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Amazon EMR vs IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd)
IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.7%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud is 2.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon EMR3.7%
IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud2.2%
Other94.1%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

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.
FM
Database Engineer at Meezan Bank
Enhancing analytics with seamless data dumping and reliable support
Our primary use case is data storage and analytics The organization has decided to purchase a full stack solution from IBM due to positive responses, which helped them upgrade from the previous version. The data dumping into the raw zone and the feature of BigQuery is quite attractive. There…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall a good cloud infrastructure and takes the burden of managing the distributed hardware and can easily scale up and scale down as per the requirement of the task at hand."
"When we grade big jobs from on-prem to the cloud, we do it in EMR with Spark."
"The project management is very streamlined."
"It allows users to access the data through a web interface."
"In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance."
"We are using applications, such as Splunk, Livy, Hadoop, and Spark. We are using all of these applications in Amazon EMR and they're helping us a lot."
"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."
"It's made life very easy."
"The way that it scales will help a lot of customers that are stuck with Netezza boxes that can't grow any larger.​"
"It will be MPP, so performance should improve."
"Ease of migration from Netezza DB; IBM ported over all Netezza's functionality and made the warehouse DB/dashDB the best of breed of the two."
"I like that the dashDB solution is built on DB2 technology, which means that you can use all the features of a DB2 database while outsourcing all the hardware and software maintenance."
"Since my company is an IBM partner, it has enabled us to offer cloud data warehouse solutions on a 100% IBM stack."
"DashDB is a good product to work with and the extra cost you spend on performance, technical support and tools to work with is worth it."
"It is stable when there is support from IBM."
"The performance is okay as long as the volume of queries is not too high."
 

Cons

"In general, I would rate the solution at a four out of ten."
"The most complicated thing is configuring to the cluster and to ensure it's running correctly."
"Better monitoring, debugging, and stability are all needed."
"The initial setup was time-consuming."
"It was complex to configure."
"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
"The solution can become expensive if you are not careful."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"I would rate the level of dashDB support 3.5/5. While they are very knowledgeable in many areas, you can still struggle to get the correct resolution."
"There are some limitations in adding data files to table spaces, and improvements are needed for regional support."
"Right now, we are implementing on ESX VMware 6.0. Support for this platform is poor. Also, one of the backup/recovery options is broken and IBM is not addressing the issue."
"Tech support for dashDB is awful. We usually have tickets open for three to four weeks."
"Containers get corrupted very easily. Restoring them using GPFS can result in a lot of issues."
"The support channels need to improve."
"Db2 is not a solution that I recommend. We have a lot of experience and we are not satisfied with the product or the support that we received."
"Ultimately, the product itself has challenges and we are not currently satisfied with the support, either."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
"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."
"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."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
"If your going to go with warehouse DB/dashDB, use the cloud or Sailfish version."
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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
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

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 Business4
Large Enterprise3
 

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 advice do you have for others considering IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud?
Organizations of all sizes, especially those who are in need of powerful and elastic cloud data warehouse solutions that can help administrators maximize the efficiency of their data-based operatio...
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud?
There are some limitations in adding data files to table spaces, and improvements are needed for regional support.
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud?
Our primary use case is data storage and analytics.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
IBM dashDB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Copenhagen Business School, BPM Northwest, GameStop
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.