IBM Cognos Analytics Upgrades

Cognos has been a BI tool of choice for a large number of businesses globally. IBM recently released the new version of Cognos – Cognos 11.1.x; however, as earlier versions of Cognos have been working so well and so elegantly, many corporations were apprehensive about stirring the pot and upgrading to the newer version. And it didn’t help that earlier releases of Cognos 11.0.x had many issues. However, as of March 2019, most of the issues are resolved and Cognos 11.1.x now is a very stable and reliable version. Yes, IBM does release fix-packs almost every month; however, none of them are show-stoppers. Its been almost a year since IBM has stopped providing support to older versions of Cognos. In short, time to upgrade to Cognos 11.1.x and reap the benefits is now!

Cognos can be upgraded ‘over-the-top’. This means your Cognos Analytics can be upgraded to a newer version using the same configuration details, ports, themes and extensions as your previous installation. Now, this assumes that your current version is not very old. If it is old (older version 10.x/8.x), you may have to do the migration and upgrade in steps (i.e. hop to a version that can support an in-place upgrade to the most current version).

What’s new in Cognos 11.1.x?

Cognos11 is the first version of Cognos Analytics. As per IBM, the new version of Cognos infuses advanced analytics and AI automation throughout the whole user experience. It has the ability to build data modules and visualizations on the fly.

This new interface of Cognos is relatively easy to use and this feature becomes particularly useful for new end users who aren’t used to configurations of the older version of Cognos. It’s more intuitive with options like Storytelling allowing quick animated data presentation. Storytelling allows easy PowerPoint-style slideshow or Prezi-style pan and zoom presentations of multiple visualizations.

Whether it’s the search capability, the dashboarding technology that just added limited support for Framework Manager models, or the new and updated visualizations and built-in location intelligence, there are many improvements that make it worth the upgrade.

The dashboarding capability of the Cognos solution has been completely overhauled and provides the ability to just drag and drop data onto the screen to see the visualization change to suit the analysis. Dashboard creation on the fly gives your users faster access to information, thereby increasing productivity and improving your ROI on your BI solution.

Web-based modeling creates a Data Module which is similar in concept to a Framework Manager package but uses Watson Analytics technology to allow ‘intent-based modeling’, meaning a user can type their interest (e.g ‘Revenue’) and the tool will search for that text and return relevant information. These models can then be shared.

Data discovery is an area that IBM has addressed in Cognos Analytics with data modules and dashboarding. It has been made possible due to technology developed for Watson Analytics. This helps the user to select the visualization that best suits the data in play and helps to find associations in the data and to make report creation much easier. And of course, there are a bunch of new visualizations and reporting enhancements to make the upgrade to Cognos 11.1.x worthwhile.

We at Trinus have teamed up with IBM to carry out successful Cognos upgrades at multiple installations (including public sector). Please get in touch with us for a free, no-obligation consultation.