We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Microsoft BI based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft BI has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, it is a more lightweight solution than IBM Cognos.
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"It is a stable product."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation. Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution. Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on."
"I like the flexibility it offers."
"Its visualization capabilities are pretty good. It is very easy to use. You can easily make your dashboard."
"It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on."
"The product can go easily go and extract data and it can put it into any format."
"Technical support has been great."
"As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools."
"The data can be accessed from anywhere."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"The solution's support could be better."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization."
"The only concern I have faced with Microsoft BI is the time it takes to find out an issue and rectify it."
"I would like to be able to use SQL properly within the reports and allow multiple people to work on the same report at the same time. If one person is working on it, then it causes issues for anyone else wanting to make reports."
"Drill-down in dashboards needs to improved. The capability only works in Power BI Desktop today. We need to have an alternative approach today."
"It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI."
"I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect."
"I feel the modeling page should be simplified."
"We found out that you can't share a report with others unless you have an additional package. That caught us off guard. It came as a program that somebody could go in, build a report, and show it, but you can't share it without having additional licenses."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 297 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". IBM Cognos is most compared with Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. See our IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft Power BI report.
See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.