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

Amazon QuickSight vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon QuickSight is 8.3%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 4.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

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.

Helpful for visualization purposes but delayed drill-downs feature

Anoop Jose

Senior Manager - Architecture and engineering excellence at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

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.

Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product

MukeshMathur

Business Analytics Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

As per my opinion, because SAP is a very worldwide product or very useful product, I'm not talking about improvement, because I just think that SAP can focus on the pricing factor. The cost of this product, so every company is not suitable to use it. Because of the very huge amount of integrations, every organization can not use it. So, it is a very costly product. Secondly, from an educational point of view, So, it is not easy to adapt to each and every IT person because some, most, in India, most cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, or Chennai, only metro support the educational platform for that. So, just my suggestion is SAP should focus on every user; it should be easy to pick the product and, easy to carry, easy to use in every life. So, SAP must try to improve in this part.

More Amazon QuickSight pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."

"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."

"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."

"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"It is a stable product."

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."

More IBM Cognos pros

"The solution is very quick to turn around and integrate."

"The most valuable feature I have found is the low-level securities are very easy to use."

"Easily able to connect with our other services and easy to manage."

"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 ease with which it integrates with different data sources is most valuable. Especially when everything is on AWS, it is easy to connect to the data source and organize different dashboards."

"It helped the managers to visualize the data activities."

"The solution is simple to implement."

"The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there."

"The features that I have found most valuable are that we are able to build all dashboards with self-service BI and are able to provide our business users with self-service BI. We are building a repository on top of our data warehouse and building all the dashboards and KPIs."

"One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

"Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports."

"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."

"The common metadata environment means that the entire organisation has the same definition of core measures rather than these being derived in spreadsheets or specific reports."

"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."

"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."

"We are using SAP BusinessObjects because its scheduling capabilities are more powerful than those of other tools."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pros

Cons

"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."

"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 flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."

"The solution's support could be better."

"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."

"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."

"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Lacked connectivity with other third-party tools and data sources."

"You can't tell a data story as well in QuickSight as you can on others, especially in TIBCO Spotfire."

"The product has some storage and SPICE data issues."

"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."

"One area where Amazon QuickSight could improve is its formatting features for dashboards."

"I would like to see a feature that allows us to save a draft version before making it public and publishing it."

"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."

More Amazon QuickSight cons

"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."

"Factoring in total implementation and maintenance costs, SAP BusinessObjects is too expensive. If you deal with a huge amount of data, you can go with BusinessObjects. However, if you are a medium-sized company with a modest amount of data, you can opt for another solution."

"The solution can improve by having more analytical features."

"This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."

"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."

"It is not simple to use."

"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."

"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

"It is pretty expensive."

"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."

"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."

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The product pricing is better than other vendors."

"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 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 pricing is cost-effective with a good plan."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is cheaper than the other products in the market."

"A highly affordable cost structure with fixed membership and timeframe basis options."

More Amazon QuickSight pricing and cost advice

"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user."

"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."

"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."

"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."

"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."

"It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

it_user6663

BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

May 25, 2013

SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI

A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

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 version...

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

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...

What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making ...

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

Qlik Sense vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 25% of the time

Tableau vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 20% of the time

Looker Studio vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 10% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 8% of the time

TIBCO Spotfire vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 1% of the time

More Amazon QuickSight Competitors

SAP Analytics Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Essbase vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Tableau vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Download IBM Cognos product report

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download Amazon QuickSight product report

Amazon QuickSight

November 2024

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

October 2024

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

QuickSight

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects

Learn More

IBM

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

SAP

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business analytics service that makes it easy to build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and quickly get business insights from your data. Using our cloud-based service you can easily connect to your data, perform advanced analysis, and create stunning visualizations and rich dashboards that can be accessed from any browser or mobile device.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.
Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.
Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

Reviews from Real Users

SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."

A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization.

Sample Customers

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.

MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.