IBM Cognos vs Oracle Analytics Cloud comparison

IBM and Oracle are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. IBM is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.3, while Oracle is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.6. IBM holds a 1.3% mindshare in BIT, compared to Oracle’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 76% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 136 IBM Cognos reviews

5,536 Views
2,879 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Oracle Analytics Cloud

Read 27 Oracle Analytics Cloud reviews

3,373 Views
2,159 Comparison Views

76% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

Oracle Analytics Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

IBM Cognos and Oracle Analytics Cloud compete in the business intelligence and analytics software market. Oracle Analytics Cloud has the edge due to its user-friendly interface and advanced machine learning capabilities.

Features: IBM Cognos is known for a robust suite covering broad analytic capabilities, appealing to both technical and non-technical users. It offers strong integration features and high standards in complex reporting with tools like Query and Report Studios that enhance ease of use. Oracle Analytics Cloud stands out for its intuitive interface and speed, offering substantial predictive analysis and visualization capabilities. It efficiently consolidates various data sources with robust security, making it attractive for enterprises.

Room for Improvement: IBM Cognos could improve in data visualization and user-friendliness, lagging behind competitors like Tableau. It also experiences slower performance with large datasets. Oracle Analytics Cloud could enhance its flexibility and provide more visual options, further advancing its chart capabilities. Though effective, the cost of scaling analytics remains a concern for some users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cognos focuses on on-premises setups but also supports private and hybrid clouds. Its technical support, while costly, is valuable. Customer service satisfaction varies. Oracle Analytics Cloud provides flexible deployment options, efficiently supporting public and hybrid clouds. Users report better experiences with its customer support, appreciating faster response times and helpful resources.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Cognos is associated with high licensing and operational costs, demanding for smaller enterprises but valuable for larger organizations due to efficiency improvements. Oracle Analytics Cloud offers a more flexible pricing structure, appealing to enterprise users. Despite its higher pricing compared to some competitors, its comprehensive features justify the cost, delivering excellent long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud

December 2025

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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

136

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

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
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Cognos	1.3%
Oracle Analytics Cloud	1.3%
Other	97.4%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

reviewer2648136

EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Centralized reporting has supported university-wide regulatory dashboards and secure data access

From my experience, we use regular dashboarding with IBM Cognos for producing scheduled reports and for mandatory regulatory reporting. All our departments use IBM Cognos, with each department developing their own reports while our corporate IT team provides the data. Some people use the interactive dashboards feature of IBM Cognos, and there are also other tools in use. I think some users utilize Power BI and Tableau, but our IT organization only provides IBM Cognos as an enterprise business intelligence and reporting tool. IBM Cognos is evaluated and complies fully with all our security standards. In my opinion, IBM Cognos is very stable. It has been around for many years and many users are familiar with it, ensuring it performs well in its intended capacity. The benefits of choosing IBM Cognos, aside from cost savings, include having institutional knowledge for maintaining this infrastructure and a reliable solution that enhances developer productivity, given our team's extensive experience with IBM Cognos.

Read full review

Vaclav-Biba

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."

"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."

"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."

"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

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

"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."

More IBM Cognos pros

"It plays a crucial role in facilitating decision-making for various organizational stakeholders."

"The ability to quickly search for and access relevant data is crucial."

"The best feature may be data flow, which is used to prepare and clean data."

"It's robust. It has the ability to handle massive amounts. After reporting has been developed, there is an ease of use or a user-friendly interface for a trained workforce."

"A valuable feature is the speed of the solution."

"It's valuable feature is that it is user-friendly and doesn't require much time for understanding. The solution is stable. The initial setup was straightforward."

"Analytics Cloud allows you to merge various data types and structure data from multiple sources."

"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."

More Oracle Analytics Cloud pros

Cons

"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."

"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."

"Need improvement towards Visualization."

"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."

"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."

"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."

"I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."

"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."

More IBM Cognos cons

"They could improve the ease of developing the dashboard and interacting with it."

"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."

"As with most BI tools, the visualizations can be made much nicer. Currently, it has standard visualizations. They've been adding new visualizations, but we see animated visualizations from other vendors. It would be nice to have similar visualizations, such as the swarming visualizations, which are fairly new and very popular at the moment. I haven't seen that with Oracle. That would be nice."

"It's not a failure of the product; it's just an architectural choice. It has to do with data modeling. I'm comparing this to another product, which is Oracle's developer client and probably called Oracle BI Developer Client Tool. The data modeler, which is cloud-based, and Oracle BI Developer Client Tool, which is local or on-premises-based, both can do the same thing in data modeling. However, the cloud tool does not have as many features as the Oracle BI Developer Client Tool, which is closest to the OBIEE Administration Tool with full feature data modeling, metadata development, and so forth. In a complex environment or implementation, that is the capability that you need."

"The implementation of generative AI and machine learning should improve"

"When you implement the product on a small scale, it doesn't generate any ROI."

"At this time, dataflows cannot be shared, but I think that this should be enhanced."

"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."

More Oracle Analytics Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

"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 price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"Bottom line, the cost is really, really cheap compared to other solutions. Oracle has made a huge effort on the pricing."

"We pay on a monthly basis and it is $10 per user each month."

"The price is reasonable; it's quite a bit lower than Tableau and Spotfire."

"It is an expensive platform."

"The tool's pricing is not unreasonable or non-competitive."

"I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"I would rate it a five out of five in terms of the value received for the price charge."

"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."

More Oracle Analytics Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Insurance Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	87

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	11

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...

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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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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What do you like most about Oracle Analytics Cloud?

The ability to quickly search for and access relevant data is crucial.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 11% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SQL Server vs IBM Cognos

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Analytics Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Analytics Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Oracle Analytics Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Analytics Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio vs Oracle Analytics Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Oracle Analytics Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

January 2026

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Analytics Cloud

January 2026

Download Oracle Analytics Cloud product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

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

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.”

IBM

Oracle Analytics is a complete platform with ready-to-use services for a wide variety of workloads and data.

Oracle Analytics allows businesses to add AI and machine learning capabilities to any application—and as part of our integrated suite of cloud services to comply with data security and connected without disrupting business operations.

Offering valuable, actionable insights from all types of data—in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid deployment—Oracle Analytics empowers business users, data engineers, and data scientists to access and process relevant data, evaluate predictions, and make quick, accurate decisions.

Oracle Analytics Cloud Features

Oracle Analytics Cloud has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Intelligent search
Smart data discovery
Smart data preparation
Natural language
Auto suggest
Visualization
Dashboarding
Global transformation policies
Smart collaboration
Integrated data science
Enterprise architecture and security
Platform extensibility
Smart data connectors

Oracle Analytics Cloud Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Oracle Analytics Cloud. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Flexibility: Oracle Analytics Cloud gives you the flexibility to grow and change as your business does. At the same time, it puts you in complete control of your analytics environment by allowing you to analyze data and accommodate changing demand easily.

Scalable: Oracle Analytics Cloud is a single, centralized solution that provides everything you need in a scalable environment to support varied user requirements for your organization right now and in the future as well.

Comprehensive analytics: With Oracle Analytics Cloud, existing services are combined with new ones to deliver comprehensive analytics in the cloud. It provides everything you need for analytic agility, from fast, fluid self-service discovery to data loading and blending, inline data prep, data enrichment, automatic visualizations, data storytelling, and more.

Cost-effectiveness: The solution is cost-effective and reduces your total cost of ownership (TCO).
Innovation: Use the latest data analytics technologies, such as AI, machine learning, and natural language processing. Oracle Analytics has been recognized by industry experts for its innovations and robust architecture.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Oracle Analytics Cloud solution.

Fabricio Q., Data Analytics Manager, says, “The main functionality is great and everything is pretty standard and easy to use. It's great for consolidation and creating one source of truth. The initial setup is pretty straightforward.”

PeerSpot user, Eric B., Independent Consultant - Oracle BI Applications at Desjardins, mentions “It's really an enterprise solution. It has 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.”

Gaurav S., Vice President Credit Risk Management at a financial services firm, explains, “From a financial or bank perspective, this product is secure enough. The dashboards, analytics, visualizations, and different reports are valuable for business analytics. The AI/ML enablement is useful, as many reporting tools do not offer machine learning models as of now, without writing customized code.”

Another reviewer, Trinh P., Delivery Manager at Sift Ag, comments, "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."

Oracle

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud

December 2025

Free Report: IBM Cognos vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud

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