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IBM Cognos vs Oracle Analytics Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
137
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (5th)
Oracle Analytics Cloud
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Analytics Cloud is 1.3%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
Oracle Analytics Cloud1.3%
Other97.4%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Dishan Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at McKinsey and Company
Efficient reporting with strong scheduling and time-saving features
The best features IBM Cognos offers include scheduled reports, calculation and transformation of raw data, and flexibility with the Excel format, which all stand out as especially valuable. I rely most on scheduling, calculation and transformation, and Excel flexibility, and these features affect my daily work by allowing me to use this tool for reporting to make and schedule reports easily. We are able to schedule over 300 reports in a day, where we also schedule them weekly to over 40 executives. Additionally, IBM Cognos transforms raw data into insights and analytics, enabling our data team to make great insights and data-driven decisions easily. IBM Cognos has positively impacted my organization by enhancing our data analysis capability which has helped us in our business planning. It is a great tool for reporting capacity, enabling us to update all of the leadership management about our business in one report. Auto scheduling and report generation are strong features that save a lot of time. Precisely, we have been able to save about 60% of our time from IBM Cognos Analytics, which helps us to make data decisions easily while also saving a lot of time.
Vaclav-Biba - PeerSpot reviewer
BI/DW Consultant at Neit Consulting
Enhanced analytics through metadata-driven reporting with enterprise-level visualizations enables competitive advantage
In my opinion, what can be better in Oracle Analytics Cloud these days is primarily about pricing. I am from the Czech Republic, which is our main market. The situation here in the Czech Republic is that Power BI rules the world. There are two main reasons for this. First, speaking about the Czech Republic specifically, and second, the Power BI pricing model appears cheaper compared to Oracle Analytics Cloud. The pricing model in Microsoft is more straightforward. With Oracle, you have the data visualization and enterprise lines, and to put it simply, both appear as more expensive options for customers trying to get oriented in the segment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"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."
"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."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"It plays a crucial role in facilitating decision-making for various organizational stakeholders."
"The AI/ML enablement is useful, as many reporting tools do not offer machine learning models as of now, without writing customized code."
"The technical support services are good."
"The technical support is excellent, and they respond quickly."
"It's really an enterprise solution. It has a dashboard, like standard dashboarding functionality. It also has reporting capabilities for producing pixel-perfect reports, bursting large volumes of a document if you need to. It has interactive data discovery functionality, which you would use to explore your data, bring your own data, and merge it with maybe the data from an enterprise data warehouse to get new insights from the pre-existing data. It has machine learning embedded in the solution. If you're new to machine learning, it's a really good way to get into it, because it's all within this platform, and it's really easy to use."
"The most valuable features of the solution are dashboarding and data visualization."
"The product is able to compare with other tools on the market; it has everything you need, everything you can find in other tools such as Tableau and Power BI, and additionally, it has history, so you get a robust solution with support."
"The product is easily customized."
 

Cons

"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"The solution's support could be better."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"We are generally satisfied, but I am not certain if IBM Cognos meets every feature request from users since we only provide IBM Cognos as our standard and do not maintain infrastructure for other tools."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"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."
"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."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"It is less scalable than Snowflake."
"The pricing model in Microsoft is more straightforward. With Oracle, you have the data visualization and enterprise lines, and to put it simply, both appear as more expensive options for customers trying to get oriented in the segment."
"The interfaces could be improved and some in-memory operations could be built in."
"The learning curve should be improved, and I'm uncertain if tutorials are readily available or easily accessible. We may have resorted to looking on YouTube for such information. Having easily understandable documents or guides for new users would be beneficial. AI integration would be an interesting feature to add in the next release."
"The product could benefit from increased flexibility compared to other vendors."
"It is expensive."
"Its machine learning and visualization capabilities can be improved. There should be more visualization options."
"One of the major issues is that Oracle Analytics Cloud is not user-friendly, requiring skilled people with proper certifications to work with it successfully."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty expensive."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"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."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"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 of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"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."
"I don't know the exact cost, but its pricing was good. Its pricing was competitive. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing."
"The price is reasonable; it's quite a bit lower than Tableau and Spotfire."
"I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"It is an expensive platform."
"Oracle Analytics Cloud's pricing is generally higher than that of other vendors."
"The product’s pricing is expensive. However, feature-wise, it fits the requirements of enterprise customers."
"We pay on a monthly basis and it is $10 per user each month."
"I would rate it a five out of five in terms of the value received for the price charge."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise87
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
 

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 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?
Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve. The more I use this platform, the more ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle Analytics Cloud?
The ability to quickly search for and access relevant data is crucial.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Analytics Cloud?
The pricing of Oracle Analytics Cloud is quite expensive, fitting for a premium tool. However, the cost raises expectations for partner support that are not met, especially for smaller companies wh...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Oracle Analytics Cloud Service, OAC, Oracle Data Visualization, Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service, ODV
 

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.
Sejong Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.