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AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) vs ThoughtSpot comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
39th
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (4th), Data Governance (34th), BI on Hadoop (4th)
ThoughtSpot
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (11th), Embedded BI (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThoughtSpot is 1.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…
Avirat Gaikwad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's great not having to write SQL queries but they lack custom visualization functionalities
The majority of issues we have are similar to those every visualization tool faces in the initial phase. Something like a customized visualization, which a lot of companies build for Power BI or Tableau isn't available in ThoughtSpot, or there are minimal options. That's something that I'd like to see in the next release. ThoughtSpot is essentially a query-based search engine where you can type your query and get the answer. If you don't have your data prepared well, your user won't understand what this search engine is for, or they won't get the right answer. So, it doesn't have that powerful query. We usually create models in DBT and then get that into ThoughtSpot as a worksheet.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"The ability to do ad hoc explorations of data has been most valuable."
"ThoughtSpot takes the modifying of existing reports out of our hands."
"The scalability is good."
"I like ThoughtSpot's search capabilities. You can also create custom analytics even if you aren't an experienced data analyst. We have users with no data analytics experience making some of the dashboards we've created, copying components, and customizing them to their specific use cases."
"The initial setup was very straightforward."
"It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"I would say the return on investment is good. Whatever we invested, we got results. We have been finding it easy to use and onboard new use cases."
 

Cons

"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"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."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"If I want to order columns, this feature is not there."
"The most difficult thing I found is that it only deals with the files and does not have direct connectivity to databases."
"A customized visualization is lacking in this product."
"In terms of features, I'd like to be able to pivot data - for example, going from rows to columns. It's not easy to do."
"The dashboards could give you more ability to fine tune the appearance. You get a great deal more control over how something looks in Power BI than you do in ThoughtSpot."
"The one area of the solution that I do hear needs improvement is on the visualization front."
"ThoughtSpot is a fairly new product, so some usability aspects aren't as mature as we'd like them to be. One example is their organizational methodology, like how objects are organized in their dashboards inside the product. They're all on a flat list, which works if you've got five or 10 dashboards. However, it's insufficient when you're a large enterprise with multiple groups looking at the same dashboards. It isn't organized well."
"I would like to see more flexibility in adding the pins. Currently, we have four different sizes in which I can add pins, but I would like to be able to resize my pins."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"Pricing should be improved."
"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
Information not available
"I give the pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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...
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What do you like most about ThoughtSpot?
It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?
I like the pricing structure. I get billed by how much data I put in, not how many people are looking at the data. It...
What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?
We'd like more flexibility with the calendar as our fiscal year does not align with the calendar year. We have to loa...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

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.
Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.