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IBM Cognos vs Oracle Hyperion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

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 Hyperion
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they 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 Hyperion, on the other hand, focuses on Business Performance Management, holds 12.5% mindshare, down 12.7% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mahdi Mohaddes - PeerSpot reviewer
Good tool for data visualization but interface is not very intuitive
I am the one that builds the reports. So, it's the baseline for making any predictions for budgets and something like that. We are an international organization, so it helps us to have consolidated reports and a clearer overview. It certainly supports streamlining across our global operations. The integration of Hyperion into our existing system improved operational efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The tool's most valuable feature of the solution is flexibility and integration capabilities."
"Scalability is one of this solution's big plus points."
"This is a customizable product. Our implementation was designed to fit our needs."
"Oracle Hyperion is fairly user-friendly and not too complicated. The forecasting, it's really good. It's sometimes slow when there are a lot of users using it and we can have up to approximately 300 users using it. However, you can do it in Excel because there's an Excel add-in. This is a benefit because a lot of people do this way instead of having to go into the planning application itself."
"The most valuable features are those associated with modules and SP, IT in this space, planning, HFM, and PME."
"The platform is very easy to use from a user perspective, especially for nontechnical experts."
"Oracle Hyperion is an engine allowing you to build whatever you want on it."
"It's a very good program and it's useful for consolidation."
 

Cons

"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"Their documentation could be a little bit more descriptive at places. They don't really do a lot of How-Tos because that gets pushed through to the consulting groups. There have been some books. There is a real good one out there about how to look smarter than you are with Hyperion Planning that some people at a company called ArganoInterRel wrote. Those things do exist, but that's not in their documentation. It's basically like they'll say, "This is the field. This is what it's used for," but they don't tell you how to particularly use it in your case environment."
"Integrating Oracle Hyperion, a multidimensional database, with relational databases poses challenges due to the differing database structures."
"There can be an improvement in many regards with the dimensions, the metadata, the interfaces, as well as the integration."
"They could support machine learning algorithms for the product."
"The analytical side of the product could be better and needs to be improved."
"Oracle Hyperion generally it's quite a complex architecture that is hard to maintain."
"Hyperion has much room for improvement, especially disaster recovery. You don't have the option to choose the proper disaster recovery method. We have Hyperion and an SQL server on the backend. We have active solutions for the backend database server, which aren't working for our people. They've asked us to remove the high availability to increase application performance."
"I would like to see more integrations with third-party vendors such as BigSense and SAP. I'm looking forward to seeing more interface-related content."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"It is averagely priced."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"As Oracle's pricing is on the higher end, most businesses prefer to have their own private cloud."
"It might be considered relatively costly compared to some alternatives."
"The solution is affordable."
"The licenses cost approximately $1,000."
"Oracle Hyperion is not an inexpensive solution."
"To get a full license, which gives you access to most of the different Hyperion programs, it costs $2000 to $2500 a month."
"Compared with MSBA, it is quite reasonable."
"We pay for licensing yearly."
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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%
Government
4%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
5%
 

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...
What do you like most about Oracle Hyperion?
We can collect data from various sources, which is very useful for budgeting and planning.
What needs improvement with Oracle Hyperion?
The most important aspect for improvement is the time efficiency when handling large databases. When the database consists of several million records, the software can be slow. However, the perform...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Hyperion?
We use Oracle Hyperion for ad hoc querying and connection with multidimensional databases. It is very easy to use for combining dimensions of the database such as time, geography, and product dimen...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Hyperion
 

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.
ITNL, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd., Zaklady Farmaceutyczne Polpharma S.A., Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd., Barco N.V., SITA, McGregor Fashion Group B.V., PCCW Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: December 2024.
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