IBM Cognos Vs QlikView – 15 Major Factors to Finding Your Best Tool

Qlik and IBM provide their customers with a wide range of products. Two such popular BI tools are QlikView and IBM Cognos. Some of you might be familiar with either or both tools.

Although, both the tools are business intelligence platforms, there are certain things that make them distinctly different from each other. Let us start out discussion on IBM Cognos Vs QlikView to find which one is better.

So, are you excited to know the difference between IBM Cognos and Qlikview?

What is QlikView?

QlikView is a data analysis and visualization tool. Through which users can fetch, integrate, process and analyze data from varied sources.

It is primarily used by developers who focus on developing data models, analytical applications, dashboards, visualizations to create analytical reports and deliver it to end-users via the Access point.

To analyze data and discover data trends, this access point can help end-user for accessing data, carrying out searches, creating data models, visualization etc.

Features of QlikView

1. Dynamic BI ecosystem (Interaction with dynamic apps and dashboards).
2. Default and custom connectors
3. Data visualizations
4. Guided and advanced analytics
5. Serves as an application development platform.
6. Advanced reporting templates and custom reports
7. Supports devices such as Windows, iPhone, Mac, iPad, and web-based devices and apps.
8. English is the only supported language
9. Is deployable on-premise, on-cloud and on mobile.

What is IBM Cognos?

IBM Cognos is an integrated business intelligence platform offered by IBM. It is essentially a web-based service which is a result of several individual services coming together.

Cognos provides a complete set of data analysis and visualization capabilities such as dashboarding, reporting, analytics, advanced analytics etc. It comes as a package of multiple components which work together to make an effective business intelligence solution.

Components of IBM Congos are: IBM Cognos Connection, IBM Cognos Insight, IBM Cognos Workspace, IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced, IBM Cognos Report Studio, IBM Cognos Event Studio, IBM Cognos Metric Studio, IBM Cognos for Microsoft(tm) Office, IBM Cognos Query Studio, IBM Cognos Analysis Studio, IBM Cognos Framework Manager, IBM Cognos Transformer, and IBM Cognos Cube Designer

Features of IBM Cognos

1. Simple and intuitive interface
2. Smart search (in context)
3. Personalized experience with customization capabilities
4. Scheduling and alerts
5. Interactive content available (online or offline).
6. A complete web-based experience
7. Easy upload of personal/external data
8. Report directly off a data source
9. Effortlessly combine data sources
10. Dashboards creation using drag and drop on mobile device or desktop.
11. Best automatic visualizations
12. Various reporting templates and styles

IBM Cognos Vs QlikView

Here, we will discuss each factor of the difference between Cognos Vs QlikView.

1. Ease of Use

QlikView win points over Cognos when it comes to usability and ease of use. QlikView has more user-friendly dashboards with HTML5 graphical capabilities. Whereas, Cognos is reported to sometimes have bugs while working.

2. Pricing

QlikView: QlikView offers a personal edition and an enterprise version. Qlik does disclose a general price quote for the services.

Instead, the pricing model is quote based and requires interested clients to contact the sales team. However, the tentative starting price is said to be $1350 per months.

IBM Cognos: It has a quote-based pricing model having a minimum of 6 months subscription. However, for the Workgroup edition, the pricing starts at $1,990 per month (allowing about 25-500 users with storage of 100GB).

• The Standard edition starts from $10,000 per month providing 100+ users, storage of 250GB (both on-premise and on a cloud).
• The Enterprise edition starts from $19,950 per month with 150+ users,500GB storage, standard features plus, bare-metal server and cloud throughput capacity.

3. Supported Platform

QlikView: QlikView offers platform compatibility with Windows, web-based, iPhone/iPad, Mac, and Android devices.

IBM Cognos: Cognos is compatible with Windows, Linux, Mac and web-based platforms.

4. Reporting

QlikView: It is better than Cognos in data transformation, data modeling, WYSIWYG report designing. However, both QlikView and Cognos have a good user and reporting interface.

IBM Cognos: Cognos is better in functionalities such as standard reporting, ad-hoc reporting, report output, and scheduling, etc.

5. Data Discovery & Visualizations

QlikView slightly outperforms Cognos in data discovery, graphs and charts, scorecards, dashboards, and in overall visualization capabilities.

6. Access Control and Security

IBM Cognos is better than QlikView in access control and security functionalities.

7. Speed and Responsiveness

When it comes to speed and responsiveness, what better than an associative, in-memory QIX engine of QlikView. As in this technology, data is quickly fetched from in-memory or RAM of the system.

Also, the associative capabilities of QlikView engine always display logically related data and thus never shows anything out of context in analysis.

Whereas, IBM Cognos does not have an in-memory technology and fetches data directly from the database (data source) which is a slow process as compared to QlikView’s.

8. Self-service Capabilities

QlikView: QlikView is better than Cognos in certain self-service capabilities such as data discovery and search.

IBM Cognos: Cognos is slightly better than QlikView in features like calculated fields, data column filtering, auto modeling, collaboration, and workflow.

9. Advanced analytics

QlikView: QlikView is better than Cognos in visualizations.

IBM Cognos: However, Cognos is better than QlikView in some advanced analytics capabilities such as predictive analysis and big data services.

10. Reliability and availability

QlikView is better in terms of reliability and availability as the QlikView server is very stable and causes very rare outages or errors.

Cognos, however, lags behind Qlik as it still does not offer compatibility with some popular platforms and have limitations with browsing and dashboarding.

11. Performance

QlikView: In terms of performance QlikView is better than Cognos in customization, reliability, mobile user support, and sandbox/ test environment.

IBM Cognos: However, Cognos proves to be better in user and role management, access management, internalization and breadth of partner applications.

12. Support and Training

QlikView: It provides good customer support through email, phone, live support training, and tickets. QlikView also conducts effective online and in-person training.

IBM Cognos: Cognos also provides customer support in all ways except for live support. Although, Cognos is known for its active online support and training which is better than QlikView.

13. Company Size

QlikView: QlikView finds its place in almost all kinds of industries such right from small scale, medium scale, and enterprise level businesses.

IBM Cognos: Similarly, Cognos is used in small, mid-sized and enterprise level setups. However, it is preferred more by large scale enterprises.

14. Implementation

QlikView wins this competition when it comes to implementing the tools to your system for your use. However, Cognos is not too far away in the race and also provides the users with proper support and guidance in software deployment, scaling and implementation.

15. Scalability

In terms of scalability, IBM Cognos has managed to please its customer better. Cognos takes care of scaling according to user requirements right from the moment they design the system’s architecture to the time of implementation.

Cognos Vs QlikView – Verdict

Both QlikView and Cognos are popular business intelligence tools offering a wide range of data analysis, data modeling, and reporting capabilities. However, QlikView has been ranked 4th in Business Intelligence tools and IBM Cognos was ranked 7th, as of March 2019.

The most fundamental difference between QlikView and IBM Cognos is that QlikView is a user-friendly and focuses more on the end user and data discovery.

Whereas, Cognos is a great reporting tool aiming mainly at the IT department’s control of data and advanced reporting and matrices.

However, both tools have their downsides as well. So, it only depends on the user’s requirements and needs as to what they want from the tool. Also, the costing of both tools is more or less similar.

The only difference is that QlikView licensing is a bit cheaper initially, but the total price adds up to a lot when the charges for support are also added.

As with Cognos, the upfront price is higher than QlikView but offers better customer support in minimal or no additional price.

Summary of Cognos Vs QlikView

From the above IBM Cognos vs QlikView, QlikView will recommend for data visualization because it has many advanced features. On the other hand, IBM Cognos will recommend for excellent security, predictive analysis, and big data.

Along with this, we have compared the two tools based on many features. And so, we hope it proved to be helpful for you in deciding which tool suits your requirements better.

Hope, you liked our explanation on IBM Cognos Vs QlikView. We will also like to explore the Difference Between QlikView and Tableau (Infographic)

If we miss something or you want to add more differences. You can approach us through the comment section.