Your Cognos environment has years of reports, business logic, and security rules built up inside it. We deliver structured IBM Cognos to Power BI migration programs: from report inventory and semantic model redesign to security remapping, user enablement, and full Cognos decommission.
Is Your Cognos Environment Costing More Than It Delivers?
IBM Licensing Costs Keep Rising
Every Cognos renewal is a significant investment. Licensing, infrastructure, and specialist support costs stay high even as usage migrates to other tools. Most organisations find that a large share of their Cognos reports are rarely accessed.
Good Cognos Developers Are Hard to Find
Framework Manager, Report Studio, and TM1 require skills that are increasingly scarce. When a key developer leaves, institutional knowledge about how your reports and data models actually work often leaves with them.
Every Change Takes Too Long
Simple report changes that should take hours take days. Upgrades require extensive compatibility testing across your report catalogue. And every time IBM shifts its support roadmap, your team has to react.
Cognos Is Isolated from the Rest of Your Stack
Your organisation is investing in a new ERP, Microsoft 365, Azure, and potentially Microsoft Fabric. Cognos sits outside all of it — a separate platform with separate governance, separate identities, and separate costs.
Migrate from Cognos to Power BI Without Disrupting the Business
We don’t just rebuild your Cognos reports in Power BI. We assess what you have, design a Power BI environment that actually improves on it, and validate everything before Cognos is switched off.
Understand What You Have Before You Touch Anything
We inventory your full Cognos estate — reports, data packages, Framework Manager models, TM1 cubes, security rules, and actual usage data. Every report gets a decision: rebuild, consolidate, or retire. This step typically reduces migration scope by 30–40%.
Redesign for Power BI — Not a Cognos Clone
We redesign the semantic model for Power BI’s tabular architecture — star schemas, shared DAX measures, governed KPI definitions — rather than replicating Cognos logic inside a new tool. Business logic moves out of individual reports and into a shared, maintained model.
Validate Numbers, Then Decommission
Cognos stays live until Power BI passes validation — automated comparison of report outputs, stakeholder sign-off from BI and business owners, and documented resolution of every discrepancy. IBM licences are cancelled when parity is confirmed, not when the project timeline says so.
From Cognos Assessment to Power BI Production
Cognos Estate Assessment & Migration Roadmap
We inventory your Cognos environment — reports, packages, cubes, and security rules — and classify every asset by value and complexity. Output: a prioritised Rebuild / Consolidate / Retire decision for every report, and a realistic migration roadmap.
Semantic Model & Data Architecture Design
We design the Power BI semantic model from the ground up — star schemas, shared DAX measures, and a governed data layer that replaces Framework Manager structures. TM1 cube logic is translated into tabular models or Fabric-native structures.
Report Migration & Rebuild
We migrate your prioritised Cognos reports — list reports, crosstabs, dashboards, paginated outputs — into Power BI using structured rebuild and migration tooling. Complex business logic is re-implemented in the data model, not recreated at report level.
Security Remapping & RLS Design
We translate your Cognos security model into Power BI Row-Level Security, workspace permissions, and Microsoft Entra ID group mappings. Delivered as a documented, auditable security design before any user is moved across.
Parallel Validation & User Acceptance
We run Cognos and Power BI in parallel with automated output comparison and structured sign-off from report owners. Cognos is decommissioned domain by domain as validation is confirmed — never all at once.
User Enablement & BI COE Design
We design the Power BI training programme for your team and build the governance model that prevents the new platform becoming as fragmented as the old one. Adoption is a delivery workstream, not an afterthought.
A Clear Path from Cognos to Power BI — in Stages
Specialists in Cognos Migration, Experienced Across the Microsoft BI Stack
Migrating from Cognos requires deep knowledge of both platforms — not just Power BI, but the Cognos architecture being left behind. You need a partner who understands that.
Get Your Cognos Migration Roadmap with Multishoring
Let’s talk about your Cognos environment — how many reports you have, what version you’re on, what’s driving the move to Power BI, and what a realistic migration looks like for your organisation. You’ll walk away with a clear picture of scope, timeline, and what it will actually take to decommission Cognos for good.
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Beyond Migration — Our End-to-End BI & Data Services
Frequently Asked Questions about Cognos and Power BI
Is there an automated way to convert Cognos reports to Power BI?
Automation tools can accelerate parts of the migration — metadata extraction, basic layout recreation, and straightforward expression mapping. But they cannot interpret ambiguous business logic, redesign poor data models, or validate that numbers match. Every Cognos migration requires human analysis, semantic model redesign, and structured testing. Automation helps with speed; it does not replace the architectural work.
How long does a Cognos to Power BI migration take?
It depends on how many reports you have, how complex your data models are, and whether TM1 / Planning Analytics is in scope. A focused migration of a single business domain — 50–100 reports with well-understood data sources — typically takes 3 to 5 months. A full enterprise migration of a large Cognos estate usually runs 12 to 24 months as a phased programme. The assessment phase gives you a realistic timeline based on your actual environment.
Do we need to rebuild every Cognos report in Power BI?
No — and you shouldn’t try. Most Cognos estates contain a large number of reports that are rarely or never used. A structured inventory, scored by usage and business criticality, typically identifies 30–40% of reports that can be retired rather than migrated. Rebuilding only what matters reduces cost, timeline, and the risk of recreating a bloated report catalogue in a new tool.
How does Cognos security translate to Power BI?
Cognos controls access at the portal, package, and data row level — often through Active Directory groups. Power BI implements security through workspace permissions, app distribution, and Row-Level Security defined in the data model, all integrated with Microsoft Entra ID. The two models don’t map automatically — every security rule needs to be catalogued, redesigned, and validated. For regulated or finance-sensitive reporting, this is a first-class deliverable, not a configuration step.
What happens to TM1 and Planning Analytics in the migration?
TM1 and Planning Analytics cube logic — allocations, hierarchies, multi-currency structures, write-back — cannot be lifted directly into Power BI. The cube logic needs to be understood, documented, and re-implemented: either as DAX measures and tabular models in Power BI, or as upstream transformation logic in Fabric or Azure. Finance teams using TM1 for planning and reporting need to be involved in validation from the start, not presented with the result at the end.
Can we keep some Cognos reports and migrate the rest?
Yes, and for some organisations this is the right approach — particularly for regulated or statutory reports where changing the layout or output format requires formal re-approval. We design the migration scope to reflect this: some domains move to Power BI fully, others may be retained in Cognos temporarily or permanently. What matters is that the decision is made deliberately, with a clear decommission plan for each retained report, rather than Cognos persisting indefinitely by default.