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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

"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"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."
"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."
"It is a stable product."
"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 solution is user-friendly."
"It plays a crucial role in facilitating decision-making for various organizational stakeholders."
"This is a stable and scalable solution."
"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."
"Oracle Analytics Cloud is not very user-friendly, however, it is robust and capable of performing a wide range of tasks."
"It has the best feature for data augmentation."
"The product is easily customized."
 

Cons

"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"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 tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."
"I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."
"It is expensive."
"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."
"It is less scalable than Snowflake."
"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."
"Its FAW feature has limitations in terms of usage."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
"When you implement the product on a small scale, it doesn't generate any ROI."
"This solution could be more adaptable in its application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is affordable."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"It is pretty expensive."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"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."
"It is averagely priced."
"Bottom line, the cost is really, really cheap compared to other solutions. Oracle has made a huge effort on the pricing."
"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."
"I would rate it a five out of five in terms of the value received for the price charge."
"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."
"The price is reasonable; it's quite a bit lower than Tableau and Spotfire."
"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."
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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
7%
 

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.
881,282 professionals have used our research since 2012.