IBM has released Cognos 10 and there are some skeptics out there wondering if it is worth the hype. In my opinion, the release warrants a conversation because it is a major release. Note that they went from Cognos 8 right to Cognos 10 and there are major differences. Some of the additions and changes are great … really … so I will give you the quick and dirty. You can read the complete release information in the upgrade whitepaper, so I won’t bore you with too much tech talk.
The biggest change that they made was integrating dash boarding into IBM Cognos 10. In Cognos 8 when you wanted to do really flashy and pretty dashboards, you had to use Go Dashboard. Now in Cognos 10, you have the Go Dashboard capabilities within Cognos 10. If you are like me, I like my dashboard to look good as well as tell me something. You know that I am a fan of Go Dashboard, so I am happy to see that the functionality is now available within Cognos 10.
The second change, which is a change in philosophy, is that IBM introduced Business Insight and Business Insight Advance. For those of you that were fans of the studio structure, you can relax because Business Insight has the same functionality of Query Studio and Analysis Studio without having to navigate to different studios. What that means to you is that you can start with a report and if you want to know more, you do an analysis without having to go Query or Analysis Studio. If you are in Business Insight, you can open the report and do your analysis in the same place. I really like that they streamlined the studios and it really makes it easier to understand your data without having to struggle with knowing the “studio tango”.
The final change that I am excited about, is that Cognos 10 is now a real mobile device integration! Remember in Cognos 8 … you had Go Mobile and within Cognos 8 you could run prompted reports, but much like Go Dashboard, it was a separate application. I am happy that they have integrated mobile functionality into Cognos 10.
So, if I had to one line the changes from Cognos 8 to Cognos 10 it would be that IBM has streamlined Cognos and made it more fluid then Cognos 8. Now the next question on your mind is “Is it worth an upgrade?”. I have one answer for you and it is yes maybe no. You might have to read that line again because no one can tell your business you need to upgrade. You have to determine your business needs and match them with the latest software offering in order to come to the correct answer.