IBM Cognos Reviews

I enjoy the flexibility that the application has with Excel. Power users can use Excel functionalities for data analysis and reporting. Also, I like the integration with Excel (Xcelerator) and the ability to source data from numerous sources. Additionally, the use of Revelwood's Dynamo! allows for quick generation of reports.

The added power of Excel with Cognos TM1 allows my company to generate dynamic Excel-based reports to our customers much faster with the look and feel of Excel that they are accustomed to.

It would be more user friendly with GUI navigation. A lot of expertise is required to be able to navigate and perform simple tasks, as well as to create reports with Cognos TM1. I believe a GUI will make it easier for less technical folks (non-power users) to be able to use the tool effectively.

We’ve used Cognos TM1 for four years.

Performance of the product is usually stable and only has issues when there are lots of users during heavy reporting periods.

We have had no scalability issues.

I would rate the technical support 8/10. IBM has been pretty great with maintenance and technical support.

We have had no previous solutions.

The initial setup to install is pretty simple. You will need some technical experience to be able to successfully install the software components.

Licensing and pricing seems fair as compared to other products.

I don't know if the company evaluated other options. They were already using the product before I joined.

I believe it is important to evaluate similar products. I also advise to have a resident expert in-house to support and maintain the platform.

It has the ability to model OLTP data sources with Framework Mgr. instead of building a data warehouse. Building a Framework metadata model takes weeks, while building a data warehouse takes 12-24 months.

The Framework model won't perform as fast as a properly designed and optimized DW, but it will give you accurate results with a much lower investment. Then, when your company is ready to invest in the DW, it can take the structure of the Framework model and map it to the DW tables, and all of your reports still work.

We are a Cognos-only training and consulting company so our business depends on Cognos.

The one that sticks out in my mind is the ability to search the relational data tree for query items (fields). I believe this functionality has been added in v11 (Cognos Analytics). The user interface in v10 is a little dated and not as tablet-friendly as some of the other viz tools. This has been greatly improved in v11.

I have used it for three years.

There are no stability issues as long as the image is properly built and fix packs are installed.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Over a few years, we have opened only a couple of tickets with IBM and all have been handled professionally and promptly.

We have always used Cognos. We recently demo'd trial versions of Microsoft and Tableau against Cognos v11 and we still think Cognos is the better product for medium and large enterprises.

Building the image for a new version takes several hours. Of course, IBM has cloud options that eliminate the need for keeping your own images.

Like any enterprise software product, make sure you negotiate. IBM simplified the licensing in 2014, so I can't suggest any improvements there.

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

Make sure your CFO understands the investment required for a successful BI installation that will give you one version of the truth, whether it's Cognos or another vendor. The investment is not only in software and hardware, but in the people who use it.

I am an architect who builds solutions. I have 20 years of experience with translating business needs for BI and data warehouse solutions.

We get to create customized solutions for many users. In our organization, we reach 40% of the employees with information from the data warehouse.

• The ability to build solutions that can be changed so that the solution is up to date. The possibility of integrating third parties through HTML and Java code in a supported way. 
• It's possible to add to the role management and security that can be maintained.

• Continue to develop the AI assistant so we can add business logic to the metadata. 
• Ability to insert own graphs in D3 through supported API. 
• Prompting should be better.

More than five years.

The most valuable feature is the ability to quickly build cubes with Cognos Transformer. Transformer has enabled us to consolidate millions of rows of detailed data into multi-dimensional cubes. It enable business users to drill down, and slice and dice data by key business dimensions, such as product, region, customer, and time.

It has provided visibility into our customers; specifically, it has given us insight into high-value customers.

The Cognos Suite needs improvement in a number of areas. First, the products must be made more user friendly for casual users. Next, business users need the ability to quickly pull in data from non-structured sources without the need for IT to model the data. Another area for improvement is advanced charting and graphical elements that you can use in reports and dashboards.

I have been using IBM Cognos since 2012.

PowerCubes has limits and thresholds. Developers need to be aware of these when designing a cube, and take into consideration the cube performance versus the physical size.

Report Studio for operational reporting against relational data sources is very dependent on the underlying database performance and the design of your metadata model in Framework Manager. Report designers and modelers must analyze the generated SQL and tune the Framework Model and reports.

The technical support is good.

I did not use any other solution previously.

Setup for a multi-server environment is of average complexity. Tuning the environment takes time.

Negotiate on licensing and support costs.

We have often reviewed the BI landscape. For Enterprise BI, we have looked at Cognos, SAP Business Objects and MicroStrategy. These tools are very similar and leapfrog each other with each release. Newer tools such as QlikView, Tableau, and Spotfire have gained momentum and taken market share from the enterprise BI vendors. You need to analyze your needs and determine whether an enterprise BI suite is right for you, or if you need multiple tools for different capabilities.

Plan your reporting strategy. Do you intended to implement self-service reporting so that end users are creating reports? Do you need structured operational and management reporting? Cognos often requires IT resources for metadata modelling. Will you have the bandwidth and time to move at the speed your business requires?

Powerful Report Studio and Event Studio: We have stringent requirements for the reports that go to investors. Report Studio helps us to deliver pixel-perfect reports in both HTML and PDF formats. Event studio is such a powerful tool: We have over 400+ reports going out every day based on different conditions; a few are periodic, a few are based on availability of data, etc. Without Event Studio, it would be a nightmare to maintain these huge jobs.

Even though I identified Event Studio as one of the most valuable features, it still has room for improvement. Sometimes events get stuck; we need to restart Cognos services and do clean up in order to clear the queue. Error messages are not that straightforward.

The other area that needs improvement is Cognos Workspace. When we add multiple reports to the workspace, the performance is not up to the mark.

Another area of improvement is ‘interactivity’. Cognos is not even comparable from the interactivity perspective with other reporting tools such as Tableau.

I have used it for over 7+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. Cognos is very scalable. We could have a distributed installation (which we are already using) with multiple content managers and application tier components; we have never faced scalability issues.

I would say technical support is good, not great. We have contacted support for a number of issues. The main thing tech support needed was to replicate the issue at their end, which is not always possible. We still have issues that tech support is unable to address.

We were using Microsoft reporting services as our reporting solution.

Initial setup was quite complex. We started with a single-server installation, and faced performance issues; then, we tried a distributed installation. A distributed installation is quite complex, especially when the requirements are high, such as AD integration, load balancer support, enabling single sign on, etc.

It is a very good product. I feel the price is OK, as it is not just a tool but it is a reporting platform.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options. However, we did evaluate a few others recently for some other requirements. We figured out that MicroStrategy is also at par (or even on a bit higher side in some features), but considering the tradeoff between the features, price and effort to migrate, we felt it is better to go with Cognos.

This is a best-in-class reporting platform. But keeping in mind the high price of this tool, it is better to evaluate it before going for it. You might not need all the features provided by this tool, in which case you end up paying more. Also, it might not be suitable for small firms.

It is great for delivering self-service BI to our end users. It provides great flexibility in the types of BI output formats that can be delivered.

It has allowed end users to explore data without having to copy it into Excel first.

The upgrade process is always a challenge, as it is basically a reinstall each time.

I have used it since 2010.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support from our vendor partner is great.

We previously used Oracle Discoverer, but it reached end of life.

Initial setup was complex in the sense that there were different ways to deliver BI: relational models, DMR, and cubes. When you first start using it, it is difficult to know which is the best.

Haggle and buy near the end of IBM’s financial year.

Before choosing this product, we looked at SAP BusinessObjects, OBIEE, Pentaho, Jaspersoft and QlikView; all in 2010.

Get a good local partner or take on an experienced Cognos contractor to help get your local team up to speed and be productive.

Drill through reporting, ease of use, ease of design, and functionality.

This BI tool helped automate and centralize production reports. It provided intuitive navigation for end users. It helped to positively change the reporting landscape while addressing customer needs

It definitely needs better data visualization. I needed to couple Cognos with Tableau to provide a complete reporting environment.

2 years for Cognos BI series 10; 2 years for Series 8 and 7 years for Series 7

No, the company I worked for had a Corporate user (many end users) license which enabled license costs to be minimal.

Customer Service: I did not work directly with Cognos support.Technical Support: I did not work directly with Cognos support.

The IT group in my organization was responsible for the set-up. On version 8, Cognos seemed very unstable. Cognos 10 was much improved.

In house

IT group handled this aspect.

Yes. Our company had many BI tools to choose from but Cognos was the most sustainable and scale-able.

There are many BI tools out there to choose from. Cognos might be the right solution for you but this decision needs to take into consideration the size of your user group, the cost per license, the functionality needed for your reporting infrastructure, and the in-house BI knowledge of the BI tool that you choose.

Data Manager is a great ETL tool, Query Studio is a great tool for ad-hoc queries, simple but powerful. Report Studio is a bit more complicated but also very powerful for complex reports.

Dashboards and reports bring all the needed figures to our direction on a daily basis and it's available from various devices (apple, android, windows 8.)

The reporting tool can be tricky and you'll need to get used to it but it's worth the effort.

4 years

Yes, there may be compatibility issues but as long as you read the requirements and do not apply the latest Fix Pack blindly as soon as they are released, it's pretty stable.

Yes, as with many 3-tiers applications you rely on a web server, an application server and a database, so for example- a huge load of connections can bring down the app server when using LifeCycleManager, a great tool for assistance in the upgrade process.

Not so far.

Customer Service: Better, but I must say that it's not as good as my experience with Oracle's.Technical Support: Good.

I tried (very briefly) Business Object and QlikView but my company has been running Cognos since the beginning.

As usual it requires a lot of reading and it can get a bit complex since there are a lot of different technology involved (web server IIS or Apache, app server TOMCAT, java and Oracle RDBMS as the content store).

It was a mix, the vendor usually has good skills on the subject. Support can be sometimes be disappointing.

Yes, we did look at Microstrategy, Qlikview and Oracle BI which may have been good choices if we started from scratch but there was no point in changing the tool we were already using.

You need the resources and the budget but it's a great set of tools that can bring value to your business.