BO Vs Cognos Vs MSTR – a quick outlook

      With the availability of wide range of BI products / tools, customers are perplexed in finding the right BI tools that suite their business needs. In the quest to find this out, we end up gathering information about various BI tools; still comparing them is often more tricky.

Here is an attempt to put together the  comparison between the 3 major Bi giants –BO, Cognos and  MSTR.

	Business Objects XI	Cognos	Micro Statergy
Platform Architecture	Good offline analytical capabilities. ensures data quality and lineage, closely integrated with other BI tools lower level of integration within the platform	No offline analytical capabilities Complete Performance management system on a single SOA platform
Data Access	Heterogeneous - provides good ETL tools to manage inconsistent data	Heterogeneous – Uses CMM ( Common Metadata Model)
Business Focus	what-if analysis available besides traditional BI reporting. Vertical solutions growing up after acquisition by SAP.	Industry specific packaged solutions available ( as blue prints ) **Key soln -  Performance Mgmt	Packaged solutions not available.
Query Reporting	Integrated tool - Web Intelligence – for end user queries, reporting and analysis Xcelsius - for interactive visual reporting	3 tools : Query Studio – for data query Report Studio – for reporting  Analysis Studio – for Data analysis	When using 100TB plus data – MSTR is more beneficial.
Product Line	Integrated.	Not Integrated Each additional product means additional metadata and security to administer and another interface for end users to learn.	More cohesive With 3 components application server,  web server and an automated mail services server.
Workflow	Business Objects supports "Analyze then Query" and "Query then analyze" and any other permutation User is in control - and s/he remains in the same product. The user is always in the right product.	Supports "Analyze then Query". End user is limited in workflow as (Power Play is for OLAP and Impromptu for Reporting ) An end user cannot reverse the workflow. Moving from Impromptu to Power Play requires transformer.	Integrated product and hence good workflow.
Deployment	Easy to deploy.	Difficult to deploy to the enterprise. Impromptu is not deployable (as semantic layer  is file based ) PowerPlay is not deployable (as it prevents end users from accessing the data they need, when they need it).	Easy to deploy.
Min Server Configuration required	• 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-class processor • 2 GB RAM • 4.9 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Enterprise • 1 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Enterprise (Win32 Clients) • 0.2 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Live Office • 0.2 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Process Tracker	RAM : Minimum: 512 MB         Recommended: 1 GB Disk space Minimum: 1 GB of free space on the drive that contains the temporary directory	•1Ghz or higher  Pentium Compatible (Min 450 MHz) • 512 MB or higher RAM (min 128 MB ),1GB(min 500 MB)
Graphs / point an click	Supports point & click graphing. Only Basic graph models available.	More specialized charts, such as  Pareto charts, Point charts,  gauge,  funnel,  scatter,  dot density,  waterfall, etc..	Provides Point & click graphing Supports a wide range of graph/chart types.                          Eg. Area – Horizontal absolute Funnel – Standard Pareto – Standard
Unbalanced Hierarchies	Hierarchical grouping is supported	Not supported
Drill Down/ Drill Up Features	Drill Up/ Drill Down are supported	Drill Down\Drill Up feature is supported by Cognos Transformer only. Can use both, the Transformer and Report together to achieve Drill up/down	Supports Drill Up/ Drill Down
Drill through	Drill Through is supported	Create a drill-through report to link two reports containing related information. Can then access related or more detailed information in one report by selecting a value in another report.	Supports Drill through
Control Breaks (Sub and Group Totals)	Control breaks and Sub/Group Totals are supported.  Some Sub totals require workarounds  in Webi (as folding options are not available)	Allows to add summaries at any of the group level. Can create sections for breaking the data.	Supports Control Breaks through zones.                             Also subtotal and group total.
Supported Report Types	Cross-tab, conditional, top N/bottom N, summary/drill-down, form,mailing label, OLAP, Subreports, Graphs, What-if Analysis	Report Studio supports the following report types : 1. List 2. Cross Tab 3, Charts, 4. Multipage statement layout, Can also combine one or more of these in single reports.	Scorecards and Dashboards,                                         Managed Metrics Reports,                                                Production and Operational Reports,                                               Invoices and Statements,                                                     Business Report,Datamining and predictive reports.
On Fly Calculation	Supports on the fly calculations	On-the-fly calculations are possible in query studio.	Only when using the OLAP Analysis as the source
Support for Sub Reports	Supported	Sub reports are supported using different queries in the same report as a master-details query.	N/A
Partial Result Support	Supported	Bitmap Bitmap There is option to support Partial result, we can specify the number of rows to be displayed or  Preview with limited data	Partial result can be retrieved through filters and prompts. Or using the row limit.
Support for re-usable components/ template creation	Not supported in Webi Intelligence. Supported in Crystal Reports and Desktop Intelligence	Yes. Any report which developed in report studio can be used as a template to any other report/ all reports layouts are available	Can create Common report objects for reuse through templates.
Automated Time Dimension Rollups	Supports time dependency and hierarchy navigation	Not possible in report	Supports Time Series Intelligence
Incremental Refresh	Not Supported	This is only possible for Cognos Cubes not for any other areas.	Not possible since it is a ROLAP Model.
Read & Write	Supports only read facility. Does not support Write back	Supports only read facility. Does not support Write back	Supports Write back to databases using MSTR Transactor.
Metadata Maintainability	Metadata is stored in the database. New tool, Repository Diagnostic Tool scans for and repairs inconsistencies that may occur in metadata in Business Objects repository.	Content store (Metadata DB) uses Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or DB2 UDB. But the content Store database must be utf-8. General Database back ups should be taken regularly.	Reusable object oriented metadata
Statistical/Financial/Time Series Analysis	Statistical functions are supported. Time Series Analysis such as 'MTD', 'QTD', 'YTD' is possible	All Statistical functions are available in report studio like SD, Var, Avg etc. Powerplay transformer –has inbuilt categories such as 'MTD', 'QTD', 'YTD'	Supports statistical analysis and time series analysis using Intelligence server. Provides ready functions for calculating IRR< depreciation, present and future value etc.
Print Format Control	Standard print format is supported by exporting reports to different format	More customized print format is possible. (If the output format is PDF, in the Paper Size box, select the page size; select the orientation of the report. Even If the output format is HTML, in the Maximum Rows box, type the maximum number of rows needed to appear on each report page.)	Print Format Control on both MSTR Agent and MSTR Web (options like Page Ordering, Header & Footer and margins are available)
Caching of results	Supports caching at Server level.	Server builds an in-memory cache to service many requests without requiring database access.	Supports automatic shared caches.
Fax and Autofax / Voice Mail	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supports through Information transmitters