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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
4th
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 March 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.6%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle OBIEE is 3.8%, down from 4.7% 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

"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"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."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"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."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"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."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"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."
"I like that Oracle OBIEE comes with more options. For example, more options with data security, user security, and other security. It's more complicated than Microsoft, but it gives you more options. They also added the part for machine learning, which is good."
"The most valuable feature is the openness of the solution. It helps us integrate some of our clients."
"They were reasonable in terms of price."
"It doesn't have many frills and is definitely older technology, but it is undeniably a workhorse."
"Oracle OBIEE is very easy to use. Looking at analytics, I think they have come a long way by adding new features like visualization, which is really cool."
"Ability to create our own reports."
"Oracle OBIEE is good for data visualization and analytical reporting."
"It can be used with any type of data models, such as relational lines and dimensional lines."
 

Cons

"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"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."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"One significant improvement is the need for simplification. The set up could be more intuitive. An enterprise setup with HA and DR are pretty complex and to get a robust solution one has to play around with Real Application Cluster data sources and FAN notifications as well as WebLogic clustering and external load balancers. SSO also is not that simple to set up especially if you want all your Oracle systems to use the same SSO solution, i.e., no cheating with direct LDAP connectivity."
"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."
"We were not satisfied with the support, because we could not obtain answers or solutions."
"Oracle OBIEE is a product that is not easy to implement. The product is also not easy to use."
"It's not so flexible to do BI reporting directly from the data source without models. It is not that agile."
"Oracle OBIEE only displays KPIs, but it does not include strategic objectives or display risk in a strategic map."
"This solution is weak in the data science perspective. I have past data science experience. And, I find that there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of incorporating more advanced statistical modeling into the product."
"Oracle products have a lot of complications...Oracle has a history of not really providing great support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"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."
"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"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."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"Be prepared to spend a lot of time and money."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"This is a very costly product."
"This was not an expensive product for us, although the price varies depending on conditions for each company."
"For the license in part of Oracle, my company makes yearly payments."
"The licensing cost for Oracle OBIEE is expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The cost of this solution is a little bit high compared with other products like Zoho, so reducing it would make OBIEE more competitive."
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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
57%
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: March 2025.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.