There seem to be two main competitors selling Cognos version control: BSPSoftware ICS (Integrated Control Suite) and MotioCI
Does anyone have experience with both products? Do you have and pros and cons for each?
It would seem that ICS is more feature complete, including versioning of packages in Framework Manager and automatic versioning with each save (but not requiring check-in/-out), for instance. However, I have heard from a single user with experience with both (and when pressed rather hard!), that MotioCI is “rock-solid” and “hardened” but he refused to offer any other insight due to his position as a third-party developer.
Any insight is appreciated. This is a major investment!
Thanks!
My team has implemented several large Analytics deployments using Cognos (8.X and now 10.X) and we have recently chosen MotioCI as our version control/test tool for Reports. While I can’t speak to BSPSoftware’s offering - I can say that Motio CI does have the ability to manage both reports and FM objects - we even integrated quickly with JIRA to track bugs through saved versions. Another big win for us was the ease with which we could implement and run unit tests on individual reports and stress tests on the report server. This will help us find bugs that would otherwise slip through when time is tight (i.e. all the time). Test engineering will also use the impact analysis feature to look at how the report performance changes as we publish new versions to them - and give us feedback. We have been using the tool for about 3 months (evaluation and in development) and we have found it to be exactly as advertised. Support is also quick and to the point (we had some custom Auth provider issues - and they helped us track down and resolve the problem quickly.) Now that we have MotioCI - we would not like to go back
Hope this helps - let me know if you have any further questions - and good luck on your search!
Last year we went through a strenuous evaluation of both products. Though both products have merit, we decided to purchase Motio largely because of the regression testing feature.
We have been very happy with the product and the support we received since our purchase.
Did my homework a few years ago to compare BSP with MotioCI (and free PI) and I went with Motio and never regret a minute. Motio feels to me more mature and powerful. Never had a major issues with version control module and I am (as well as my all users) 100% confident that Motio app covers our back. Hope that helps…
whom,
We considered both Motio CI and BSP for version control for our environment (Cognos 8.4.1).
BSP’s IVC only does version control in RS or QS (maybe QS), whereas MotioCI (2.x) monitors the BI Bus and captures changes on everything; Packages, security, configuration, RS, QS, AS. Additionally, it can monitor windows folders, so it can capture changes on FM, transformer (mdc, the text version if I recall) and anything else. I think it would only make sense to monitor text based files. Monitoring changes to a binary source would do much good, except to say it changed.
We find that Motio has better integration (version 2.0) compared to BSP. BSP has a couple of nice features though, like broadcasting to users. But the nice-to-have features will be added to MotioCI later (that I understand).
Also, Motio has additional products for regression testing, load testing. Both have the ability to do promotion between environments.
We also use Motio PI which is a great complimentary product (and free, last I checked) for CI.
Motio’s support is top notch; they encourage suggestions for improvements and welcome bug feedback. They actually fix things that I bring to their attention.
I like that I can give feedback about improvements and find that some of them, they impliment. (Not all my ideas are winners, but I have a few).
I would recommend Motio, they have excellent customer service, excellent product and excellent tech support.
Robert Camarda
If you haven’t already, I would suggest having both vendors perform a demo for you and do an apples and apples comparision I think once you do that, it will become abudantely clear which way you should lean toward…
We selected Motio as our VC about 6 months ago. We had both demo’d. Motio had the features we wanted and was less expensive. So far we’ve been quite happy with it.
