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Birst vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
Birst
Ranking in Reporting
32nd
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (14th)
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
315
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.6%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Birst is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.7%, up from 25.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

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.
RH
The dashboards and Visualizer are valuable.
The administration module was built using flash. It is clunky and outdated. By “clunky” I mean that it sometimes becomes confused and throw an error when I’m making a change. To clear it up, I will have to log out and log back in. We knew going into our purchase that the UI for the admin was not the strongest part of Birst at the moment. Power users often depend on the web services to complete admin tasks and the web services are robust. Birst knows they need to improve this area of their system and have been working on that. They began improving usability overall with the the front-end UI that report writers utilize and did an excellent job with that so I have good reason to expect the admin module UI refresh to be solid as well. From what I understand, the planned changes are more significant than a simple UI refresh also.
Amol Rane - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics
The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain."
"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."
"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."
"The most interesting feature of Microsoft Power BI is that it's very user-friendly."
"The initial setup is simple to do."
"The amount of customization that you can do is good, and it's relatively straightforward to do."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Its data visualization provides the user the ability to quickly look at data and focus on relevant information, allowing them to make an immediate decision."
"The DAX coding language is good for creating formulae."
 

Cons

"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution."
"I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance."
"Licensing could be improved."
"Microsoft BI typically connects to a database, often SQL Server, but it's also capable of connecting to multiple databases, pulling data from them, and allowing for data consolidation. You can then aggregate and generate dashboards and reports from this combined data. Personally, I wouldn't claim to have the expertise to suggest significant changes or additional features, as it functions quite well as is."
"Maybe they can enhance the UI a bit. Right now, it's very basic, I would say, compared to the MicroStrategy or Qlik."
"There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution."
"The integration with third-party products could be more stable."
"The solution could improve by providing more free visuals. A lot of them are very nice but you have to purchase them."
"The integration in Microsoft BI could improve for other solutions, such as Oracle DB and PostgresSQL. Additionally, the reporting from the databases to Microsoft BI should be in real-time and the overall performance could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"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 is averagely priced."
"Please negotiate on the price and purchase the latest version."
"Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually."
"This product offers good value for the money."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."
"Costs less than most competing solutions."
"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? ​"
"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."
report
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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
Educational Organization
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
No data available
Educational Organization
42%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Learn More

 

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.
Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.