Transitioning Cognos BI V10 Skills to Cognos Analytics V11

Clients have been calling in with questions about the exciting next generation of the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence platform – known as IBM Cognos Analytics, v11. Besides wanting to know what is new, one of the common questions we hear is: Will my Cognos 10.x skills translate to the equivalent roles in v11?

The short answer is yes. Even though v11 presents an entirely new user experience (UX), we have found that for existing users the transition from v10 can be a positive experience. We have created a reference chart about our findings on what skills will translate directly and which will not, followed by detailed notes on our findings and a quick preview of what’s brand new.

BUSINESS AUTHORS

• Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Event Studio, Metric Studio, and Cognos Workspace are not a part of the v11 UX. However, each of these capabilities and objects created from them will migrate 1-to-1 into v11 and will run in their legacy UI in a separate browser tab or window. Objects created in these tools in v11 will also be saved as legacy objects – currently there is no migration path. IBM has announced end of life for these tools after this release.
• If you intend to continue using any of these studios after upgrading to v11, any current v10.2 training will be 100% relevant. Budgeting Solutions recommends devising a strategy for migrating off from these solutions in the long-term. Contact us for more information.

PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS

• Report Studio and Cognos Workspace Advanced do not exist as-is in v11 UI/UX; however, all of their features and functionality are available in its new authoring piece. Experienced authors will not find migrating from v10.2 to 11 a major challenge. Core techniques learned in a  v10.2 Report Studio or Cognos Workspace Advanced environment will be directly translatable to v11 – the same goes for Dimensional Authoring, OLAP Data Exploration, and Active Report authoring.
• Budgeting Solutions will be offering a one-day New Features for Experienced Authors course which will enable a seamless transition for Report Studio and Cognos Workspace Advanced authors. For a limited time we will be offering a complimentary seat in this new course for each student that registers for our existing Report Studio training course.

SYSTEM ADMINSTRATORS

The main administration user interface has NOT changed from v10 to v11, nor have the core configuration components. Architecturally this new version is basically the same as v10; however, there are some new installation and configuration options.

CONSUMERS

•  The most obvious change is to the user experience. However, consuming static reports does not change. Consuming interactive reports has become much more seamless in the new UX, basically making every report available to be enhanced by users similar to Cognos Workspace.
• Graduated capabilities means that users have a singular UI for consumption, enhancement, customisation, self-service authoring, and data discovery. No more hopping from studio to studio.

So, what about all the NEW stuff?
There are a lot of brand new, never before imagined, features in v11 such as data modules for self-service modeling and a new dashboarding capability. We are in the process of developing training materials to describe these new features. We will be holding a series of free webinars covering many of these new features.

BOTTOM LINE:  With v11, users will be getting a two-fer: powerful new features along with a thoughtful transition between the legacy and new versions. Core skills developed in v10 will be either directly or easily applicable in v11. Users should continue to upgrade their skills to get the full value of their existing investment and can be confident that their skills will still be valid after upgrade.