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Amazon EMR vs IBM Db2 Warehouse comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd), Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
IBM Db2 Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2043696 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Data pipelines have simplified complex transformations and provide faster insights for users
The features at Amazon EMR that I have found most valuable are fully customizable functions. I am using Amazon EMR for data transformation, where we load the data. The entire ETL process is encompassed within it. The first thing is the egress part, where we pull the data from various sources, which include our main core databases, the systems that include Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and Postgres. We bring data from all these sources and use Amazon EMR specifically to combine all this data, clean the data, and combine it at a particular level. We bring everything to a particular level to make it more production-ready, and we simplify the data because every system has its own problems. We are using it to clean the data and transform the data in such a way that the end-user can get the insights faster.
Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable."
"One of the valuable features about this solution is that it's managed services, so it's pretty stable, and scalable as much as you wish. It has all the necessary distributions. With some additional work, it's also possible to change to a Spark version with the latest version of EMR. It also has Hudi, so we are leveraging Apache Hudi on EMR for change data capture, so then it comes out-of-the-box in EMR."
"Amazon makes it about as easy as it can be to dip a toe in those waters."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"This tool is simple to use and it's really accessible to many dev teams."
"I rate Amazon EMR as ten out of ten."
"It's helped to automate processes."
"The security of the managed workflow and the managed services are the best features for us. Since we inherited their security model and it's all managed services, those are the key benefits for our clients."
"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"The solution works with big data, so it's pretty scalable."
"The solution is stable."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"If you have good people designing how the data is stored, it's a marvelous tool."
"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."
"It's easy and practical to use."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was time-consuming."
"There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange."
"The legacy versions of the solution are not supported in the new versions."
"The dashboard management could be better. Right now, it's lacking a bit."
"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."
"The product's features for storing data in static clusters could be better."
"It was complex to configure."
"We don't have much control. If we have multiple users, if they want to scale up, the cost will go and increase and we don't know how we can restrict that price part."
"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a five. It is fairly bad."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."
"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?
I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
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