MicroStrategy vs.

Cognos

A Comparison White Paper by MicroStrategy

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Patent Information
This product is patented.  One or more of the following patents may apply to the product sold herein: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,766, 6,173,310, 6,260,050, 6,263,051, 6,269,393, 6,279,033, 6,501,832, 6,567,796, 6,587,547, 6,606,596,
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6,850,603, 6,859,798, 6,873,693, 6,885,734, 6,888,929, 6,895,084, 6,940,953, 6,964,012, 6,977,992, 6,996,568, 6,996,569, 7,003,512, 7,010,518, 7,016,480, 7,020,251, 7,039,165, 7,082,422, 7,113,993, 7,127,403, 7,174,349,
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MicroStrategy vs. Cognos

I. Executive Summary.......................................................................................................................... 5

II. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology............................................. 6

MicroStrategy 8 Overview................................................................................................................... 6

Why Companies Choose MicroStrategy?............................................................................................ 7

III. Comparison of MicroStrategy and Cognos on Key BI Requirements...........................................7

IV. Critical Questions to Ask When Evaluating MicroStrategy and Cognos.................................... 12

I. Executive Summary

In the business intelligence marketplace, MicroStrategy competes vigorously with vendors such as Cognos. At first
glance, both MicroStrategy 8 and Cognos 8 can be used to report on and analyze corporate data, providing business
insight to organizations. However, once customers implement these business intelligence (BI) solutions, they recognize
critical differences derived from the architecture and paradigms of these very different technologies. Key architectural
differences affect the variety of report types, the breadth and depth of analysis, as well as the cost required to
maintain the BI application. The architectural differences result in disparities in performance, scalability, usability,
efficiency and reliability of the system; all of which impact user adoption and ultimately, the success of the BI project.

Ironically, as user and business requirements have become more complex, IT budgets have come under increasing
pressure. Business intelligence applications must now be developed, deployed and maintained with the minimum of IT
resources, while serving more users across the global organization. Clearly, the BI architecture can be either a liability
or an asset to IT departments. A technologically superior architecture will meet all the needs of the end user, while
minimizing the amount of IT maintenance and administration. An inferior architecture will require redundant and
repetitive administration, and the constant development of one-off workarounds.

MicroStrategy technology is based on a completely relational object-oriented metadata model that insulates the
BI application from changes in the data and business environment. This centralized and reusable metadata is self-
maintaining and adapts real-time to changes in user requirements, data schemas and business logic. In MicroStrategy,
report developers don’t need to duplicate metadata definitions across hundreds of reports as they do in Cognos. This
duplication increases the cost of ownership and change management of the BI application. With MicroStrategy, IT
departments have an industrial-strength administration infrastructure on which they can rely to maintain their BI
applications with ever increasing economies of scale.

Securing corporate data is a top priority in today’s enterprise BI applications. Drug prescription records, human
resources records, cell phone call records and financial transactions are just a few types of sensitive data. The security
requirements become even more urgent when information is distributed via extranets or when users drill from the
high-level performance reports to detailed transaction information, anywhere in the data warehouse. MicroStrategy
provides airtight security with 128-bit end-to-end encryption and cell level protection applied automatically across
all reports and all data. Cognos does not provide the same level of security out of the box and relies on third party
components to offer comparable protection.

Cognos has pursued a product strategy based on technology acquisitions which can be directly correlated with
its lower levels of customer loyalty1. Conversely, MicroStrategy has concentrated on a single product architecture
that spans reporting, ad-hoc query, analysis, proactive notification, scorecards and dashboards under the same user
interface and metadata, thus ensuring a single “version of the truth.” Cognos 8 is still comprised of many different
architectures and interfaces. In Cognos, users will need Query Studio for ad-hoc query, Analysis Studio for OLAP,
Report Studio for managed reports, Metrics Studio for scorecards and Event Studio for proactive alerts. A greater
MicroStratEGY VS.Cognos

number of different architectures means more maintenance effort for IT. A greater number of user interfaces means
more training for end users, elevating the total cost of ownership of the business intelligence application.

1
The OLAP Survey 6- Author: Nigel Pendse http://www.survey.com/olap/


 For over a decade, MicroStrategy customers have built thousands of mission critical BI applications with MicroStrategy
technology. With an administration-friendly architecture, robust security, a self-service zero-footprint Web interface,
and proven user and data scalability, MicroStrategy 8 is the only business intelligence vendor to obtain the highest
technology score from the leading industry analyst firm’s Vendor Ratings. The most respected independent survey in
the industry, The OLAP Survey 61, stated that MicroStrategy surpassed Cognos in delivering higher business value and
better technical support resulting in the highest customer loyalty ratings across any BI vendor.

This document discusses in detail the important characteristics of the MicroStrategy 8 architecture, the key differences
between MicroStrategy 8 and Cognos 8, and the critical questions that should be asked when evaluating Cognos and
MicroStrategy. Conclusions are rooted in publicly available documents and not subject to individual interpretation.

II. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology

The MicroStrategy architecture is the result of 4 years of development and 5 years of subsequent refinement,
driven by the needs of the most demanding BI applications in the world. MicroStrategy is an industrial-strength
BI technology, uniquely capable of serving BI application requirements characterized by the largest scale, most
sophisticated analytics, highest report volumes, and most users. This caliber of BI technology is now being sought
after by companies, not just for their most demanding BI applications, but for the purpose of hosting all of their
BI applications – standardizing all BI onto a single, highly-functional and economical architecture and reaping
significant economies of scale and enterprise-wide consistency.

Unlike BI Suites and BI Series offered by other vendors, MicroStrategy offers the only organically grown BI
architecture. All of the MicroStrategy 8 components were expressly built to work within a unified architecture and
not as separate standalone products or acquired technologies that were subsequently joined together.

MicroStrategy 8 Overview

Launched in 2005, MicroStrategy 8 offers the latest in technical innovations with over 2,000 enhancements across
the platform. One of the key differentiators of MicroStrategy 8 is its integrated BI platform, eliminating the need for
companies to use numerous distinct technologies from different vendors for reporting, analysis, and performance
monitoring. MicroStrategy 8 provides a BI platform that companies can standardize on for all their BI needs.

With a scalable architecture and a single metadata, users can seamlessly navigate from scorecards and dashboards
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

to reports and analysis without being required to open and close multiple BI tools and navigate dissimilar interfaces.
MicroStrategy 8’s newly designed Web interface is specifically tailored for the business user. The user interface
includes an array of “one-click” actions with familiar paradigms to make business users more productive. For the
first time, users can format reports and scorecards in WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) mode and leverage
the formatting skills they already have to radically reduce the time it takes to develop and deploy new reports.


 Why Companies Choose MicroStrategy?

1. Integrated architecture: The MicroStrategy product set is built from a single architectural foundation, delivering
all 5 Styles of BI: Scorecards and Dashboards; Reporting; OLAP; Advanced Analysis; Alerts and Proactive Notification.

2. Full featured Web interface: MicroStrategy’s Web interface delivers a Windows-like feeling with drag-and-drop
interactivity from any Web browser. The advanced Web architecture is “zero-footprint”, using no Java or Active X
controls, and delivers a rich reporting experience both inside and outside the firewall.

3. Seamless integration of reporting, analysis, and monitoring: MicroStrategy can embed OLAP features
directly into enterprise reports like scorecards and dashboards, providing a seamless user experience that
uncovers root causes without the need for programming or switching interfaces.

4. Ease-of-use and self-service: MicroStrategy’s unique WYSIWYG report design and editing allows MicroStrategy
end users to easily design and refine reports over the Web using familiar skills similar to Microsoft® PowerPoint or Excel.

5. High performance scaling to thousands of users: Unlike other BI providers, MicroStrategy software expands
with the application to efficiently scale from hundreds to thousands of people.

6. Proven data scalability: For the past five years, The OLAP Surveys have ranked MicroStrategy highest in
data scalability. With terabyte-size databases commonplace, MicroStrategy’s field-proven technology enables
customers to deploy more BI applications with greater analytic sophistication and user functionality.

7. Automated report maintainability: Dynamic metadata architecture ensures that changes ripple throughout all
reports automatically.

8. Pervasive security and user administration: Security is automatically applied to all users, reports, and data
through role-based user administration.

9. Engineered on a single code base: MicroStrategy is widely recognized for its meticulously engineered software
based on a single code base, scaling to organizations and applications of all sizes; leveraging any hardware,
operating system, and data source infrastructure while making BI more approachable for the average business user.

III. C
 omparison of MicroStrategy and Cognos On Key BI Requirements

Business intelligence has the power to provide performance feedback and visibility to all people in an organization,
enabling businesses to make thousands of better decisions every day. However, not all BI technologies deliver on
this promise, falling short on a number of key requirements demanded of enterprise BI applications. The following
table outlines the overarching and important criteria by which all modern BI technologies need to be assessed, and
MicroStratEGY VS.Cognos

provides a side-by-side evaluation of MicroStrategy 8 and Cognos 8 along these requirements.


 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards
• Dashboards Integrated
with Industrial-Strength BI
Platform
• Full power of ROLAP
analysis
• Single design environment
• Infinitely Extensible
Visualization
• Advanced Visualization
Flash Libraries
• Native parallel Flash and
DHTML visualizations
• On-Dashboard interactivity
• WYSIWYG Design
Paradigm
Unified BI Architecture
• Seamless integration of
analytics and reporting for
root cause analysis
• Single code base across
platforms
• Single Web Interface
• Single metadata
Market Proven Enterprise
Scalability and Performance
• 64-bit BI processing
• Minimal re-query of the
database
• Multi-layer caching
technology
• Customer references for
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence
large user and data scalability
production deployments
• Aggregate awareness
• Multi-pass SQL
• Distributed processing with
the relational database
• Minimize network traffic
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy’s Dynamic Enterprise
Dashboards fully leverage the MicroStrategy
8 platform. Dashboards are created using
reports and objects from MicroStrategy’s
single metadata. Intelligence Server provides
its sophisticated processing, security,
caching and analytical capabilities.
Users design dashboards from MicroStrategy’s
single web interface using the already
familiar design paradigm. Dashboards are
created in a zero-footprint web interface,
pixel perfect and freeform layout.
Dashboard Designers create highly interactive
dashboards and can render them in DHTML,
Flash, PDF or Microsoft Office products.
YES
MicroStrategy’s unified architecture provides
a seamless integration of analytics and
reporting from a single web interface.
MicroStrategy is a single code base that
is truly platform independent. A single
shared metadata consisting of all reports
and underlying reporting objects ensures
one version of the truth. A unified web
interface means a common reporting and
analysis paradigm for all users.
YES
The MicroStrategy platform is designed for
enterprise scalability. MicroStrategy’s ROLAP
and multi-pass SQL approach leverages the
latest innovations from database technology.
It efficiently processes large volumes of
transaction level data in the database,
minimizing network traffic.
Data is automatically cached at multiple
levels to reduce redundant computations
and network traffic. The MicroStrategy
SQL engine’s aggregate awareness can
dynamically determine the most efficient
table in every analysis. 64-bit processing
allows MicroStrategy to support much
greater numbers of users and data sizes
while improving performance.

COGNOS 8
NO
Today, Cognos has two separate
dashboarding products: Cognos 8 BI and
Cognos Now!, the former Celequest
company. Cognos 8 BI dashboards provide
limited interactivity and do not offer support
for Flash. Cognos Now! Offers limited Flash
support; however it is not integrated with
the Cognos 8 platform at the metadata and
server level.
Cognos 8 dashboards do not support
pixel perfect positioning. Users cannot edit
dashboards while viewing the information in
a WYSIWYG way. Users are often required
to switch from the Report Studio interface to
Report Viewer.
Cognos 8 BI does not support advanced
visualizations like heat maps and animations,
useful for the viewing and identifying outliers
in large volumes of data.
NO
Cognos 8 is Cognos’ first attempt to
integrate all the legacy of stand-alone
products on the same metadata. Although
Cognos did a reasonable job at the metadata
level for a version 1 release, there are still
products like Metrics Studio which have a
separate metrics repository and PowerPlay
Cubes that require their own definition of
metrics through Transformer. Cognos’ recent
acquisitions, Celequest and Applix, represent
stand alone platforms without clear plans for
integration with Cognos 8.
Cognos 8 has five different products called
Studios. These Studios contain overlapping
functionality requiring users to learn different
paradigms. This lowers user adoption rates
and increases IT support costs.
NO
Cognos 8 provides very limited support for
inter-user report caching, inter-report dataset
caching and element list caching. Reports are
often re-run unnecessarily when users perform
drill-thru actions. This increases CPU utilization,
network traffic and database processing,
hurting the performance of the BI application
and elevating the cost of ownership.
Cognos’ incomplete SQL engine lacks
automatic aggregate awareness which hurts
data scalability. Cognos cannot fully leverage
your 64-bit hardware investments and more
money needs to be spent on hardware boxes
to support the equivalent number of users
and data volumes as MicroStrategy.
Bad performance and scalability are the
main reasons why MicroStrategy has
replaced Cognos in many accounts.
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Reusable and Rich
Metadata Layer
• Robust abstraction layer
(where all physical constructs
can be modeled logically and
hidden from business user)
• Highly reusable metadata
• Automatic change
management
• Object oriented metadata
Interactive WYSIWYG
Web Interface
• Fully interactive reporting,
completely zero-footprint
over the Web from any
browser cannot change the format of the report, and
• WYSIWYG document design
and editing over the Web
• Self-service
• Easy to learn, familiar
windows on the Web
paradigm
Industrial Strength
Multi-level Security
• 128-bit encryption - extranet
ready
• Integrate with any security
infrastructure with single
sign-on
• Same report yields different
views of the information
based on user profiles
• Truly zero-footprint. No use
or download of ActiveX and
other plug-ins
• Cell level security
Dynamic Report
Personalization
• Comprehensive parameter
and question prompting
• Security profiles personalize
report content for individual
users
• Report bursting
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata
defines an enterprise’s business layer in
a single repository. The metadata objects
can be nested as building blocks to create
more complex objects. If a metadata
object changes, every other metadata
object dependent on it automatically
changes. This ensures consistency across
business definitions and minimizes the
number of objects to maintain.
MicroStrategy assembles all metadata
objects necessary for a report and
dynamically builds the report SQL at run-
time. It does not store a finished report as
a static SQL statement.
YES
Business users create highly formatted
reports, using a zero-footprint WYSIWYG
design paradigm that drastically shortens
the report development time.
End users are able to create, manipulate
and format information through a single
Web interface. Changes are available
right away without any need to “publish”
or “export” information to other
environments.
MicroStrategy achieves drag-and-drop
interactivity without relying on ActiveX, so
report designers can use any browser.
YES
MicroStrategy provides centralized security
administration across reporting, analysis
and delivery. User profiles and privileges
ensure users only access the appropriate
information and functionality. Security
filters provide the right access down to the
cell level.
MicroStrategy supports 128-bit end-to-end
encryption with a zero-footprint Web client
making it a secure platform behind the fire-
wall. MicroStrategy integrates with existing
security authentication infrastructure such
as LDAP, NT, and databases.
YES
In MicroStrategy, a single report can
automatically support hundreds of possible
data combinations tailored to different user
needs. Advanced report parameters, like
object and hierarchy prompts, allow users
to pick any business attributes and KPIs to
include in the report.
A single report definition can burst
personalized information to thousands of
users.

COGNOS 8
NO
In Cognos 8, report designers using Report
Studio cannot create report objects e.g., met-
rics, filters, prompts, custom groups and then
reuse these objects across different reports.
Report developers cannot reuse their newly
created metrics, filters or prompts as build-
ing blocks to create more advanced metrics.
Cognos’ metadata maps one-to-one to
the physical database on what is called a
Cognos Query Item. Report developers
select Query Items to include in a report.
If an attribute like ‘Region’ happens to be
in two database tables, report developers
are forced to choose between two ‘Region’
Query Items, potentially resulting in two
versions of the truth.
NO
Cognos 8 end users, Consumer and Recipient
roles, get a very static view of the reports.
Interaction with the report is limited to few
actions e.g., end users cannot sort by a column,
cannot pivot the columns and rows.
Cognos Report Studio provides relative
positioning but very limited pixel-level absolute
positioning of report objects over the report
layout. Pixel-level positioning is necessary
for designer productivity and to obtain
boardroom quality reports.
Report Studio designers must use Internet
Explorer – due to Cognos 8’s dependency
on ActiveX.
NO
Cognos does not have 128-bit end-to-end
encryption out of the box. This is particularly
important for any extranet deployment. In
order to get higher encryption, an expensive
additional third party component needs to be
integrated into the Cognos 8 application.
Cognos security must be manually
configured in several distinct technologies
e.g., Transformer, Framework Manager and
Cognos Connection. This requirement to
manage security in multiple technologies
increases the chances of human error and
maintenance effort.
LIMITED
Cognos 8 offers limited options for
parameterized reports. Object prompts such
as selection of attributes, metrics, and filters
MicroStratEGY VS.Cognos
on the fly are not supported.
Report personalization is accomplished by
bringing all possible data to the report and
hiding columns with extensive formatting
logic on each report.
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Centralized Enterprise
Administration
• Self-tuning scalable server for
maximum performance
• Usage monitoring / auditing
• Controlled environment for
analysis
• Version management /
migration
• Single management console
• Automated regression testing
process
• Automated full impact
analysis
Flexible and Powerful
OLAP Analysis
• Direct access to SAP® BW
for reporting and analysis,
Hyperion Essbase, and
Microsoft Analysis Services
• Operational database
reporting with freeform SQL
Seamless Microsoft Office
Integration
• All Office products supported
(Excel, PowerPoint, Word,
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence
Outlook) Outlook users. MicroStrategy Office
• Leverage all BI reports and
reporting objects security and administration, ensuring
• Full new report creation
• Persistent and
interchangeable formatting
across Office and Web
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy’s centralized administration
provides a single console for real-time user
and system management.
MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager provides
hundreds of KPIs and corresponding
dashboards to perform impact analysis,
auditing and tuning of the BI application.
MicroStrategy Object Manager facilitates
metadata life cycle management, metadata
dependencies and project management.
MicroStrategy Integrity Manager automates
the report comparison process and
verifies the consistency of reports. This
tool can detect, compare, and present
inconsistencies in reports and data caused
by changes in the BI ecosystem. Integrity
Manager alerts the system administrator
of changes in a report. It also automatically
highlights the differences in the numeric
values, SQL, or display.
YES
The MicroStrategy SQL Engine’s ability
to dynamically generate multi-pass SQL
allows users to ask complex business
questions such as market basket and set
analysis e.g., view sales for the current
year for all customers who purchased
product ‘x’ last year. Users can drill
anywhere in the entire data warehouse
for a boundary-free speed-of-thought
investigative analysis.
MicroStrategy’s Data Mining Services
leverages definitions from all major
third-party data mining vendors, providing
predictive analytics to thousands of users.
MicroStrategy’s Analytical Engine provides
hundreds of built-in financial, statistical,
and mathematical functions. The SQL
Engine and the Analytical Engine work
collaboratively to ensure that processing is
performed efficiently on the optimal tier.
YES
MicroStrategy delivers the complete
reporting and analysis environment to
Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and
applications are linked to MicroStrategy
100% data consistency across the
enterprise.
Users are able to access existing reports
or create new ones from within Microsoft
Office applications. Changes are
immediately reflected across MicroStrategy
Office and Web interfaces. Microsoft
Office formatting changes are preserved
after automatic data updates.
10
COGNOS 8
NO
Cognos security must be defined in a
minimum of two places: Framework
Manager and Cognos Connection.
There are limited auditing capabilities and
there are very limited tools to aid on usage,
metadata management, automated script
creation and impact analysis.
Administrators can easily break metadata
integrity by erasing a filter or other
metadata objects used inside a report as
there is no integrity tool check before
removing an object.
LIMITED
Cognos Analysis Studio provides only a
single metric view at one time. In order to
analyze many metrics users must switch to a
different product called Query Studio. Unlike
MicroStrategy, Cognos requires two different
products to perform similar ad-hoc and OLAP
tasks: Query Studio and Analysis Studio.
Cognos’ SQL engine lacks automatic
aggregate awareness, hurting data
scalability. Cognos recommends using
MOLAP sources instead. There are no
formatting options in Analysis Studio
and users must move their reports to a
different product called Report Studio to
do formatting. There is no parameterized
(prompted) reporting within Analysis Studio.
Cognos 8 does not have drill anywhere
capabilities across reports. All drill paths
across cubes and across reports have to be
manually defined by IT or report developers.
YES
Cognos’ Microsoft Office plug-ins offer
limited prompting functionality. For example,
Cognos’ Microsoft Office plug-in does not
support the ability to prompt on the set of
metrics and attributes to incorporate in the
report, also referred as column prompts.
Cognos’ Office plug-in does not offer
Dynamic Dashboard technology (Flash) that
could provide embedded visualizations and
a more interactive experience.
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Heterogeneous Data Source
Access from a Single Web
Document
• Direct access to SAP® BW
for reporting and analysis,
Hyperion Essbase, and
Microsoft Analysis Services
• Operational database
reporting with freeform SQL
Robust Enterprise Reporting
• Support for wide range of
report styles
• Pixel-level absolute
positioning
• In-place analysis
• Desktop publishing
formatting
• High quality printing
• Export to Excel
Information Delivery and
Proactive Notification
• Wide range of output types:
Web, print, fax, wireless
• Alerting and Thresholds
• Dashboards and Scorecards
• Portals integration
• Fully interactive reports and
dashboards accessed from
mobile devices
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy allows a single document to
present data pulled directly from multiple
data sources.
MicroStrategy’s Operational SQL Engine can
generate reports from data residing in any
operational database across the organization.
MicroStrategy can directly query SAP BW
InfoCubes and QueryCubes.
YES
MicroStrategy’s Web Interface is designed
to maximize business user and report
designer productivity. Highly formatted
documents are built using common
desktop publishing paradigms such as
rulers and pixel-level positioning, all over a
zero-footprint Web.
MicroStrategy offers comprehensive report
styles from banded reports to dashboards
and scorecards. These documents are
highly interactive providing in-place analysis,
pivoting, drilling and Excel-like formatting
toolbars.
YES
Users receive personalized alerts triggered
by dynamic events and time scheduled
reports, via portal, print, e-mail, wireless
or file servers.
MicroStrategy’s platform leverages
highly scalable technology that slices a
single report and dynamically distributes
personalized information to the right users. dynamically conform the recipient list.
Reusing a single report across hundreds of
users saves processing resources. Users can
easily assemble scorecards and dashboards
based on existing objects and integrating
several data sources, without the need of
an extra application or interface.
MicroStrategy Mobile allows users to
run reports and dashboards directly on
their BlackBerry® smartphones. Reports
are cached directly on the BlackBerry
for fast, offline viewing. Reports are
fully interactive; data can be sliced and
sorted; columns can be locked and resized
for effective comparisons of metrics.
MicroStrategy Mobile accesses the same
reports and dashboards used by all other
MicroStrategy user interfaces, ensuring a
single version of the truth.
MicroStrategy Mobile actively governs
memory and bandwidth usage to ensure
harmonious operations with other critical
BlackBerry applications.
11
COGNOS 8
YES
Cognos 8 provides heterogeneous access
to relational and MOLAP sources. However,
it strongly encourages customers to buy a
3rd party plug-in from Composite Software
to eliminate the cumbersome performance
issues that exist in Cognos’ native
heterogeneous data source implementation.
Cognos’ implementation of SAP BW is limited
mostly to Query Cubes and does not provide
efficient access to InfoCubes and InfoSources.
It has very limited capability to handle queries
with structures and SAP BW variables.
LIMITED
Cognos Report Studio does not offer report
designers a way to edit and format the
report layout while viewing it, for a real-time
WYSIWYG view of their changes. This
increases the design time due to unnecessary
iterations and design frustration.
Cognos users cannot continue analyzing a
report in Analysis Studio once it has been
formatted in Report Studio. They are limited
to exporting the information to Microsoft
Excel for further analysis, promoting silos of
information throughout the enterprise and
different versions of the truth.
Cognos Report Studio is not optimized for
operational, hierarchical or banded reporting.
YES
Cognos 8 now offers Event Studio which is a
separate interface that deals with Alerts and
Event management.
However, Cognos 8 has very limited dynamic
distribution list capabilities. Therefore,
Administrators have to define fixed
distribution lists and cannot use conditions to
Cognos Go! Mobile allows users to run
reports from mobile devices. However, report
interactivity on the mobile device is limited,
with no ability to re-order columns, sort
columns, or quickly view report slices via
page-by attributes. Cognos Go! Mobile also
does not support tabbed viewing of multiple
reports, limiting users’ ability to quickly
navigate from report to report with one click.
MicroStratEGY VS.Cognos
 IV. C
 ritical Questions to Ask when Evaluating
MicroStrategy and Cognos

There is a fundamental difference between the software architectures of Cognos and MicroStrategy. Cognos has a
legacy of multiple products with non-integrated architectures which haunts them even to the most recent Cognos
8 release. In comparison, MicroStrategy’s code base was completely rewritten over the course of 4 years as a unified
server-centric architecture. MicroStrategy has been building its platform organically and keeping the utmost integrity
and efficiency. This basic difference allows MicroStrategy customers to benefit from:

• A greater range of functionality through a single Web interface and unified architecture which decreases training
and maintenance costs.
• A productive WYSIWYG edit environment which can be used across any Web browser.
• A market proven user and data scalability with more efficient use of network and server resources.
• Greater analytical breadth, including predictive analytics.
• A market tested and bullet-proof security infrastructure.
• Lower total cost of ownership by lowering IS support and maintenance requirements.

The following questions elicit these basic MicroStrategy strengths with some very specific comparisons that should be
made when evaluating Cognos and MicroStrategy.

1. MicroStrategy 8 utilizes a multi-level caching architecture. MicroStrategy achieves high inter-user and
inter-report caching rates that allow maximum utilization of the IT resources, resulting in the lowest
cost per report. Does Cognos 8 provide a similar enterprise caching architecture?

MicroStrategy provides a comprehensive caching architecture that has been built and improved over the years.
With the MicroStrategy platform, caching is synchronized across clustered machines. All users can access
the portion of the cache for which they have permissions. Permissions are determined after applying security
filters, privileges and access control lists. With MicroStrategy, the cache is automatically refreshed whenever
any underlying report object or data changes. This is critical in maintaining a “single version of the truth.”
MicroStrategy’s multi-level caching architecture offers the following caching levels for maximum reusability:

• Report dataset caching allows quick access to full and intermediate result sets, enabling inter-user and inter
report caching.
•M
 etadata object caching allows the reuse of attributes, metrics, hierarchies and other report objects.
This greatly improves the response time during report creation and manipulation.
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

• L ookup table element caching provides great reusability for prompt values. For example, a hierarchically sorted
list of a thousand product categories or SKU items can be cached, eliminating expensive queries to the database.
•X
 ML definition caching delivers different report presentations from the same XML cache without the need of
querying the database again. The XML cache is also used for incrementally fetching data on-demand through
the report pages or for increasing the performance of system-to-system data transmission via web services.
• Intelligent cubes enable quick user manipulations such as slicing and dicing, pivoting, subtotaling, banding,
sorting, drilling and adding new derived metrics. This enhances the usability of the system and speeds up the
investigative process.

MicroStrategy 8 uses one or more datasets as data sources for the documents. These datasets are cached
immediately when they are first used. As a result, any other report that uses the same dataset immediately
benefits from this cache. Performance and throughput are improved significantly for subsequent reports.

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 MicroStrategy 8 prompted reports can display hundreds of options e.g., SKU item pick list, where this list can
be cached for future use in any similar prompted report.

Cognos 8 provides limited caching mechanisms to allow inter-user and inter-report caching, essentially only
providing reusable HTML caching that users have to explicitly publish and request. Users cannot automatically
reuse the report results requested by a previous user. This means Cognos 8 will have to generate and re-run the
same SQL every time a user requests the same report, putting a tremendous strain on database and network
resources. Cognos 8 prompted reports need to generate the pick list by running a query to the database every
time the report is run, dramatically increasing the users’ wait for the prompt questions.

To put this in perspective, let’s consider a hypothetical enterprise reporting application with 100 different reports
and 5,000 users running an average of 10 reports per day. This hypothetical application will produce a total
of 5,000 x 10 = 50,000 reports per day. Cognos 8 will execute 50,000 reports against the database, while
MicroStrategy will only execute a maximum of 100 reports, as the remaining reports will be retrieved from
the data cache. MicroStrategy’s advanced caching architecture will perform 500 times fewer roundtrips to the
database, consuming less network and database resources.

2. MicroStrategy’s 64-bit native platform takes advantage of customers’ investments in the latest 64-bit
hardware and operating systems. Can Cognos 8 leverage 64-bit hardware and operating systems?

MicroStrategy‘s 64-bit platform is compiled natively to leverage the address memory space benefits from 64-bit
operating systems and microprocessors. Cognos 8 is compiled in 32-bit native mode even if it is running on
64-bit operating systems which results in Cognos not being able to leverage the benefits of 64-bit environments
and customers’ 64-bit hardware investments.

3. MicroStrategy supports aggregate tables which optimize the performance of the OLAP and Reporting
application. MicroStrategy’s engine is automatically “aggregate aware” so it selects the most efficient
table to retrieve the data. Is Cognos 8 automatically “aggregate aware”?

MicroStrategy supports a wide variety of data schemas, from the common star schema to sophisticated snowflake
with split-fact schemas. Using these schemas, the data is modeled following an object oriented paradigm where,
e.g., “Region” is an object or attribute that defines a geographical characteristic of the data. In this case “Region,”
regardless of the number of instances it is found across the tables in the data warehouse, will be recognized by
the MicroStrategy SQL engine as the same object. This logical abstraction layer provides MicroStrategy with many
reusability and optimization capabilities. Factual “Regional” data could exist across several tables with different levels
of aggregation e.g., ‘daily sales’ fact table or ‘monthly sales’ fact table. If the user runs a 2005 sales report broken by
“Region,” the MicroStrategy engine will select the most efficient table. In this case it will select the Sales per month
table as it provides the highest level of aggregation and the least effort to aggregate the yearly requested data.

Cognos 8 provides a very weak object oriented definition of the data. Cognos’ Query Subjects and Query Items
MicroStratEGY VS.Cognos

represent one-to-one mappings of the data warehouse table and table column structures respectively. Using Cognos
Framework Manager, the Cognos 8 modeling tool, data modelers expose these first order representations of data
to the report designers and ad-hoc query users. Reports are then created by selecting these individual “query items.”
Since data modelers must specify that the “Region” query item will map to a specific table or “query subject,”
it constrains the Cognos SQL engine from pointing “Region” to many “query subjects” or tables. This critical
architectural limitation causes the lack of aggregate awareness capability in Cognos 8 and limits the performance,
maintainability and scalability of the business intelligence applications.

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 4. MicroStrategy can scale to support upwards of 200 concurrent web users on a single four CPU Server.
How many concurrent web users can Cognos support on a single four CPU server? How does the TCO
of MicroStrategy compare with Cognos’?

Cognos can support a maximum of 19 concurrent web users per CPU2. Low concurrency per server in a Cognos
environment results in dramatically inflated hardware costs to support a large Web user community.

When evaluating the total cost of ownership for a BI application it is critical to focus on the whole business
intelligence utility. If a CPU from MicroStrategy can support ten or more times the number of reports, then that
many times more hardware and CPU licenses would be needed for a Cognos environment so it achieves the
equivalent MicroStrategy throughput numbers.

5. MicroStrategy offers a full report formatting and WYSIWYG editing environment for highly formatted reports
over the Web in a zero-footprint environment from any browser. Does Cognos offer the same functionality
without any dependency on ActiveX? Can a report designer create a report in Cognos Report Studio using
the Firefox or Netscape browsers? Which formatting options are available in Cognos Analysis Studio?

MicroStrategy provides the report creation tools expected from typical publishing and design tools, such as
guidelines and rulers. MicroStrategy allows the report designer to efficiently control the absolute position of
report objects on the layout, delivering outstanding boardroom quality printouts. Cognos Report Studio does
not have comparable design aids and the report designers cannot use absolute positioning to place report
components over the layout. This limits printout presentation and increases report creation time.

Cognos Report Studio provides a limited WYSIWYG design environment. Report designers must layout a series of
tables and then embed the report components. To visualize the changes, report designers must run the report. If
modifications need to be performed, designers must go back to the design environment to do the appropriate
changes and re-run the report. The number of iterations to get a report to its final form without the WYSIWYG
run-time capabilities that MicroStrategy offers, greatly decreases the productivity of the report designer in Cognos 8.

Cognos Analysis Studio contains extremely limited report formatting capabilities for reports. Cognos end
users under the Consumer role cannot personalize the report aesthetics or interact with the report data e.g.,
sort by a column. Cognos 8 end-users only receive a static view of the report.

Cognos Report Studio requires Internet Explorer’s ActiveX and cannot be considered zero-footprint for run-time
purposes. The use of ActiveX in Cognos opens security holes. Cognos dependency on Microsoft Internet Explorer
makes it impossible for users to create reports using the increasingly popular Firefox or Apple’s Safari browsers.
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

6. MicroStrategy allows dynamic drill anywhere from any data element on any report. Does Cognos
offer dynamic report drilling functionality?

MicroStrategy underlying metadata and data schema allows users to easily drill anywhere to deliver the maximum
investigative results. Users can drill from a Report Services’ report to any ad-hoc query or intelligent cube. End users
are able to explore the data without waiting for IT to respond to them.

Cognos 8 does not provide dynamic drill anywhere; it can only provide drill up and down paths. Report designers
must manually create and enable drill links on a per report basis. This translates into many reports and links to

2
T able 5 from http://www.cognos.com/pdfs/whitepapers/wp_cognos_reportnet_scalability_benchmakrs_ms_windows.pdf shows that 875 users
using Cognos ReportNet, which is the architectural baseline for Cognos 8, get a response time of 18 sec. when running a report (using 44 CPUs).

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 manually maintain. Cognos Report Studio provides a way to define links using a “hyperlink” mechanism where
users can specify the target report and parameters to pass when users click on a particular column. Drill through
links cannot be reused across different reports. In addition, if the “target report” changes and its parameters
need to be updated, the user must go back to the “source report” and do the proper manual updates. While
this “hyperlink” functionality is useful in particular scenarios, it is certainly not the right approach when it comes to
replicating OLAP functionality such as MicroStrategy’s unique drilling anywhere.

7. MicroStrategy provides end users with “must have” interactive features supporting self-service
environments that greatly reduce requests to IT for slightly different versions of the report. Which
level of interactivity does Cognos 8 provide to end users?

MicroStrategy end users have useful interactive features at their finger tips. Interactive features such as sort, page by,
pivot, formatting, and toggle totals allow users to slightly personalize the report presentation to their specific needs,
minimizing the number of requests to IT and allowing them to obtain the information they want faster. Interactive
functionality helps reduce the number of reports with slight variations e.g., users might like a summary report with
an outlined view of the totals paged by “Region” while others would like a flat view of the data without any total
information in a small font. While these two views serve different purposes, the data and report definition is the
same. Users can get variations of the same report and avoid waiting on IT to create separate report definitions.

Cognos 8 Consumer role provides its end users with very limited interactivity, forcing end users to flood IT with
personal requests, promoting the creation of slightly different versions of the report and increasing the maintenance
cost of the business intelligence application.

8. MicroStrategy covers an extensive range of report types as a result of supporting the “banding”
paradigm for the creation of production reports, as well as the “zone-based” paradigm optimized for
dashboards and scorecards. How does Cognos 8 stand on its report style breadth capabilities?

MicroStrategy covers all types of enterprise reports. The report designer can drag and drop attributes to the
‘group by’ section of the report and the header and footer for that attribute band will be created automatically.
The MicroStrategy Report Services engine automatically generates the hierarchical rendering and subtotal
calculations for the different bands. MicroStrategy Report Services could place report objects within “bands”
for maximum flexibility, thereby supporting all types of business reports, including dashboards and scorecards.

Cognos Report Studio utilizes HTML tables for the creation of reports. Cognos 8 does not provide an efficient
and easy way to display the report information in different bands. In some cases, a designer using Cognos
Report Studio can potentially work around this limitation through the use of nested HTML tables and mimic
the functionality of “banded” paradigms. However, the use of tables within tables or nested tables is very time
consuming and it hinders the report performance. Nested tables would also need to include additional duplicated
objects that potentially incur extra queries and joins in memory. It is clear that Cognos 8 does not provide an
efficient way to address operational report requirements and is primarily optimized for dashboard and scorecards.
MicroStratEGY VS.Cognos

9. MicroStrategy provides out-of-the-box predictive analysis for the business user and integrates with
3rd party data mining systems. Can Cognos integrate with 3rd party data mining tools?

Cognos provides data mining and predictive modeling via Scenario and 4Thought. These products are not well
integrated with the Cognos 8 architecture. Cognos 8 does not integrate out-of-the-box with standards such as
PMML, and best-of-breed data mining systems like SPSS, SAS and IBM Dataminer.

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