We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"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."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The stability of SSRS has been reliable, with minimal issues encountered during our usage."
"We were able to embed the report builder within our internal proprietary systems, improving our reporting capabilities."
"The tool's valuable features are its drill-down feature, graphs, and charts."
"We get good support from Microsoft."
"I am impressed with the product's seamless integration. It can work with different databases like Oracle."
"I'm very satisfied with the customer service. And usually, whenever we have any issue or details, we get to the person for the support. I'm really satisfied with the service. Within a few minutes or within a few hours, the support person will be available."
"The solution is known for its robust security features."
"It is a stable solution."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"Tableau is more user-friendly because it doesn't need to do any extra programming. It has drag-and-drop functionality."
"Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services needs to improve performance."
"I would like the solution to add the scheduling feature for reports."
"The setup is difficult because you have to install different servers."
"In this solution, the cost should be reduced for the enterprise edition."
"It is not easy to integrate the product with other tools in the market."
"Sometimes, we need to make sure that the configuration stays consistent across the reporting instances. They all connect to the same database. So, it shares that same backend, but the reporting services itself can also be configured. On the application level, for reporting level. And it is, based on my own experience, it is a manual effort to make sure that the reporting servers are configured the same across the environment."
"The solution's interface is old."
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IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is ranked 8th in Reporting with 16 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is rated 7.8. 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 SQL Server Reporting Services writes "Offers useful templates but needs to improve the connectivity offered". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, Oracle Hyperion and SAP Crystal Reports, whereas Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, TIBCO Jaspersoft, Tableau, SAP Crystal Reports and QlikView. See our IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services report.
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