What is Cognos – The Business Intelligence Tool

What is Cognos – The Business Intelligence Tool from Coding compiler. Cognos is a collection of IBM software products. The software is used in companies for performance management and business intelligence. There are solutions for operating on own hardware as well as Cognos cloud services.

What is Cognos Business Intelligence

The name Cognos stands for a collection of software products from IBM in the areas of Business Intelligence and Performance Management. At the same time, Cognos is the name of the IBM software company that designs and delivers the products. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, it was acquired by IBM in 2008.

Using Cognos software, without any specialized technical knowledge users can collect, extract, evaluate and generate meaningful reports. Cognos is used in many companies worldwide and competes with products from software vendors such as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft.

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Using open standards and many existing interfaces, Cognos can connect to many different databases and data sources. Based on the analyzes, reports and forecasts of the Business Intelligence solution, business processes can be optimized and informed decisions made.

The latest version (as of early 2018) of the business intelligence software is called IBM Cognos Analytics 11 and has a web-based, service-oriented architecture. It also allows the use of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. Cognos can run on-premise on its own hardware or as a service from the network of the IBM cloud.

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Development from Cognos 8 BI to IBM Cognos Analytics 11

The latest release of the flagship Cognos Business Intelligence software, released in 2015, is called IBM Cognos Analytics. Version 11 replaced Cognos Business Intelligence 10, released in 2010. The predecessor to Cognos Business Intelligence 10 was IBM Cognos 8 BI in 2005.

In 2005, IBM Cognos 8 BI brought together several products and features into a single solution. IBM Cognos Analytics 11 is based on the same self-service principles as its predecessor, but with new features and smarter search and analysis capabilities. The cloud variant of Business Intelligence Software is called IBM Cognos Analytics on Cloud.

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The features of IBM Cognos Analytics 11

IBM Cognos Analytics provides a rich set of self-service, dashboarding, and reporting capabilities, and is a state-of-the-art business analytics solution. User-led self-service capabilities allow you to easily extract relevant data and create interactive reports , The intuitive web interface is consistent across all devices and can be personalized. Own datasets can be created without expert knowledge. In the field of data modeling, the connection of various data sources is possible.

Data access is easy to organize and reports can be generated directly from the data sources. Thanks to the intuitive user interface, reporting requires no special know-how. Own dashboards can be put together by drag & drop technique. Different templates and styles make it possible to create professional-looking reports with little configuration effort.

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Cognos and databases

In order to use Cognos efficiently in the company, it is crucial to be able to connect various data sources and database systems to the software. For this, Cognos supports different environments. Data sources include DB2, Oracle Essbase, Informix data sources, Microsoft SQL Server, ODBC , Oracle data sources, SAP BW data sources, Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise data sources, TM1 data sources, XML data sources, and access to cubing Supported by IBM services.

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In addition, users can connect their own datasets to Cognos. These can be used, for example, to import data from CSV, XLS or XLSX files. Dynamic queries are possible from both OLAP data sources and relational data sources.

IBM Cognos Express – the BI solution for mid-sized businesses

IBM offers the business intelligence solution IBM Cognos Express specifically for medium-sized businesses. It has analytics, reporting, visualization, planning, budgeting, dashboards, and forecasting capabilities aligned with these businesses. The focus in developing this software has been on ease of use.

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To ensure easy installation and smooth operation, IBM Cognos Express runs on a single server. The scope of the software focuses on the essential features, but still includes everything needed for the business analysis.

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