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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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
Oracle Analytics Cloud
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Analytics Cloud is 2.5%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.
Hafiz Abdul Mannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowers your entire organization to ask any question of any data—across any environment, on any device
The migration of older dash tools from the classic interface of Oracle BI prior to OAS launch to the newer Data Visualization and Oracle Analytics Cloud interfaces, including dashboards and metadata, is currently a cumbersome process. Improvements in this area would be highly beneficial. Additionally, the administration of the cloud, particularly the startup of services and linking of the WebLogic server and integrated components, takes longer than desired. In today's enterprise landscape, waiting forty minutes for the server to be operational is quite lengthy; ideally, this process should take a maximum of four minutes. It would be excellent to incorporate metadata management as an integral part of the Oracle Analytics Cloud. When dealing with integrated data from various sources, tracking data lineage and the entire data life cycle, from sources to report development and the mapping of reports to specific dashboards, should be seamlessly managed within the Oracle Analytics Cloud. This would eliminate the need for additional tools. Drawing a comparison, tools like Tableau have a feature enabling metadata management, making it easier to trace the complete data lineage of reports. Managing over seven hundred and thirty-six business dashboards, the metadata management capability within Tableau simplified the process of understanding how reports were developed, including details like associated tables, users, linked views, materialized views, data segmentations, ETL jobs, and the data warehouse stages. Enhancing metadata tracking within the Oracle Analytics Cloud layout would facilitate easy and practical management of the complete data life cycle, encompassing user accessibility and report permissions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"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)."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"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."
"The ability to quickly search for and access relevant data is crucial."
"The specific capability I find important in Oracle Analytics Cloud is that it allows the basic user to easily drag and drop data. I also like that the solution allows the user to decide what to measure and what to see in the reports."
"A valuable feature is the speed of the solution."
"It has the best feature for data augmentation."
"This is a stable and scalable solution."
"The solution can scale."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"The AI/ML enablement is useful, as many reporting tools do not offer machine learning models as of now, without writing customized code."
 

Cons

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"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 tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"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."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"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 should simplify data connectivity and modeling, making data extraction more streamlined and adaptable for diverse use cases."
"The product should improve its user interface. It should be welcoming and modern. Developers should also find it easier to build data models. Oracle Analytics Cloud needs to have better visualizations and more options in the marketplace."
"Oracle Analytics Cloud is lacking in charts. They should add more charts to it."
"Analytics Cloud allows you to merge various data types and structure data from multiple sources."
"One area of improvement is associated with more connectors needing to be added such as Microsoft OneDrive, Teradata and a few others. I think the list is limited to the top ones now."
"The solution could be more flexible."
"This solution could be more adaptable in its application."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"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."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"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."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The product’s pricing is expensive. However, feature-wise, it fits the requirements of enterprise customers."
"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."
"We pay on a monthly basis and it is $10 per user each month."
"Oracle Analytics Cloud's pricing is generally higher than that of other vendors."
"The price is reasonable; it's quite a bit lower than Tableau and Spotfire."
"Bottom line, the cost is really, really cheap compared to other solutions. Oracle has made a huge effort on the pricing."
"A highly cost-effective solution"
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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%
Educational Organization
39%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 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...
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 solution is highly cost-effective and easy to customize. The pricing is quite reasonable if the long-term benefits are considered. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. A company can depe...
 

Also Known As

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

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.
Sejong Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.