IBM Cognos Reviews

My primary use case for IBM Cognos is reporting.

I work with a few organizations. IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team. For example, we know which offers work and which offers don't. We've got a very good record of that. We have the very good ability to check the meetings of the actual salespeople. When they are made, who is in them, how effective the meetings were compared to what we estimated. It's very, very good on that level.

Additionally, the budget control is very good. We get triggers once a budget is crossed. It creates and sends an email to the person who needs to know, "Hey, you're in trouble. Basically, you've crossed the line." Which a lot of times you don't realize. You have a team of 20 people and the manager gets an email if somebody has done something or there's a problem, and it gives them a very strong awareness.

IBM Cognos' feature that I have found most valuable is its ability to create very complex reports which are not available in other tools.

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.

I have been implementing IBM Cognos for over 20 years.

I think they're very stable.

IBM Cognos is the most scalable option, I think. It can handle thousands of users at the same time. If anything, the only thing you need is hardware that can support it.

This product is usually focused on medium to large organizations.

I'm really satisfied with the technical support. We encountered a couple of very unique bugs and IBM was very helpful. People from IBM found a quick workaround and then they solved the problem. So I'm very happy with it.

The initial setup usually takes a few hours.

You need a consultant or an integrator for setup. You need somebody to do it. You can't just do it by yourself.

In terms of pricing, for what you get, it's a relatively good price. It's good value for what you pay for. But you always want things for cheaper, but the price for what you get is relatively good, because everything is included. Everything, all the extra features that with other products you have to pay for, here they are just included. It's in it. You don't have to pay for sending out emails, you don't need to have an extra mail server. It's in the product.

On a scale of one to ten I would give IBM Cognos a nine.

I would suggest to potential customers that if they don't have experience, there is a lot of information on the web. There are wonderful video clips in YouTube. There are wonderful blogs. Before you decide on a solution, check. There might be something that's even better than what you thought initially. The abilities are so wide and amazing that a lot of times people take a solution which is not the best, because they do what they know and they don't think, "Hey, I can do something much better."

Make sure you know all the options before you choose one. And again, reconsider. If you checked it three or four versions ago, then check again. There are new features all the time that are changing and improving, and you can get amazing results.

The jobstreams and the ways SQL-scripts can be effectively organized behind icons.

• It gave the organization a better insight in the quality of the data, which in many ways was poor.
• It gave the call center the possibility to monitor its effectiveness and efficiency a lot better.

• The Cognos Data Manager is very datamart/Kimball oriented, and it should be made more flexible, so that it can be used for architectures like Inmon’s or a data vault.
• Some of its components are not very stable (for instance the lookups).
• The prescribed working order (dimensions and hierarchies, then fact-tables) makes implementing design adaptations a complex and risky operation: loosen one thread, and a lot more go with it, and this should me made more flexible.

I've used it roughly for more than a year.

The stability of the Cognos Data Manager is quite good. It doesn’t crash very often, but of course making daily backups of your work is a wise thing to do, as with any tool.

No issues encountered.

We only had a company provide digital training. Their communication was poor, and they worked with a call center which was totally uneffective.

I had to make do with what could be found on websites and the internet. The information IBM gives here is solid, but very technical and hard to read. Other websites have to be handled with care as many contributions are more enthusiastic then useful.

I started using Cognos Data Manager because the company I worked for already used it.

To start with SSIS:

• SSIS is a lot more flexible than the Cognos Data Manager. In the latter, the user is pushed into the direction of a Kimball datamart architecture (data marts, which in a later stage are to be integrated into a integrated solution). SSIS leaves a lot more room to the user to make his or her own decisions (and suffer the consequences of these)
• The user interface is a lot more user friendly in SSIS, while Cognos Data Manager is somewhat outdated (but can in capable hands still be used very effectively)

In comparison with large scripts in Oracle and SQL Server:

• The Cognos Data Manager provides a comparison of large scripts for a real and substantial improvement. The icons and jobstreams provide a lot of structure, and are a lot easier to read and interpret than large scripts which can be hundreds of pages long
• Functions like lookups are very nice, but not always enterily stable (which is a serious drawback in their use)
• Combining Oracle and SQL Server databases with each other is a definite strong point of the Cognos Data Manager (although no longer a unique selling point)
• The SQL-scripts are pasted behind the icons. It makes tracing errors and the logic of processes a lot easier

It had already been installed, and I got a lot of support from other people in the company. I have no experience with a vendor team.

The company I worked for got a better understanding of its poor data quality, and many inefficiences in its operations. But in their mindset, speed is everything, and precision is often regarded as something of a luxury. They got more insights, made a lot of noise about it, but made no structural efforts for improvement.

• Consider carefully if you want a Kimball architecture with datamarts for your datawarehouse. If so, the Cognos Data Manager is a good option. If not, I think you should reconsider
• Consider what exactly you want to achieve with your datawarehouse. For having a historical database, it can be quite effective. For daily control, in most cases a datawarehouse architecture is unsuitable and unwieldy. Direct reports on source systems are than a better option
• If your organisation has issues with data qualities, a datawarehouse won’t solve these. It can only make these visible (and there are probably a lot of cheaper ways to do that)

Reporting, which includes building reports out of relational schema.

This product has made enhancements in building dashboards, incorporated changes to make it easier for the business users to import and use their metadata to do analysis. That is included in Cognos Analytics version 11. It is more user friendly and in some areas, you do not necessarily depend upon IT to build reports. There is one tool like Cognos Workspace Advanced, which is the hybrid of Query, Report and Analysis Studio.

Dashboarding: Actually right now in Cognos 10.2.2, Cognos Workspace is the dashboarding studio to build dashboards. But I believe some work still needs to be done in order to compete with other tools like Tableau, etc.

Tableau has in-memory capabilities and a lot of depth in visualizations. It can analyze and display a lot of intuitive data quicker. Also, Cognos Dashboard requires more IT skill to create and maintain as compared to Tableau. However, the new version, Cognos 11, is a big step in that direction to make it more user friendly.

Dimensional Modeling Reporting: Dimensional Modeling is used for reporting where the reports can be drilled down to a detail level. It works on the same concept as cubes, except it is live. Performance is a big factor, so it requires lot of expertise to build the right kind of model with the proper aggregation level; otherwise, the performance is impacted. Plus, it requires MDX knowledge to enhance/maintain the model, because SQL doesn’t work in dimensional modeling.

I have used it for eight years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I encountered scalability issues when different users are querying at the same time or if one user is running a big report involving large query (SQL).

Technical support is 8/10.

Pricing and licensing is high. It can be lowered.

I didn't make the decision to choose this product.

It is a good product for reporting, not necessarily for dashboards.

• Robust framework manager tool for querying
• Retrieving data from disparate sources into one model
• Can be used for creating views and SQL scripts.
• IBM administration for scheduling reports through multiple outputs
• Cognos roles and permissions can be created to give specified access to reports

• We have used this tool to retrieve data from the SQL Server, SSIS packages, and Oracle tables/views.
• We have built the FM model by creating views or query subjects as needed. Different reports can come from one model. This was used for relational and dimensional reports.
• We have created cubes which were built in Cognos transformer and then used as a data source in the model. This was used for creating dimensional reports using Kimball methodology (dimensional and fact tables). The surrogate keys were built by another developer using the IBM data modeler or SQL/Oracle. The dimensional model was used to create robust dashboards using the advanced workspace.
• We have used IBM Cognos Administration to deploy the reports/packages from one environment to another. Drilling through reports was used to go down to granular reports. Reports were given access per their Cognos role or LDAP access. (MS Active Directory was set up by another developer.) Different packages, such as the audit package, can give detailed information about the metadata.
• The entire process can be created in the IBM tool from source, to reporting, to administration.

• Report Studio: While using the dimensional model package, the reporting language could be made more user-friendly.
• Cognos FM could process queries faster
• IBM configuration errors should be detailed, instead of blanket errors
• Deployment of report/packages from one environment to another could be simplified

We have used this solution for more than seven years.

I have not worked on the server side, so I can't comment about stability.

I have no experience with technical support.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

I was not involved in the initial setup process.

I was not involved in the licensing process.

I am not aware of any other evaluated solutions.

• Metadata modeling: Easy and efficient
• Reporting: Generally quick
• Online report studio: Generally works well

• Automating common reports
• Standardizing metrics and reports utilized through the company
• Enabling efficiency through reducing manual report creation via Excel
• Offline data source use

Data visualization could use improvement as many competitors offer more robust options for charts. More interactivity could be useful here.

The speed in which reports run can also be a large issue unless servers are very well appointed. Queries must be optimized in some cases.

However, overall speed hasn't been a huge issue since Cognos, Version 10.

We have used Cognos in general for eleven years, and this version for over a year.

We encountered some stability issues. Often application servers need to be recycled once a month. Unless report writers are writing very clean queries, database cache cleanups and server recycles are necessary.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10. Usually support is good, but it all depends on the technician you get. I've had great experience with some people, but less than stellar experience with others.

The one thing that has been consistent with IBM Cognos support is if you have a very large issue affecting many users, they are quick to respond and support your issue.

At one company, we switched to SAP BI/BO due to wanting an all-encompassing solution.

The initial setup was not complex. There is great documentation. It has gotten better as Cognos has matured, but some documentation isn't updated as fast as you'd like if you're utilizing one of the latest versions.

I don't have any advice about these issues.

We evaluated Tableau and SAP BI/BO.

Always plan for a scalable implementation that allows for a growing user base. Bump the server memory and processors up as much as you can so you're over and above what is suggested for each version.

Look at the IBM documentation on the server setup and organize the step by step guides for each server in a distributed environment.

Ensure that the security setup and groups are well thought out before starting.

• Good reporting features: TM1 (for planning, plans vs actuals analysis, what-if analysis) and SPSS (for predictive analysis and other type of analytics).
• Integration capabilities: broad enterprise integration feature set, useful APIs and SDKs.

Self-service analysis features have improved a lot, even with new subversions of version 10, but I feel business users can't really utilize these features as they are not too intuitive and they easily find themselves lost among Cognos Studios. Query Studio is easy to use, but you can easily reach its limits. Analysis Studio is for OLAP analysis and it's quite easy to use, but OLAP needs a predefined multi-dimensional data source. Report Studio has lots of power, but it's too complex for a business analyst to use. Cognos Workspace aims to provide some self-service capabilities, but it's good for dashboarding only. Cognos Insight has been designed to close this gap, but it's quite a new solution; therefore, it lacks some complex analysis features.

Another area for improvement is error messaging. When an error occurs, the user has two options: the user gets a message that an error occurred, logged and please contact the admin, OR you get a long Java exception that you don't understand if you are not both a Java developer and a Cognos architecture expert (so there is a big chance that you will never know why the error happened).

I have been using Cognos BI version 10 since 2011, and previous versions since 2003.

Stability depends on many things, e.g., the quality of the Cognos model, the stability of the data source, the stability of the Cognos server environment, the stability of the network between the server and client application, the amount of data in the report/analysis, etc. Stability can be increased with a good initial setup and a thorough stability test of the Cognos BI environment. But it might happen that a user receives a strange and unidentifiable error message due to stability issues.

Scalability depends on the scalability of the source database system and the BI system, as well. Cognos BI can be scaled well, but the scalability of the source database system is more important in most cases, especially when a huge amount of data should be reported/analysed.

Technical support has two levels: first-level support is provided by an IBM support partner. So the quality of the first level of support depends on the experience and the quality of service of the support partner. Second-level support provided by IBM can be slow, especially when a competent IBM technical expert can't be found in your country.

I have seen some cases when an existing BI solution has been replaced by Cognos. It had various reasons but in most of the cases, the existing BI solution was outdated or the customer was disappointed with the existing BI product or simply the IBM salesperson performed well.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the product variant itself (for. ex., Cognos has an Express version, which can be set up really easy), and it depends on the planned BI architecture as well. So it can be really easy and it can be really complex, too.

Cognos BI has role-based licensing, so think well about which BI role you really need, and whether you should buy user- or CPU-based licences.

I always advise to use the right product to your specific needs, and evaluate some other options as well. Cognos BI can be a good fit for you in one case, but it might not be the best solution in another one.

Look for a good implementation expert who can help you make it a success. And don't spare on trainings; it's a complex, enterprise BI product.

Active Reports are valuable for the organization because you can save it with the .mhtm file extension and can open it as an offline report at any time; it does not need an internet connection. Also, it does not need any further customization when you present the report for Cognos mobile, and it's faster.

Creating dashboards for sales and suppliers for about of 1.4 billion EGP of income and about 55 distribution locations

There is room for improvement regarding installation of the visualization plugin for Cognos reports to enhance the colours of your dashboards. There are plugin charts from IBM for Cognos to incorporate Web 2.0 colors into charts and also add some animation. For example, feed-in and feed-out animation to add some action to the report when you open it for first time or when you refresh the report page.

I have used it for about four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. It’s very stable; more so than Oracle BI.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. You can install other software and this product can integrate with it – for example, Cognos Metrics, Mobile, PowerPlay and Transformer. This product can also integrate with IBM FileNet, WebSphere, Cognos Data Manager, and MS SharePoint 2010 and 2013.

Technical Support is very expensive and internet resources for many issues are very poor, similar to QlikView and Pentaho. But I think Oracle OBIEE and MS BIare very good in this area.

I did not previously use a different solution, because the company bought it before I joined.

Installation is straightforward. Configuration is complex if your database is AS/400, but it’s easy if your DB is Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL Server.

I think the price and license cost is very expensive, especially for Oracle BI and IBM Cognos. It’s because here in Arab world, it depends on software houses that work for governmental projects are looking to retain their partnerships with IBM and Oracle.

I think QlikView and SAP BO are better because their licenses are available for about 500$ per user and include two years of support. However, I don’t think the QlikView reporting tool is as good as Oracle and IBM. I don’t know SAP BO because I don’t use it enough to judge it.

I use both solutions IBM Cognos and Oracle BIEE. I use either of them, depending on the business needs.

This product is very useful and good to implement, but you must know that you need good support from IBM, if you face any particular problem.