I am in the middle of a medium size BI project where we chose Microsoft for ETL with the SSIS component of SQL Server 2005.  For various factors, we decided on Cognos 8 for the Cube and Presentation layers.  As part of the analysis we took in to account things like cost, Gartner, In-House skill sets and so on.  It was a pretty even race for Cognos & MS Performance Point Server (PPS) and we ended up going with Cognos.

Some background information on our Cognos implementation.  It came in-house with a product called Agile.  So since we were licensed, we went with it for basic reporting needs.  Now we're at the point we're we are really looking at BI - time analysis of data, ad hoc analysis, KPIs, and so on.  We made an assumption that we could leverage our existing Cognos skill sets into the world of Cognos 8 BI.  It wasn't a great bet.  We sent some people to training and they took away what most take away from a week long course based on a vendor curriculum (This is not just a Cognos issue, we have a real challenge finding solid training for the Microsoft stuff too).

Now, I was in the same position our Cognos talent was in when I went to work on BizTalk.  I had a strong background in the fundamentals of .Net languages and Web development.  I went off to take the one week training course (much love to Mark Berry at Dunn Training) and came away with a strong set of basic tools.  When I went up against the kind of problems we're hitting in Cognos right now, there was a difference.

Searching for help on Cognos technical issues is really difficult.  There is very little out there in the way of web based community.  And a lot of what you do find refers to Cognos' KB which is protected by password.  I am not sure what the hurdle is to getting the password setup... a call to our account representative and some paperwork.  When you're slugging out a technical issue this is not the best customer experience to have. 

On the other hand, Microsoft's community is unbelievably rich and returns many hits when searching for answers.  BizTalk is a pricy tool and is seldom afforded by those outside of serious enterprise grade businesses – which makes is developer base quite small compared to C#, SQL, ASP.Net, etc.  Never the less, there is a rich and vibrant community of users who post and share tremendous amounts of technical insight and know how.  I have become truly active in my local developer community in the pas couple of years and I see now why Microsoft pours so much effort into these folks.  As a direct result, I typically can solve most of my technical glitches or unknowns with a minimal amount of time on Google or Live Search.

I am not saying Microsoft is perfect.  I have my issues when I call in for Technical Support and deal with some of the first line folks.  I here the same frustrations form my Cognos counterparts.  The nice thing is that there is such a wealth of Microsoft product knowledge living both outside and inside Microsoft, that it’s one of those intangibles that is rarely given due weight in a product study.  It certainly keeps the number of calls I’ve made to Microsoft to a minimum.  As for which is the best product… another time and another blog post. 

Comment:  If anyone ever wants to experience the Microsoft community in full force – go to a local Code Camp.  I’ve never gotten so many professional contacts in one place.  And if there aren’t any near you, call you Microsoft Developer Evangelist and ask nicely for some help.  You’d really be amazed.