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Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
Oracle OBIEE
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (3rd)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Oracle OBIEE is 4.0%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 4.3%, down from 5.5% 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.
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.
MukeshMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product
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.

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.​"
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"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."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"A great feature of the solution is its stability."
"It is easy to create a report quickly. It does not take much time to create an ad hoc report."
"Ability to create our own reports."
"It mostly supports enterprise level data. We have millions of records on a daily basis."
"It has a lot workaround in order to do the report. data blending, and getting information from big data sources."
"It doesn't have many frills and is definitely older technology, but it is undeniably a workhorse."
"It's easy to use for business analysts."
"User-friendly look and feel."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is definitely scalable."
"The solution is stable."
"The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement."
"First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are mature."
"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."
"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."
"Way of creating reports."
"Through the use of Business Intelligence reporting and scheduling features, reports are generated and automatically sent according to a schedule. This has freed up countless hours spent performing the same tasks, month over month."
 

Cons

"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The solution's support could be better."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"Oracle OBIEE only displays KPIs, but it does not include strategic objectives or display risk in a strategic map."
"From the point of view of strategic management, I would like to have a feature, perhaps a form after we get to the KPI dashboard, to be used to note if something unusual happens in the operations. That way we could record extreme KPI situations, and track why a number is very low or too high."
"Its overall organization as an analytical tool, the layout of OBIEE, is not very good."
"Supply chain and finance."
"It's not so flexible to do BI reporting directly from the data source without models. It is not that agile."
"When a large number of queries are running at the same time, the report fails."
"I would like to see Machine Learning included in this solution."
"The performance could improve and in a future release, they could provide more virtualization options."
"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
"The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."
"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"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."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"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."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"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."
"The company had twenty-five Oracle OBIEE licenses and never expanded. Price-wise, the solution is expensive."
"Be prepared to spend a lot of time and money."
"The licensing cost is based on the number of users using it."
"Compared with the other products in the market, I feel Oracle OBIEE is an expensive product."
"A person only needs to pay towards the subscription costs since it is a cloud-based solution. I use the free version of Oracle OBIEE."
"It's comparable to the current technology we're using, Qlik Sense."
"The price of Oracle OBIEE is expensive, it is difficult for a small business to afford."
"This is a very costly product."
"Its price is fair."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"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 is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"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."
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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
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

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...
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 ...
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 ass...
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 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 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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Learn More

 

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.
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle OBIEE vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.