IBM Cognos Analytics vs. Microsoft Power BI

IBM Cognos Analytics

584 Reviews and Ratings

Microsoft Power BI

1,906 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
IBM Cognos Analytics	Score6.8 out of 10	N/A	IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.	$10 per month per user
Microsoft Power BI	Score8.6 out of 10	N/A	Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.	$10 per month per user

Pricing

IBM Cognos Analytics

Microsoft Power BI

On Demand - Standard: USD 10.00
per month per user
On Demand - Premium: USD 42.40
per month per user
On Demand - Standard: USD 10.60
per month per user

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos Analytics	Microsoft Power BI
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes	No

Optional

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	IBM Cognos Analytics	Microsoft Power BI
Considered Both Products	IBM Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics Microsoft Power BI has a more user friendly interface and it is integrated very well with the other Microsoft products but IBM Cognos Analytics has a more advanced reporting and complex data analysis capabilities. Incentivized Helpful? Astrid Ortega Data Analyst and Risk Assessor in Finance and Accounting at Banco Bci (Banking, 10,001+ employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics Tableau, Power BI, QlikView were the other options considered. Tableau lacked the following key components of business intelligence and analytics. Some other statistical functions that are available on the platform were not matched by Power BI. QlikView lacked robust … Incentivized Helpful? Tony Higgins System operations in Information Technology at DP Wagner (Logistics & Supply Chain, 11-50 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics We selected IBM Cognos Analytics based on the following. The scalable and robust features for large organizations allowing it to grow as we do. The nest feature is the strong data governance and security features. It also supports a wide variety of data sources. Lastly, it … Incentivized Helpful? Vinit Mahiwal BI Developer at Shorewise (Retail, 10,001+ employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics It was due to trust in IBM. Very good support provide by IBM. Response time is pretty good Product is proven in past & well robust feature Many good enterprises have used this product Incentivized Helpful? Cristian Racu Deputy CEO in Information Technology at Biroul de Credit (Financial Services, 11-50 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics It is a tool that delivers good performance at a good price. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics It does well however, we need more user friendly interfaces, integration options and visualizations. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics IBM Cognos Analytics is our legacy BI solution. It hadn't stacked up well against its modern contemporaries. We are thinking of replacing it with Microsoft BI. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics We looked at Qlik Sense, SAP Analytics Cloud, and IBM Cognos Analytics for our financial brand's needs. Qlik Sense is super user-friendly, great for quick data digging. SAP Analytics is perfect when we're working with other SAP stuff; it just clicks. But for our big project, … Incentivized Helpful? Adi arora Lead Engineer in Information Technology at Kipi.bi (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics Cognos Analytics provides wide range for reporting, data visualization, and self service analytics. Cognos has strong security and governance features. Sigma Computing is purely cloud native approach and has spreadsheet like interface and doesn't provide many customization … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics I feel like IBM Cognos Analytics offers a more in depth look into the business’ analytics and data and has more functionalities with AI. Incentivized Helpful? Dhruv Goyal Team lead in Information Technology at United software group (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics While all of them have their own advantages. IBM Cognos Analytics is highly scalable and have unmatched data analytics capabilities which makes the data from IBM Cognos Analytics of very high quality and data governance also makes sure your data is safe and protected. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics I like the cloud native character and ease of deployment with Sigma and ThogthSpot, I also like the metadata modelling capabilities of Power BI. I prefer the ability of Cognos to create and publish a metadata model that provides both ad hoc access and managed reporting and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics They are better in Dashboarding and performance analysis. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics We have alot of resources already invested in Cognos and it would be a humongous effort to migrate. CA is more inline with Power BI and Tableau now that there are dashboarding capabilities. Incentivized Helpful? Shawn Lamson Tech Manager, BI & Analytics in Information Technology at Ideagen (Environmental Services, 51-200 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics We could deliver a corporate wide solution with Cognos, it is an end-to-end platform. No other option provided the same breadth of scope. I can't think of a feature that the others provide that Cognos lacks, but the others do not provide the same features and governance of … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics No need to physically share data with developers, users. All we need is to send the server URL. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is an enterprise ready tool and could provide end to end functionality expected from a BI tool. Provides integration with custom applications as well as provides not just high end visualizations that Tableau or PowerBI provides but also the very … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics We selected IBM Cognos because it has all of the features our organization needs for reporting. There are multiple report and dashboard options. Security and scheduling options are good. Tableau does not have good tools for advanced reporting besides dashboards. Power BI does … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics IBM Cognos Analytics can handle larger datasets easily and has better performance than other BI tools. Incentivized Helpful? Damith Low Software Engineer in Information Technology at AI Singapore (Computer Software, 51-200 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics They are powerful tools, they are used to handle a large amount of data, create different and complex visualizations. They make it easy for users to run queries using natural language and get automatic feedback on the information. They are powerful, intuitive and allow users of … Incentivized Helpful? Mohammed Younus Siddiqui Business Intelligence Analyst in Information Technology at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics IBM Cognos Analytics is the only product that provides pixel-perfect reports right out of the box. You do not need third-party tools to implement it. Secondly, other tools require you to create a relation between the tables if you are going to use them in the report. Only in … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose IBM Cognos Analytics All these ones are fairly widely used in the business analyst world. There is no significant difference among them apart from the suite of tools that your company is using. If the company is using Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3, Amazon QuickSight is easier to be embedded in the system. Incentivized Helpful? Ben Swinney SVP - FP&A and Treasurer in Finance and Accounting at Texas Security Bank (Banking, 51-200 employees) Chose IBM Cognos Analytics IBM Cognos [Analytics] is offered through our core system provided, Fiserv. It is integrated with our loan, deposit, and customer information systems which is the primary reason it works best for us. Power BI seems to have a better user interface and visualization … Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Some of the strengths are 1. User-Friendliness 2. Self-Service BI (Caters to all levels of the employees 3. Cost-effective. 4. Easy integration with Microsoft Suits. 5. DAX Calculations 6. Familiar Interface like traditional Excel. 7. Easier Self-Service platform for … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Power BI stacks up robustly on a visuals standpoint. It has great slicer tools and visuals that are stunning. Content is fresh, easy to transmit and the design of a new dashboard is easy. Power BI is useful in identifying outliers in your data (even data integrity issues). … Incentivized Helpful? Gonzalo Angeleri Regional Product & Solution Architect Manager in Information Technology at GRUPO DATCO (Information Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Although both MicroStrategy and Cognos currently offer better business analytical capabilities, Power BI is an excellent option to extend the use of this type of solutions to a greater number of users due to its low cost. Incentivized Helpful? Vishal Shivdasani VP of Business Development in Sales at FinPro Solutions (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Can be used across all ERP packages and implementation Enjoyed by price sensitive Subscription based Incentivized Helpful? Quan Khong Practice Lead - Corporate Performance Management in Information Technology at The Normandy Group (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Power BI is a lot easier to use. The designs are also much nicer. Costs to implement Power BI (minus the existing data infrastructure) is much lower than other tools commercially available. However, the tool is still relatively new and still lacks many common features that … Incentivized Helpful? Richard Bird IT Software Administrator in Information Technology at Rowmark, LLC (Plastics, 201-500 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI I thinking Microsoft Power BI is a great start for someone who wants something more powerful and distributable than Excel. During my relatively short evaluation, I did not find Power BI to be up to the task of more powerful tools. However it might compete well if properly … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI As mentioned earlier it is free of cost and easy to learn as it is part of the Microsoft suite product. It blends well with ETL package tools such as SSRS and SSIS. It is also easy to distribute the dashboard to users of Office 365. It is a a complete Microsoft product which … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

IBM Cognos Analytics

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 7.0 106 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.8 140 Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports	6.996 Ratings	8.5120 Ratings
Customizable dashboards	7.3104 Ratings	10.0140 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates	7.0101 Ratings	8.0128 Ratings

Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 7.4 108 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.2 140 Ratings
Drill-down analysis	7.3106 Ratings	7.0139 Ratings
Formatting capabilities	7.1107 Ratings	9.0138 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages	7.874 Ratings	8.0103 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration	7.4103 Ratings	9.0135 Ratings

Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 7.8 107 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.6 134 Ratings
Publish to Web	8.327 Ratings	8.0129 Ratings
Publish to PDF	7.1101 Ratings	9.0122 Ratings
Report Versioning	8.626 Ratings	9.0102 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling	7.0104 Ratings	8.0104 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers	8.112 Ratings	9.074 Ratings

Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 6.7 98 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.7 136 Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)	6.993 Ratings	9.0131 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization	7.189 Ratings	8.0122 Ratings
Predictive Analytics	6.486 Ratings	9.0102 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining	6.624 Ratings	9.01 Ratings

Comparison of Access Control and Security features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 7.4 103 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.6 127 Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)	8.0100 Ratings	9.0121 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model	7.899 Ratings	9.0102 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)	6.199 Ratings	10.0111 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control	7.428 Ratings	7.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)	7.882 Ratings	8.394 Ratings

Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 7.6 84 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.0 117 Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access	7.778 Ratings	8.0111 Ratings
Mobile Application	7.968 Ratings	7.793 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile	9.074 Ratings	7.7112 Ratings

Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	IBM Cognos Analytics 7.7 65 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.4 80 Ratings
REST API	7.562 Ratings	8.072 Ratings
Javascript API	8.660 Ratings	9.956 Ratings
iFrames	8.39 Ratings	8.055 Ratings
Java API	6.911 Ratings	8.046 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)	7.110 Ratings	8.163 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)	7.87 Ratings	8.444 Ratings

User Ratings
	IBM Cognos Analytics	Microsoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend	7.3 (131 ratings)	8.5 (142 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.4 (27 ratings)	9.0 (2 ratings)
Usability	8.1 (8 ratings)	7.9 (58 ratings)
Availability	8.6 (4 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	9.0 (5 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	10.0 (8 ratings)	10.0 (53 ratings)
In-Person Training	8.7 (4 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Online Training	8.0 (4 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	7.0 (7 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Configurability	7.0 (3 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Data Sharing and Collaboration	8.6 (40 ratings)	8.5 (82 ratings)
Data Sources	8.3 (40 ratings)	9.0 (81 ratings)
Ease of integration	6.0 (4 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	8.2 (3 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	7.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	7.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)