Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Knowage vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
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
Knowage
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
33rd
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
20th
Ranking in Reporting
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Knowage is 0.5%, down from 0.6% 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.
AM
Easy to customize, cross-platform capable, and very stable
The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills. When we come to the integration with the single sign-on facilities, that part is very challenging. In Power BI and other tools, it's very easy to integrate with active directory and single sign-on, and identity management is very easy in other business intelligence tools. However, when it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports. The solution could be cheaper.
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

"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."
"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."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"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."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"The embedding feature is great."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"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."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"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."
 

Cons

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"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."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"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."
"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The dashboard components could be better."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"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."
"Logging capability is needed."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"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."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"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."
"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"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 ."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
824,106 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
14%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Hospitality Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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 ...
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 version...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 wou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
For those starting to use this tool, there is a free version available which is beneficial. The company also finds th...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java. The platform works with Java, and i...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
SpagoBI
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.
FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about Knowage vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,106 professionals have used our research since 2012.