Knowage vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

Knowage vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

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 Knowage is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 4.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Jul 27, 2022

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.

Easy to customize, cross-platform capable, and very stable

AbdulshukoorMohammed

General Manager Information Technology & Enterprise Applications Manager at OXFORD HOLDING

Sep 14, 2021

The advantage of the solution is we don't need to have any third-party tools to connect to the different databases. It has in-built features such as data mass and data warehousing. The big data concept is also included. It's very easy to implement graphical reports. We don't need to have a data…

Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product

MukeshMathur

Business Analytics Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

May 3, 2024

As per my opinion, because SAP is a very worldwide product or very useful product, I'm not talking about improvement, because I just think that SAP can focus on the pricing factor. The cost of this product, so every company is not suitable to use it. Because of the very huge amount of integrations, every organization can not use it. So, it is a very costly product. Secondly, from an educational point of view, So, it is not easy to adapt to each and every IT person because some, most, in India, most cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, or Chennai, only metro support the educational platform for that. So, just my suggestion is SAP should focus on every user; it should be easy to pick the product and, easy to carry, easy to use in every life. So, SAP must try to improve in this part.

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."

"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."

More IBM Cognos pros

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

"We can easily do our own customizations."

"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."

"The embedding feature is great."

"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform's most valuable features are it has a great presentation layer. We can develop the presentation layer with drag-and-drop capabilities. For end-users and for our interns in the company can create reports and do their data analysis processes or works by using the objects that we created on the presentation layer by themselves."

"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good."

"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."

"It is more user-friendly and easier to work with the report creation part, creating reports out of an established universe. Maybe a business person could liberate the existing universe and create a report on top of it, as well. So that's one cool feature."

"It is solid and stable."

"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."

"Business analytics are the most valuable features of this solution; I don't have experience with the other functional features offered."

Cons

"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."

"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."

"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."

"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."

"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."

"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 solution's support could be better."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."

"The dashboard components could be better."

"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."

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features."

"There is still a lot to be done on the mobile side to make Web Intelligence truly seamless between the desktop and mobile versions and I would like to see SAP pay a lot more attention to this."

"The performance could be improved, like when we extract a large amount of data."

"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."

"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."

"I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement."

"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."

"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."

"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."

"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."

"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."

"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."

"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."

"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."

"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user."

"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."

"It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6663

BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

May 25, 2013

SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI

A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

13%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Hospitality Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...

What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making ...

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Knowage

Compared 67% of the time

Tableau vs Knowage

Compared 18% of the time

Pentaho Business Analytics vs Knowage

Compared 14% of the time

More Knowage Competitors

SAP Analytics Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Essbase vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Looker vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Cognos

Download IBM Cognos product report

Knowage

Download Knowage product report

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform product report

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

SpagoBI

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects

Learn More

IBM

Knowage

SAP

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Knowage (formerly SpagoBI) has a 14-years history. The actual release is the 6.3.

Knowage offers FULL ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES, with a special focus on big data analytics and comprehensive support to rich and multi-source data analysis. Knowage provides different modules, each one focused on a specific domain but mutually combinable (Big Data, Smart Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Location Intelligence, Performance Management, Predictive Analysis). Moreover, Knowage is an OPEN SOURCE solution: the source code is freely accessible, everyone is allowed to join the community and build the own business solution to ensure strategic decision-making and improved productivity.

Knowage suite is supported by Engineering Group, the leading Italian software and services company, with about 10,000 people and more than 50 offices worldwide. Maintenance and support services (such as trainings, migration support, proof-of-concepts, etc) are provided by Engineering Group (KNOWAGE Labs) under subscription.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.
Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.
Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

Reviews from Real Users

SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."

A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization.

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

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

Knowage vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform