IBM Cognos Analytics vs SAS Visual Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics is a paid business-intelligence platform for reporting, business analytics and AI-assisted insights. It supports hybrid deployment, real-time refresh, scheduled reports and natural-language queries across Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, web, API and self-hosted environments. Users can build multipage reports and share them as HTML, CSV, PDF or Excel files. Interactive dashboards provide visualizations, drill-downs and email or Slack sharing. Time-series modeling supports trend prediction, while the AI Assistant answers natural-language questions about selected data sources and can create dynamic dashboards. Standard costs $10.60 a month per authorized user and includes dashboards, data modules, mobile access, basic administration and AI capabilities, but users receive reports only. Premium costs $42.40 a month per authorized user and adds report creation, execution and scheduling, data explorations, custom visualizations, advanced administration and reporting agents. A free 30-day On-Demand trial supports up to five users.

SAS Visual Analytics combines data visualization, business intelligence, reporting, and advanced analytics in one application. Users can explore data, build interactive reports and dashboards, summarize performance metrics, and share results through web and mobile devices. Machine learning and natural-language explanations help surface relationships, outliers, and clusters. Business analysts can use predictive analytics to assess potential outcomes without programming. Data preparation includes importing data, quality operations, calculated columns, transformations, joins, filters, and scheduled jobs. Sources include databases, Hadoop, Excel spreadsheets, social media, CSV files, and SAS data sets. SAS Viya Copilot for Augmented Analytics supports dashboard building, data exploration, and data stories through natural-language prompts. Location information can add geographic context, and SAS for Microsoft 365 supports report interaction and embedding report content in Excel. Security features include authentication, content authorization, and object-, table-, and row-level data security. Deployment is hybrid; web, Windows, iOS, and Android are listed. Pricing is available on request, and a free SAS Viya trial is offered, with no duration stated.