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IBM Cognos vs Oracle OBIEE 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
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle OBIEE
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
5th
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.6%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle OBIEE is 3.8%, down from 4.6% 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.
VishnuReddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles large datasets and easy to interact with and handle but performance could be better
Oracle's technical support usually recommends to upgrade when you contact them for support. They don't focus on fixing the issue at hand or providing guidance on how to do it. If you are in a lower environment, like one version down, they will blindly suggest upgrading. Additional patches are given for other Oracle products like WebLogic, databases, and apps. They fix issues and create patches based on client needs. But from an OBIEE point of view, they mostly provide bundle patches of around 5 to 6 GB that need to be applied and tested end-to-end. It's not an easy way to get small patches, and if issues arise after applying the patches, you have to contact Oracle again.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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'."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting."
"Its robustness is most valuable. It can handle massive amounts of data quickly. If it's properly configured and tuned, it can handle massive amounts of data very quickly to produce results. That to me is the number one feature."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE, for me, would be the Web Catalog. From a development perspective, I do not need any client or any software to be installed on my laptop or desktop. Everything is browser-based, so I just open the browser and start development."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly set of tools that the customer can use to develop their own business dashboards."
"It is easy to use...I rate the scalability of the solution a nine out of ten."
"Both the vertical and horizontal scalability of the solution is good. In terms of scalability, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"It doesn't have many frills and is definitely older technology, but it is undeniably a workhorse."
"I have found the most valuable features are business intelligence and reporting."
"Oracle OBIEE is good for data visualization and analytical reporting."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"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 high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"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."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"There are a lot of aspects of Oracle OBIEE that are exceptionally complicated, make things unnecessarily difficult for everyone who uses it. In terms of the integrations, Oracle needs to improve a little more, but I believe that they have tried to capture all those issues. The issues we are facing in the Oracle OBIEE 12C versions, in the Oracle Analytical Server Center or Analytical Cloud versions, Oracle has managed to overcome the challenges."
"Setup and migration are very complex. Technically, Oracle accessory is extremely complex. These days, the industry demands a kind of Excel analysis, which is very easy to install, set up, and it's very developer-friendly as well as end-user friendly. OBIEE lacks all those features."
"In terms of tech support, we have our own technicians. But, we did register for their help. When we register a call, it takes time for them to respond to us."
"For a beginner, this is a product that is difficult to learn. You cannot learn it quickly."
"Retail, Finance, Wholesale"
"We needed some technical expertise during setup."
"They should make the dashboard more intuitive."
"From the point of view of strategic management, I would like to have a feature, perhaps a form after we get to the KPI dashboard, to be used to note if something unusual happens in the operations. That way we could record extreme KPI situations, and track why a number is very low or too high."
 

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."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"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."
"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 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."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"Pricing is an area that could be improved."
"It is an expensive solution."
"In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users."
"For the license in part of Oracle, my company makes yearly payments."
"Simplifying the data integration process would save our clients considerable costs."
"All products from Oracle are very pricey."
"This was not an expensive product for us, although the price varies depending on conditions for each company."
"The licensing cost for Oracle OBIEE is expensive."
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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
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
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?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
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 OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

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.
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Oracle OBIEE and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.