IBM Cognos Analytics for IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Our clients utilize IBM Cognos  mainly for static reporting, board packs, business reporting, and insights.

IBM Cognos  is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting. One of our customers can get a full company update on a Monday morning from all of this data via Cognos Analytics.

There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.

I have been using IBM Cognos for over five years.

I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.

I rate the scalability of IBM Cognos as six out of ten. It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.

I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.

Positive

Setting up IBM Cognos is quite complex. I rate it a four out of ten in terms of ease.

Our clients have seen a return on investment, evidenced by one customer who can get a comprehensive company update through Cognos Analytics.

I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.

I recommend IBM Cognos and rate it six out of ten overall.

I have many use cases. Now, we are not using building a queue, but we are using Cognos Analytics for dashboarding, operational dashboarding, and all. We are using normal standard reports and tabular reports. I think I don’t know the exact version of Cognos, but we use studios to build those operation reports.

OBIE and Cognos, now our business users are not using much because it takes a lot of time to run. We need infrastructure. We need a lot of resources. Whatever we developed a couple of years back, that is the only thing running by the business users, by the control jobs.

We don't do major development in both the tools now. Our main development is now in Power BI and Tableau.

There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. 

But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.

I have been using it for more than 15 years. 

When I used to work on that project, we supported more than 2,000 users. That project is still there, but I’m not primarily supporting and working on it now.

After version 10.3 or 11.3, I stopped working because customers were switching from IBM Cognos to other tools.

My prior experience with customer service and support was good.

I’m a BI architect. I’m a technical architect. So, I have experience with various tools to start with Cognos, Power BI, then OBIE, Tableau.

The difference between these products lies in terms of the setup, mainly the setup, and the availability of resources. Power BI is a good tool. It is easy to set up. Then, licensing cost and infrastructure. It is available on the cloud. One of the projects we just finished is using the cloud services of Power BI.

It was straightforward. Now I did not work on setting up the environment. I used to work a lot on the administration side. But since the last three, four years, I did not work on it. 

But I hear from various people that setting up Docker, setting up LDAP, and setting up a metadata database is time-consuming. Also, deploying under which app server, like WebSphere or Tomcat, is also a little bit time-consuming. That’s what I hear from our Cognos administration.

We have a solid team. We have a metadata developer, a Cognos admin team, and a BI COE team who are very much experts in BI tools.

We do need some maintenance. Sometimes, those jobs did not run or took a lot of time to execute in the environment. Then, we need to contact the admin team, and they will take a look. If they think it is a database issue or a common issue, then they restart. Those things are there. 

It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive. It is very hard to get the resources because no one wants to work on Cognos. They want to work on multiple BI tools. So, I would rate the pricing model an eight out of ten.

It is expensive because you need infrastructure, you need a metadata database, you need Tomcat or WebSphere or WebLogic to deploy Cognos.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. I would recommend it to other users. 

In operational reporting, the standard reporting, Cognos is the number one tool still in the market. 

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. 

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.

We’re creating reports and modelling them for managers. We use IBM Cognos to clear log reports and address performance issues. If performance issues arise, we can access the production environment, login, and check server-side capacities. If we encounter any difficulties, we can directly connect with the support team to obtain necessary information and address issues on the server side. For example, we recently encountered an issue. We generate a large number of reports. During the first week of the month, each user runs approximately 2000 reports. However, we faced network latency issues in the PAM system. After analysis, we identified the issue in the capacity configuration within the administration console. We adjust values for services during peak times based on server specifications such as CPU and number of users. These configurations are managed through the administration console. Currently, we work in the HVAC sector, handling requirements from development to production using a single instance of IBM Cognos and a single database.

We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts. What we have created involves around 160 queries and approximately 110 variables. We use options such as tab, cross-tab, and various graphics, including charts and blocks.

Cognos is easy to use.

Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side.

Some reports have performance issues because of data value. Power BI struggles with datasets exceeding one lakh records, and IBM Cognos handles datasets ten times larger without delays. Generating reports with large datasets in Cognos may take around 30-60 minutes. The final output is delivered in Excel format.

I have been using IBM Cognos for two years. We are using V11.1.7 of the solution.

The product’s stability is good.

You can manage functionality.

Technical support is good.

I have used Power BI and Tableau.

The initial setup is easy and takes four to six months to complete.

The product is expensive.

You can use the dashboard to determine where it stands based on the graph. The amount is included in the dashboard. We use data from the United States, the UK, Germany, and Japan. The data is stored in our CCS report. Based on the ID, we can retrieve specific data within that report. Certain portions of the data will display information for only one particular country. This restriction confines the data within the report. We are implementing security measures to ensure data integrity.

Some users access IBM Cognos directly for their businesses, while others log in to the Cognos console portal. These users interact with the actual JavaScript within the portal. This process may require additional time for adjustments, including those related to the DKA component.

If you have the budget, you can opt for Cognos; otherwise, you can opt for Power BI.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.