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
Tableau Server
Score7.6 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau Server
Editions & Modules
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
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau Server
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau Server
Considered Both Products
IBM
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 …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We considered several major commercial visualization and dashboarding tools and decided to adopt Tableau and Cognos. We're a healthcare delivery organization and security and privacy of patient data are a critical feature. For that reason, we preferred a well recognized and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We used to use Crystal Reports but transitioned our reports to Cognos when Crystal was no longer supported in conjunction with PeopleSoft. Crystal is a more flexible report-building tool for unique needs, but Cognos has better prompts and is a better server-style report …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Analista de Sistemas in Information Technology at Consultor independiente de software (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM is a titan in BI innovation but has arduous competitors as I mentioned before. IBM has prestige in BI and the directors and managers know that. On the other hand, complexity is not the strategy of Cognos, that's why if you need big cubes of data, Tableau, and Microsoft BI …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau is amazing, user friend, innovative, straightforward in concept. Cognos does not stacks up against another software, it is more due to the insufficiency of this software that we need to accommodate with many others. Such as Excel, Access, SQL, SAS, Tableau. The load …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Manager of BI Reporting in Information Technology at Bezaleel Consulting LLC (Insurance, 10,001+ employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos shines when it comes to setting up slow changing historical reports that need to be delivered on a predefined schedule to a predetermined set of recipients.
Tableau
Verified User
Chose Tableau Server
Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Vice President Global Procurement & Manufacturing in Information Technology at Potter Electric Signal Co. (Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 201-500 employees)
Chose Tableau Server
Cognos was outdated and much harder to use and implement.
Qlik was more expensive and a little harder to manage your data.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose Tableau Server
We used and still are using IBM Cognos for business intelligence purposes. It is good for use as a data infrastructure and analytic framework, rather than a BI toolkit, but Tableau is replacing Cognos fast. We used D3.js for a few proofs of concept visualization and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose Tableau Server
Tableau is a stable and time tested product which can handle hundreds and thousands of users and a huge amount of content, plus tableau has also introduced a web authoring tool which you can [use to] edit dashboards using your browser.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Tableau Server
It is the most user-friendly and its features are all suitable for our company's needs.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Sr.Cognos/QlikView/Tableau Administrator & Architect in Information Technology at AIG (Insurance, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Tableau Server
QlikView can't connect to live data (in general) Licensing Costs of QlikView and Cognos are expensive. Cognos doesn't have excellent Graphics embedded within the tool
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Business Intelligence Developer- Tableau in Information Technology at ARCADIS U.S. (Environmental Services, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Tableau Server
I've personally have used a vast majority of the Business Intelligence products on the marketplace. I've used all of the Oracle products over the past few years. I've used all of the products in the Microsoft stack, along with Cognos, Qlikview, etc. Each are effective if your …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IBM Cognos Analytics has great scheduling capabilities. A single report can be parameterized (e.g., “Store Manager ID”) and burst to thousands of recipients with their slice of data.IBM Cognos Analytics is a good fit for highly complex, multi-level calculations which can be handled by Report Studio. For example Monthly balance sheet that requires multi step calculation
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
IBM Cognos Analytics enables customer data segmentation, which is essential for marketing, improving and streamlining purchasing behavior and preferences. This helps companies create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
Our clients Through data analysis, we can identify and observe trends in the behavior of other clients, allowing us to anticipate needs and adjust strategies to avoid consequences.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For an existing solution, renewing licenses does provide a good return on investment. Additionally, while rolling out scorecards and dashboards with little adhoc capabilities, to end users, cognos is very easily scalable. It also allows to create a solution that has a mix of OLAP and relational data-sources, which is a limitation with other tools. Synchronizing with existing security setup is easy too.
It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
We have a strong user base (3500 users) that are highly utilizing this tool. Basic users are able to consume content within the applied security model. We have a set of advanced users that really push the limits of Cognos with Report and Query Studio. These users have created a lot of personal content and stored it in 'My Reports'. Users enjoy this flexibility.
Reports can typically be viewed through any browser that can access the server, so the availability is ultimately up to what the company utilizing it is comfortable with allowing, though report development tends to be more picky about browsers and settings as mentioned above. It also has an optional iPad app and general mobile browsing support, but dashboards lack the mobile compatibility. What keeps it from getting a higher score is the desktop tools that are vital to the development process. The compatibility with only Windows when the server has a wide range of compatibility can be a real sore point for a company that outfits its employees exclusively with Mac or Linux machines. Of course, if they are planning on outsourcing the development anyways, it's a rather moot point
Overall no major complaints but it doesn't handle DMR (Dimensionally Modeled for Relational) very well. DMR modelling is a capability that IBM Cognos Framework Manager provides allowing you to specify dimensional information for relational metadata and allows for OLAP-style queries. However, the capability is not very efficient and, for example, if I'm using only 2 columns on a 20-column model, the software is not smart enough to exclude 18 columns and the query side gets progressively larger and larger until it's effectively unusable.
While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
Why is their web application not working as fast as you think it should? They never know, and it is always a a bunch of shots in the dark to find out. Trying to download software from them is like trying to find a book at the library before computers were invented.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have consistently had highly satisfactory results every time we've reached out for help. Our contractor, used for Tableau server maintenance and dashboard development is very technically skilled. When he hits a roadblock on how to do something with Tableau, the support staff have provided timely and useful guidance. He frequently compares it to Cognos and says that while Cognos has capabilities Tableau doesn't, the bottom line value for us is a no-brainer
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Onsite training provided by IBM Cognos was effective and as expected. They did not perform training with our data which was a bit difficult for our end-users.
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
The online courses they offer are thorough and presented in such a way that someone who isn't already familiar with the general design methodologies used in this field will be capable of making a good design. The training environments are provided as a fully self contained virtual machine with everything needed already to create the environments. We've had some persisting issues with the environments becoming unavailable, but support has been responsive when these issues arise and straightening them out for us
The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.
Make sure that any custom tables that you have, are built into your metadata packages. You can still access them via SQL queries in Cognos, but it is much easier to have them as a part of the available metadata packages.
The Cognos architecture is well suited for scalability. However, the architecture must be designed with scalability in mind from day one of the implementation. We recently upgraded from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and took the opportunity to revamp our architecture. It is now poised for future growth and scalability.
