IBM Cognos Reviews

This version of Cognos combines a new modern interface and intent-driven data discovery, with the scalable, governed and managed architecture for which it has always been valued. Also:

• The ability to quickly get an engaging view of my data, with no scripting or SQL knowledge is a winner.
• The true common modelling layer (Framework Manager) ensures that data objects are re-usable across the business, lineage is easy to track, and reports can be protected from back-end changes.
• New releases are announced frequently, and it is constantly evolving.

Cognos Analytics allows our business the freedom of movement and self-sufficiency we require, while keeping the IT team happy that information is secure and easily sharable. A light data modelling tool allows business users to source and analyse their own data in a managed environment. This is the only tool I know of that keeps both business and IT teams happy.

As there are new releases every 3 months or so, enhancements to the new dashboards are regular being released. It would be useful though to be able to apply custom palettes, and change the spacing around each object, allowing dashboard objects to fit more snugly with each other.

We have used the solution since its launch in Dec 2015. I have been using previous versions of Cognos since 1996.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues. The architecture is scalable via the use of separate gateways and dispatchers, and can be scaled to include many servers across multiple locations.

The availability of the new Cognos Analytics community allows for global sharing of problem resolutions. As this version is evolving rapidly, finding in-depth training material can be challenging.

We switched from ‘desktop data discovery’ tools to a more stable, scalable, enterprise ready solution, to allow for secured distribution to a broad and varied audience. Cognos Analytics provides a complete toolkit from quick discovery, endless visualisation options to enterprise-scale report delivery, through any medium (e.g. call-centre LCD screens, mobile, executive dashboards, financial reports etc).

The new installation is very simple. Wizard driven installation takes about an hour. It can get more complex to install a distributed architecture, but still not more than a day or two to install it.

The initial set-up price is higher than comparative tools, due to the base server component, but can be more cost-effective in the long run for a larger user base (> 100 users). Also, all features come standard, so add-ons are not required for printing, distribution etc.

We evaluated Qlik, Tableau, Microsoft BI.

Cognos Analytics allows for many ‘styles’ of deployment, and can be done simply ‘out-of-the-box’. To get the most from the product, explore the different features. Some creativity and thought should be applied on how to engage your audience in most interesting and intuitive ways.

• The jobs, which can be used easily, to place the right SQL-statement in the required order, makes monitoring them a lot easier
• The jobstreams, makes it possible to group the jobsteps effectively, and in the right order
• the scheduler, which makes it easy to run the jobs and jobstreams at any convenient moment
• The lookups, if working correctly (they can be unstable), provide a good way to ensure referential integrity between fact tables and dimension tables

It gave the organisation the possibility to have a closer look a the data in a more organized way. If they would have had the stability to see it through, they probably would have required insights in their (in)efficiencies that greatly would have improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the core activities (it was a callcenter).

The stability of the lookups is not very good, and really needs improvement. The tool forces you in the direction of a datamart/Kimball architecture. If that is not the architecture that you want, it requires a lot of tricks to fold it to your needs. When you use hierarchies and dimensions, you are basically more or less forced into building these first, before building the fact tables. If these dimensions need adjustment or modifications, implementing these is a very complicated delicate and a faultridden operation.

The most effective way to get a sturdy result in the Cognos Datamanager, is to leave out the fancy stuff. Only use the jobs and jobstreams (and of course the scheduler to run them). Guard referential integrity by making the correct joins in the queries which are in the jobs (and putting these of course in the right order). Then, Cognos Datamanager can be very useful, sturdy, and flexible.

I understand from fellow forum user that the Cognos Datamanager will not have technical support from IBM anymore starting from 30th September 2015. If you haven’t made a choice yet for a datawarehouse solution, choosing the Cognos Datamanager could give you serious support issues in the not so far future.

In a more general sense, why do you want a datawarehouse? If you want to resolve issues with data quality, a datawarehouse can make these visible, but there are a lot cheaper ways to achieve this. And, of course, knowing about the problem, but taking no steps to tackle these, won't solve anything. If you want a sturdy, reliable, comparable, standardized and well organized data, a datawarehouse is a good option. However, it takes time and effort. However, quite a lot of organisations use the Cognos Datamanager. Migrating to another environment is a costly and potentially risky undertaking. I expect that a lot of Cognos Datamanager applications will probably be in use for many years to come. Some useful dinosaurs, such as COBOL, still survives. I think the Cognos Datamanager can easily go that way too.

There are too many features I like in Cognos to mention, but the most valuable one is a tool has a new set of features called Cognos Insight. It need a separate article to talk about.

As a consultant, I have seen many cases where Cognos has helped organizations to increase business performance, and support managers in decision making.

The main improvement required is to help users with the full vision about the product according to their need. Also, the scale of the stuff on their website that is hidden needs to be changed. They also a need technical person who is very interested in the product, and understands it. The technical stuff is improving too fast, and the IBM lab is working too hard.

I have been using it for more than five years.

I can't remember any issues I have faced that I have not been able to resolve through their website.

I believe that Cognos is the most stable BI environment.

Cognos has the most scalable options in the market. It has options for all, from personal users, to the most complex enterprise organizations.

Customer service is fair compared with the abilities and size of the product.

I would rate it as 7/10 as it is rare to find unknown issues that have no resolution, but if you find one, or you did something wrong, and try to get help it will take some time.

I used Microsoft BI and I switch to Cognos when I found that I wasn't able to satisfy some customers needs.

The setup now is straightforward. The complexity decreased by time until it reached a very good level, but it gets far too complex for advanced setup.

We also looked at Microsoft BI.

Before you start, request advice so you can select the most suitable option for you. You should do this because there are too many options in this product and you may pay for features that you will never use.

Our primary use case for this solution is reporting and analytics.

This solution has helped us in the distribution of reporting content to one hundred and fifty users. It has also helped in the management of self-service BI.

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

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

It is a quick solution and has dynamic insights. The features that I liked about the system are:

• An easy creation of dashboards with insights. The dashboards that are created, are simple for data representation. Thus, the comparisons are quite user-friendly.
• A user-friendly table structure.
• Being able to create data drill up and down quite quickly. Drilling data down and up helps to understand the insights quickly. For example, in order to analyze the sales data, we get total sales-> region-wise sales-> country-wise-> district-wise-> and store-wise. Reversely, in order to understand the product performance, we would require a drill up chart, i.e., performance at the zonal level-> country level-> overall performance.

The organization was able to:

• Reduce the reporting efforts by 50%.
• Have more insightful reports.

I find areas where some improvements will help are:

• When the data becomes very voluminous, then handling and representing it becomes clumsy.
• The type of charts are only two dimensional. Currently, the charts are two dimensional to understand the trend. Also, one needs to compare the time horizon or the volume horizon separately and it will be really helpful, if that dimension could be included.
• The reporting output/UI is quite old-fashioned.
• The statistical insights are missing or they cant be created.

I have used this solution for two years.

There were no issues in regards to the scalability.

The technical support is average.

One of the reasons why we switched solutions was due to the maintenance cost and the cost of ownership.

We looked at other solutions, namely SAP and TIBCO Spotfire.

• Advanced, enterprise-level data modelling
• Reporting
• Request routing
• Integrated security
• Auditing
• Jobs and scheduling
• Alerts and agents
• Content distribution

Centralised, balanced, scorecard-based dashboards with drill-through to detailed OLAP; datawarehouse; and operational reports keep the organisation focused on KPIs.

It is struggling to compete with the front-end ease of use and visual appeal of QlikView and Tableau.

I have used it for 14 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good (7/10).

I did not previously use a different solution.

It is a mature, full-featured enterprise product and as such requires detailed configuration/administration knowledge to set up.

Before choosing this product, I also evaluated SQL Server Reporting Services, Tableau, and QlikView.

It provides value for larger enterprises.

The molap cube file is valuable.

We shared the molap cube file, which means can do analyses on their desktop.

Cognos is a good product with bad performance. We had licenses for all the features but users almost exclusively used the molap cube file.

I've used it for 12 years, since v7.

It has poor integration with other IBM products. In v7 (not in the IBM family), I overrode their upfront UI to integrate it into a websphere portal. In earlier versions, I still find these kinds of problems.

Almost all the time, we have a problem with Cognos stability and even our maintenance vendor can’t do anything to resolve it.

I think Cognos have problem with their dispatcher performance. In v7, I overrode their impromptu options, to catch performance requirement, while in v8, again, I had to override their dispatcher management with our code. Finally, in v10, we didn’t make any changes to improve Cognos, and now our users leave it.

It's good.

We are more expert than they are.

We used Infobeacon and now we are using Cognos and Microsoft BI. We are currently looking for a better product and are evaluating Tableau.

In 2003 It was very complex, and we must survive by ourselves because we can’t find any technical support for us.

We always implemented it through a vendor, but until now, we are more expert than they are.

We evaluated Microstrategy as another option.

Quality of data, flexibility and the performance of the tool(s) are the critical aspects of BI. Test the critical aspects by doing a proof of concept using a huge amount of data.