Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs Tableau comparison

Microsoft and Salesforce are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.9, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7. Microsoft holds a 3.7% mindshare in RT, compared to Salesforce’s 23.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs. Tableau Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft SQL Servering Services vs. Tableau

December 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.6%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is 3.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 23.7%, up from 22.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

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.

Read full review

Gnanavel-Chakkarapani

Junior Consultant at CMA CGM

Offers useful templates but needs to improve the connectivity offered

In Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, not much of the interface part is used. With Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, its users face issues with the interface after they use Excel or create Microsoft SSIS Packages. The tool's interface is an area of concern requiring improvement. There needs to be an improvement in the product's connectivity so that the tool can connect easily with other third-party databases. In the dashboard, drag and drop functionality needs to improve, especially when compared to other tools like IBM Cognos Analytics and Qlik Sense. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is useful only for standard reports. In IBM Cognos Analytics, query studio can be used by users to drag the data and simply download the reports, so the user doesn't need to have any technical knowledge like developers. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is to be improved to offer features like query Studio, which is provided in IBM Cognos Analytics.

Read full review

ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time

When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."

"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pros

"I like Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services' automated reporting feature."

"We get good support from Microsoft."

"The solution's features are all just wrapped up in one nice easy package. I don't need a lot of toolsets to get everything I need done."

"I am impressed with the product's seamless integration. It can work with different databases like Oracle."

"We can create quality reports in real time."

"The solution is known for its robust security features."

"It is a stable solution."

"It is scalable."

More Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services pros

"Tableau is highly scalable. Now that they've introduced Hyper, you can create an extract of more than 5 million rows in minutes and then do your analysis."

"The solution is configurable and flexible. We can customize the dashboards and configure the interface the way that we want. The data can be manipulated and arranged in different ways, such as columns."

"The best use case for us is the solution's integration with Salesforce because we are also partners of Salesforce."

"The solution helps users create dashboards and analyze data without relying on IT or product teams."

"I have found the solution easy to use and the interface is very good."

"The maps and colors and interface are all fantastic."

"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."

"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"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 seems to slow down the servers."

"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."

"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."

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."

"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."

"It could have more options for themes."

More IBM Cognos cons

"It is not easy to integrate the product with other tools in the market."

"The setup is difficult because you have to install different servers."

"We encounter some barriers while trying to build a report."

"Tableau is more user-friendly because it doesn't need to do any extra programming. It has drag-and-drop functionality."

"It doesn't have quite the flexibility of a Tableau or something like that. Many users are more comfortable with Tableau and I'm not quite sure why that is right now, but it seems to be the case."

"The product could be improved by reducing the time it takes to build and deploy reports."

"Technical support is in minor need of improvement so that they can solve problems in a more timely manner."

"The complex tuning for report performance is complicated. There is a lack of native support for source code control. We often need to use separate tools like VS Code or other software to manage version control and changes in the database. It would be beneficial if source code management were integrated directly into SSRS, thus eliminating the need to rely on external tools. While CLI-based operations are exemplary, the trend is towards GUI for a better user experience. Integrating both visualization and source code management within SSRS would simplify the process for users."

More Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services cons

"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."

"When I've done presentations in the past, I've had issues with uploading the cartography."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"Lacks machine learning algorithms that you can implement using R, SPSS Modeler, and Python."

"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."

"It needs more ETL capabilities, to be able to address the end-to-end BI need."

"Tableau has so many functions, so sometimes it's hard to find the right solution quickly. I have to search multiple menu bars to find the right command."

"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

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

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The price is pretty good."

"The solution is expensive."

"The tool's licensing costs are expensive."

"The product pricing is reasonable in terms of suitable features for business."

"The solution is cheaper than its alternatives."

"The solution is free to use for developers."

"Value-wise, the solution's pricing is good for the price that we pay."

"The pricing is high."

"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."

"The cost of the solution should be improved."

"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."

"The license is very expensive."

"We always consider pricing when considering a new solution. We are a non-profit and price is a huge concern."

"Its price is reasonable. Everything is included in the license."

"For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model."

"I rate the product price in the Indian region a seven to eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

42%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services?

I mainly use the solution for the ease of reporting and for executive dashboards.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services?

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services should be okay if you're within the budget. We're just using open-source solu...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services?

QL Server can support the customer language in the long term, so we can use another language to build some components.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?

Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....

See all answers

What do you like most about Tableau?

Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

QlikView vs IBM Cognos

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

TIBCO Jaspersoft vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 24% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 19% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Tableau

Compared 2% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

December 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft SQL Servering Services

December 2024

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services report

Download Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

November 2024

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

SQL Server Reporting Services, Microsoft SSRS, SSRS, MS SQL Server Reporting Services

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Learn More

IBM

Microsoft

Salesforce

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.”

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.

We do business in 170 countries and are made up of 114,000 passionate employees dedicated to fulfilling our mission of helping you and your organization achieve more.

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

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.

CMS Wire, The New York Times

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft SQL Servering Services vs. Tableau

December 2024

Free Report: Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs. Tableau

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs. Tableau report.

See our list of best Reporting vendors.

We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.