IBM Cognos Analytics is a business intelligence platform for enterprise reporting, dashboards, analysis and forecasting. Users can ask questions in natural language, automate report production and work on certified data models with central governance and audit trails. The product can be installed on-premises, deployed as containers in a cloud of the customer's choice, or used as an environment hosted by IBM.
IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York. As a US company it can be subject to US legal demands such as the CLOUD Act, wherever data is stored. For a European organisation, on-premises or self-managed container deployments keep data under the customer's control, while the IBM-hosted option requires a review of data-centre locations and contract terms. The product page does not state where IBM-hosted data is stored, so this should be confirmed with IBM before use. The software is proprietary.