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IBM Cognos vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
21st
Ranking in Reporting
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"It is a stable product."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
 

Cons

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"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."
"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."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"It could have more options for themes."
"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."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Logging capability is needed."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"The repository should be improved."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"It is averagely priced."
"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."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"It is pretty expensive."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho 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
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
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?
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...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
The organization has both options based on their needs and budget constraints. The Enterprise Edition is expensive with references to an added number of features.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The product to me is not as user-friendly as other players in the market. It also still needs improvement in the reporting module. You will need to search for deployment examples or need to have a ...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

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.
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.