The fierce competition of two OLAP technologies has not stop by merging their mother’s companies. Cognos in 2007 acquired Applix (though months later itself was acquired by IBM) not just to create synergy effect or broaden its customer base but to gain technological advantage too. Cognos’s PowerPlay, some ten years ago probably the most broadly used OLAP technology, has already reached its technological limits and new innovative products had superior performance and more capabilities.

In 2005 when it launched new generation of product Cognos 8 BI, the company has chosen to continue with old PowerPlay cubes under new name PowerCubes but with more broader possibilities to access the data stored in. Now for some time it has looked, that PowerCubes have their days counted. It is still broadly used and sold but with increasing integration of TM1 in Cognos BI it will probably take over. A recently launched Cognos Express , a Cognos 8 BI version for midsized companies, PowerCubes was ultimately replaced by TM1.

The advantage of TM1 is not only better OLAP performance but also its possibility to accept user data input that makes it not just analytic and reporting but planning and budgeting tool too so it can replace Cognos Planning (former Adaytum) as well.

Anyway IBM Cognos PowerCubes technology is still selling quite well within IBM Cognos 8 BI server and will continue in IBM Cognos 10 as well. If you want to use TM1 with Cognos 8 BI you have to purchase another server. Is it worth? What are the differences?

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