IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared IBM and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #7 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 3.8% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #10 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 134 IBM Cognos reviews

7,418 Views
3,983 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 14 Oracle Essbase reviews

138 Views
108 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

Oracle Essbase

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Reporting (4th)

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

IBM Cognos and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Cognos is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 3.8%, down 4.3% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.2% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

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.

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Prithwish Kumar Ghosh

Manager at Capgemini

Handles a huge amount of data at a time and offers good processing speed

You will definitely get bugs, for sure, with every version that comes. Oracle is active in creating fixes, and they release patches. If you are using Oracle Cloud and the infrastructure is owned by Oracle, you don't need to worry. They will push the bug fixes themselves. When we use PBCS or EPBCS applications on the cloud, they handle those things. It might be a downtime during the weekends for 30 minutes, but it's a very stable area. You don't actually use Essbase when you use PBCS or EPBCS. It is in the backend, and things are happening there as well, for sure, but you won't get to see the console. You'll just see the front end, the planning part.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."

"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."

"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."

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

"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 most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

More IBM Cognos pros

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"The solution can handle a large volume of data."

"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."

"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."

"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."

"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."

"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."

"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."

"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."

"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."

"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."

"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."

"They should provide improved visual reporting."

More IBM Cognos cons

"The initial setup could be simplified."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"It's an expensive product to use."

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"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."

"It is averagely priced."

"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."

"It is pretty expensive."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"It is a costly solution."

"The solution is expensive."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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

Educational Organization

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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...

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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?

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?

It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

If I got the opportunity to work with Hyperion, which is the best product, I would definitely go with that. The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be bett...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

We provide complete ownership of this application to Walmart projects. In the UK system, we support and develop for the Asda account, known as Eltham. We provide installation and support to over 50...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 34% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 19% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 12% of the time

Tableau vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

December 2024

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Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

December 2024

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Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Essbase

Learn More

IBM

Oracle

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.”

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

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.

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

December 2024

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