IBM Cognos Reviews

Robustness:

• The environment is super stable, once you have the right environmental resources (CPU, memory, etc.), the platform will be rock solid.
• BI on BI: You will get KPIs out of the box in the Cognos administration about the usage of your environment.
• Audit: plenty of user information regarding running, modifying reports and other objects.
• Granular security and degree of access control.
• Lots of logging information, this will help you diagnostic any issues you might encounter.

Scalability:

• You can size the environment specs and configuration from 10 all the way to thousands of users.
• You just have to add more resources (CPU, memory, etc.) or another component (Application Server, Content Manager).
• And if you have the right design and architecture, you can achieve multi-tenancy.

It is a very complete solution: versatile, flexible, robust, and scalable.

It is serving as the single source of truth, consolidating information from various systems.

At the moment ,the metadata tool (Framework Manager) is client based, meaning, you have to install the tool itself in a workstation. You will also need any ODBC/OLDB and database drivers installed on that computer to access data and start modeling. This tool design and the way it works is already outdated. Your models can get corrupted for numerous reasons; that's why it is always good to back up and save your work. The tool does NOT support multi-user development, meaning only one developer per model is allow at any given time. You also rely on the file system all the time. A cloud-based / multi-user solution would be more than welcome.

IBM Cognos and the entire suite does NOT come with any source/version control capabilities out of the box. If you made a change to a report and, for whatever reason, you want to go back to the previous iteration, you will need to restore a backup or an export; if you didn't make a backup, you will be out of luck. Same with every single object in the environment (packages, queries, security, administration, settings, etc).

They also need to take more advantage of new in-memory technology, and have better integration with other visualization tools.

It would be nice if we could use standard XML as a data source.

I have used it for 11 years.

After going to a full distributed environment (Content Manager, App Server, Gateway), we have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good, solid. They gotten better lately.

We previously used Crystal Reports; a more powerful platform was needed, plus IBM Cognos is easier for front-end/business users.

Setting up a full-fledged distributed environment is not for the inexperienced administrator. On a scale from 1 to 10, the complexity level is definitely above 7.5. You need to have low to mid-level network knowledge; need a sense of how database connective and security works. Your average system admin might be able to do a single-server installation.

Don’t be cheap; try the product and scale accordingly. Pricing is a lot more competitive these days.

It was already in place when I was hired, but I had already have seen various products, such as OBIEE, Crystal, MicroStrategy, Qlik, etc. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Make sure you try this product well before implementation.

Accommodate resources.

Also make sure your users and internal assets (administrators, developers, and architects) get formal training.

Hiring professional services is always a plus during implementation and the first wave of development.

I use IBM Cognos for various purposes in our business. We use it to generate email triggers based on alerts as a self-service BI tool where users can drag and drop for analysis and predictive analysis using the integrated IBM Watson. We also use it for presentations and business reporting.

You can customize your data according to your needs. It has all the functions and capabilities, making it easy to use. You can customize datasets at the business layer based on your preferences, which is very convenient. Compared to Power BI, IBM Cognos offers more flexibility, like joining data at the report level and applying any needed customizations. You can also set up role-level security so users only see the data they need. Additionally, you can distribute reports as needed. It's easy to integrate with other systems like Active Directory.

The tool integrates IBM Watson, which is used for predictive analysis. Simply dragging and dropping your data, IBM Watson provides trends and insights, making Cognos stronger in AI than other tools.

The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau.

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product.

I have been working with the product for eight years. 

I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. 

The tool's installation and maintenance are easy, and the setup process is quite easy—I'd rate it an eight out of ten. Deployment only takes about 30-40 minutes, involving exporting a package from development and importing it to production.

IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

Due to the way our product is designed, it has not been possible for us to use Cognos because of one of their issues. When we upgraded to Cognos 11, there was an issue with this version and we are not able to use the dynamic query mode. So essentially, we've not been able to use the dashboards and other kinds of reports in Cognos 11.

In terms of Cognos 11, we primarily upgraded due to the support for Cognos 7 going away. I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot. We haven't been able to use them recently. Most of the reports we've used are upgraded versions of legacy reports.

In terms of what could be improved with this product, the speed could be better.

The second thing I feel is lacking in Cognos 11 is usability - ease of use. I find Tableau much easier to use.

I have not used stories and dashboards extensively, but 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.

The other thing that should be included in Cognos is Landing Pages. It would be good for the Dashboard Landing Page, if they could make it as easily and attractively as Tableau, that's the only other tool I've used, and theirs is completely visually appealing. The client should want to click and open the Cognos portal to get their data. We have our own product and Cognos is integrated with it. If they're able to get similar data, even if it is not as detailed in our product, they don't have any motivation to go to Cognos. They need to polish their product a little bit to make it more user-friendly and customizable - that would help.

I have been using Cognos for about 15-16 years.

Product stability-wise, I do find Cognos stable. We have faced some issues with memory in our client environments wherein if the client has created a custom report, it may not be optimized. In such cases, the memory gets utilized and the Cognos server goes down. A simple restart does resolve the issue, but that's still an issue if the client has a production server which is using Cognos. These kind of issues are among the biggest pain points we have. Other than that, Cognos has been fairly stable for us.

I am not very satisfied with the technical support that they offering. It's a very time-consuming process. The biggest problem that I see with Cognos is not the product itself, but the support of the product. That's where we always face issues, because whenever we contact IBM support, it's a very long and difficult process to get that thing resolved.

The setup is slightly complex for us because Cognos is basically integrated with our company's product.

So what happens is, we have our product and Cognos is a separate product, a reporting tool for that product. Whenever we release a new version of Cognos, we have to make a sort of handoff from our product to Cognos and we need to create some Custom Namespaces and do other Custom Roles. So for us, the setup is complicated.

But I have installed Cognos out of the box once, as well, and it was very easy. I did face an issue in an early in version 11.0.1, that whenever Cognos started and set up everything, a lot of times RAM use was an issue, even though the system had quite a lot of RAM. But if the system RAM was allocated to the standby memory, then Cognos did not get it. That used to be an issue. However, that issue has been resolved in subsequent versions.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cognos a 7.

I do like the product. I think there is room for improvement. Cognos has started taking steps towards improvement like new solutions such as Tableau, however, there is still quite a way to go. Cognos's framework model requirement does restrict everything. If you want to make any changes to existing reports, it is a tedious process to add some new tables or change joints or things like that, to make it part of the data model. That's one of the main issues that we had. But other than that, I'm quite happy with the product.

One of the features I find most valuable in the latest release is the Visual Storytelling functionality and being able to tell stories visually with your data. While stories are similar to dashboards in that they use visualizations to share insights, they differ as they provide a description over time and are actionable in nature.

This product has improved the way our organization and our customers truly interact with information, really putting the capabilities into the hands of the key decision makers and not having to rely on IT resources that do not have the business knowledge to do this for them; true self-service analytics.

The key areas for improvement are the administrative capabilities that are largely the same from the series 8/10 versions and the ability to use Framework Manager packages and models on new dashboards, etc. The introduction of data sets in the latest version demonstrates that this functionality is going to be offered around the corner.

While IBM Cognos Analytics has been on the market for under a year, I have been using the Cognos platform for nearly 15 years and have seen it continue to grow and mature.

I have not encountered any stability issues. The IBM Cognos platform has been around a while and with the right people doing the install/configuration/management of the environment, it is pretty rock solid. IBM is coming out with new minor releases every 2-3 months, which is great for customers as you can tell the commitment to excellence with the product is there.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support has been pretty responsive. I run an IBM Cognos professional services organization and we become the front-line support for many of our customers.

I have been installing/configuring IBM Cognos BI environments for years and I will have to say the documentation for the first iteration of IBM Cognos Analytics 11.0.0 was not complete and created a few challenges. The subsequent releases have been more complete and the latest version is pretty solid.

Pricing and licensing really comes down to what customers are looking to achieve, as there are lots of options out there. IBM Cognos Analytics offers a fully managed SaaS Cognos in the cloud offering, where a customer does not have to deal with infrastructure, maintenance, administration, or provisioning. This is a great option for many SMBs out there. For other larger customers, it comes down to the number of users, what roles they will have, and internal IT capabilities that they have. One of IBM Cognos’ greatest strengths is the ability to cover the whole spectrum of customers at a price point that is acceptable to all.

I led a large vendor selection process at a former company around 13 years ago where I had 10 vendors come in and do a product demonstration based on our business requirements and from there, I was able to narrow the field down to Information Builders and SAP BusinessObjects. For the flexibility, self-service capabilities, and in-memory OLAP functionality, Cognos was the clear winner for us.

I am a strong believer in having the right tool to do the right job. I believe IBM Cognos BI has been and continues to be a solution that I have seen great results in and continue to recommend. However, I recognize that there are strengths that other vendors bring to the table and solutions that could be a better fit in some circumstances.

It does a fantastic job of promoting true self service and allowing line of business users the ability to load their data without the need for IT involvement. Non-technical people can easily upload their data and start to perform analyses of their business creating attractive dashboards and asking key questions based on empirical data.

Dashboards and visualizations are the product’s most valuable features. Most of my customers are moving from reporting to dashboards and mobile. They are keeping reporting only for daily/weekly/monthly basic reports. All other communication of metrics/KPIs and operational information are moving to dashboards and visualizations and many are looking for mobile solutions.

• Better collaboration

There is room for improvement in the user interface, which might simply be a learning curve issue. It has changed dramatically and some of the functionality is very different. For example, getting a list of reports requires some extra clicks to get the full list and the entire file name is not visible in all views.

Some important bugs still exist in the product, including:

• Not being able to change packages on a published report
• Some issues with Framework Manager in Cognos 11 not connecting properly when the 10.2.2 version is still installed

I have used it for two months.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good.

We previously used Cognos 10.2.2; upgraded for new features.

Initial setup was complex. Cognos is a very complex tool to configure.

Get bulk licensing if at all possible. IBM has a very structured pricing model.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

Make sure you have good IBM support in place before installing, and read all associated documentation. Third-party or IBM installation would be recommended.

The most valuable features are the AI-based questions.

The storyboarding and storytelling features of Cognos Enterprise are both very good.

The solution offers excellent dashboard creation capabilities. I use this extensively.

The initial setup is quite straightforward.

Overall, there aren't any features that are lacking in the product.

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

I'd like to see more predictive analytics enhancements in future releases.

I've been using this solution for our years now.

The solution is very stable. We don't worry about bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash on us at all. It doesn't freeze. It's reliable.

You can scale the solution if you need to. That's not a problem.

At our organization, we have between 150 and 200 people using it at any given time.

We've dealt with technical support in the past. We found them to be helpful. We've been satisfied with the service provided.

We did use Cognos Express originally. It's built for smaller deployments, and we were on the margins in terms of parameters. In the end, our organization found that it was too small for our needs and we moved up to their Enterprise option.

We also use Phillips and Oracle Business Intelligence as well as Power BI.

The initial setup isn't very complex. It's mostly straightforward. However, due to the setup of our organization and its architecture, we did face a few specific complexities during implementation.

We have seven people who handle the administration as needed.

We had someone who helped us set everything up and provide the required technical training.

We'd like the pricing to be reduced, of course. We'd like to reduce the cost period.

I'm a user, not a vendor or a reseller.

We use the enterprise version of the product.

In terms of BI tools, I'd advise others that this is one of the best. It was easy to use once we had the initial training that is required. The features such as storytelling, AI based sessions, are great. I would recommend it to other companies for sure.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at an eight.

I use the solution in my company to do some reports about the activity.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

The tool does not have much documentation on the internet. It is not easy to resolve issues by finding the reason for the problem on the internet. The tool needs to have more documentation on the internet.

There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using IBM Cognos for two years. I use the solution's latest version.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

I believe that my company did not configure the product very well, so we did not use the product with full capacity and its scalability features. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Around 50 percent of my company uses the product.

My company has no plans to increase the number of users of the solution. The product is useful mainly for people who make decisions in the organization, meaning it has limited usage in our company.

My company has worked with Microsoft Power BI.

The product's initial setup phase is easy, but we are using it with another tool. When we use IBM Cognos with another tool, meaning when you plug it in for the first time, it is a little bit complicated, but once you have done it, the next time, it will be okay.

For the product's deployment phase, you have to follow the setup guide to create the deployment plan. My company plugs IBM Cognos with our database, which is populated by our main tool. My company gets the data from the database or one of the other tools we use and from the vendor of IBM Cognos.

The tool's ROI part is something that can only be discussed by the managers who are responsible for using the product. I think the product is useful because my company gets many requests from our customers to upgrade or change some reports.

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

I would describe a specific scenario or project where the solution improved our company's decision-making process by giving us some organization.

My company uses the tool for reporting.

My company manages IBM Cognos with another tool. My company has seven people to manage not just IBM Cognos but also other tools. One person will be enough to manage IBM Cognos.

Honestly, IBM Cognos won't be the first choice if I have to recommend a solution to others.

If the price of IBM Cognos is not very expensive, people can buy it, but for the same price, they can have Microsoft Power BI. I think I will recommend Microsoft Power BI to others.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

I have used the solution for business intelligence across various commercial sectors, including banking, finance, luxury goods, etc.

The solution's most valuable feature is scalability.

The solution's support needs improvement. Also, they should add better administrative tools.

We have been using the solution for 25 years.

It is a stable product. I rate it an eight for stability.

We have 3000 end users of the solution as our customers. I rate its scalability a nine.

The solution's technical support could be better.

Neutral

I rate the solution's initial setup process as a five. It takes a year to complete.

The solution is averagely priced. I rate it as a five for pricing. We have to pay extra to buy third-party administrative tools.

It is a good tool for a multinational enterprise. I rate it as an eight.