Sisense For Cloud Data Teams vs Cognos Analytics

Sisense for Cloud Data Teams is a powerful BI tool that excels in the hands of data analysts with coding knowledge. These analysts will be able to model, manage, prepare, manipulate and analyze data with ease. As the platform supports SQL, Python and R programming languages, the sky's the limit when it comes to extensibility, development and coding support. The platform allows for strong collaboration within an organization, designed to alleviate the time-consuming burden of reporting and data visualization on IT teams while allowing business users to access insights on their own time. Most of the features are built around making the analytics team’s job easier, with reusable code, built-in collaboration and more. The support team earned universal praise from users who contacted them, citing their swift, in-depth and informative answers as immensely helpful in resolving any issues they had with the solution. In addition to hands-on support, a speedy implementation process ensures that customers can get the platform up and running in no time. We found that users’ opinions of the platform’s functionality and ease of use differed significantly based on their own roles; analysts generally praised its robust data visualization and data querying features, while decision-makers often found it hard to use, due to the SQL language barrier. SQL is necessary for most functions, and even though there is a visual query editor that attempts to make SQL more accessible, some users said that the platform doesn’t do enough in this regard. Overall, users did agree that the tool makes it easy to collaborate with each other to bridge that gap, with most of the analytics being done on the technical end, letting business users simply access those results. Still, it’s difficult to accurately call Sisense for Cloud Data Teams a self-service analytics tool, as it requires an IT or analyst team’s involvement to truly shine. Additionally, the cost can be prohibitive to smaller businesses. Overall, Sisense for Cloud Data Teams can be extremely powerful in the right hands - for those who know SQL and how to use it, it’s a dream for querying data and delivering analytics, but for those who don’t have the necessary IT resources, it could prove difficult to fully maximize the value of this data solution.

IBM Cognos Analytics is an excellent BI tool and rates very highly with users on all major counts. Users are unanimous in their praise of its data management and data analysis capabilities to provide a single source of truth. Having ventured into AI-powered tools with the 11.1.3 version in 2018, IBM is making bold strides to incorporate augmented intelligence into the platform. IBM has astutely combined this solution with the capabilities of one of its other offerings, Watson Analytics, for natural language processing - a game-changer for empowering non-technical users to create a vast range of dashboards. With AI-enabled exploration, users can review key drivers of metrics and identify gaps in data, though some users feel that more tools are needed for content store exploration through its relational database. It also rates excellently with users for its data integration and ad-hoc reporting capabilities, efficient metadata management and extensive data modeling features. Several strong features of this platform, as noted by reviewers, include Jupyter notebooks, regular updates to the platform and enhancements to data modules, though when it comes to integrating with Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) data sources and IBM Planning Analytics in particular, it comes up short. Version 11 of the platform comes with over-the-top installs for upgrades, which reduces time to set up; though some users feel that integrations built with the current SDK solution can be tedious to implement and maintain. Being part of the IBM software suite, it connects seamlessly to other IBM products under the same umbrella. However, integration with MS-Sharepoint is not supported; this can be managed with workarounds, but only for on-premise setups, not cloud-based deployments. The platform has a rich reporting repertoire with report burst capabilities, pivots and Cognos Event Studio for event-driven reports. However, many users feel that Report Studio should provide the write back capability, which is crucial for business. As for the cost, a majority of users feel that its licensing models are restrictive, especially when compared to other BI solutions; though the vendor seems to address pricing and ease of use with version 11.1.3. In summary, Cognos Analytics is among the best BI solutions in the market today and IBM, with its ear to the ground, is delivering enhanced data analysis and reporting capabilities at scale.