Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL] comparison

Cloudera and IBM are both solutions in the Hadoop category. Additionally, 92% of Cloudera users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Read 51 Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop reviews

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2,660 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights ...

Read 7 IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL] reviews

83% willing to recommend

Cloudera Distribution for H...

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights ...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop and IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Apache, Cloudera, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Hadoop.

To learn more, read our detailed Hadoop Report (Updated: May 2026).

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Hadoop

May 2026

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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

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (2nd), NoSQL Databases (10th)

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights ...

Average Rating

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Sami Al-Yazidi

Head of Advaced Analytics & Intelligence; AGM at Alinma Bank

Integration of multiple features supports data analytics and processing

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop provides numerous features and capabilities combined into one platform.The solution offers power processing and supports different file systems and query engines. It provides parallel processing for handling many requests. The platform includes role-based access control in Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop. It secures the data itself and provides users with different roles and privileges.

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it_user743022

BigData Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Served our customers better by giving real-time suggestions and proactive maintenance, however the UI was not interactive

* The UI was not interactive: Responses used to be very slow and hang up at times. * The UI was not really helping to track the real-time jobs and its logs. * You can bring in a better UI for job management and health checks. * Developer API documentation needs improvement.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudera is doing a great job in the field offering an enterprise ready data platform."

"Very solid. Excellent user experience. good documentation."

"I am very comfortable with this product."

"We used it to build an enterprise data hub."

"The file system is a valuable feature."

"Cloudera Manager is the most valuable feature for its ease of use, features, ease of upgrade and install components."

"The most valuable feature is Impala, the querying engine, which is very fast."

"Cloudera really has no competition."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pros

"It integrates with JSqsh, enabling us to submit long-running exports from the shell."

"It gives us the option of extending our analytics system."

"InfoSphere Streams was the one core product from the platform in which we were using. We were building a real-time response system and we built it on InfoSphere Streams."

"This helped us to serve our customers better by giving real-time suggestions and proactive maintenance."

"Definitely a product worth evaluating, esp if you are an IBM shop and if done on Bluemix, it gives a jump start on protoypes/POCs."

"Watson is the perfect engine for text analysis for us, but in 2014 it doesn’t support the Russian language."

"The thing that I have found most valuable in this solution is the BIQSQL implementation which is fully SQL ANSI compliant."

"This is a very helpful product, with continuous improvements by IBM and a great customer service which enables easy access to valuable information for both Hadoop developers and system administrators."

Cons

"Flume seems unstable and has to be restarted quite often."

"The one thing that we struggled with predominately was support. Because it was relatively new, support was always a big issue and I think it's still a bit of an ongoing concern with the team currently managing it."

"The user infrastructure and user interface needs to be improved, as well as the performance. The GUI needs to be better."

"Cloudera 5 is currently very unstable. Between two Cloudera 5 clusters, we have an incident at least twice a week due to what are now outstanding bugs."

"On same ground I didn't see much training materials from Cloudera."

"The performance of some analytics engines provided by Cloudera is not that good."

"The Cloudera training is terrible."

"Without the big data environment, we cannot store all of this data live. We have billions of records and terabytes of storage to be used. It's not an option actually for us to have a big data environment."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cons

"I encountered issues with having the appropriate documentation resources, as well as getting the right stability when explored virtualized environments based on Virtualbox and HyperV software."

"I'd like to see faster execution time, especially for simple queries that don't touch on many rows and don't involve many operations (Joins, Unions, Groupbys)."

"The UI was not interactive: Responses used to be very slow and hang up at times."

"For our business customer pricing is very important motivation, so I can advise change licensing policy from “by volume in the cluster” to “number of machines in the cluster”."

"I have found a lot of issues in Fluid Query and BigInsights Applications to move data in the enterprise version."

"Unfortunately the stability of the platform was an issue."

"Initial setup is rather complex in comparison with Cloudera."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s price depends from project to project."

"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."

"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is expensive, with support costs involved."

"When comparing with Oracle Sybase and SQL, it's cheaper. It's not expensive."

"The pricing must be improved."

"It is an expensive product."

"The solution is fairly expensive."

"I believe we pay for a three-year license."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Construction Company

10%

Marketing Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	32

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.

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What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

If they could support modifying the data more easily than the current implementation, it would be beneficial.

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What is your primary use case for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

We use Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop for many use cases including analytics, storing huge data sets, and various data processing tasks.

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

June 2026

Download Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop product report

Buyer's Guide

Hadoop

May 2026

Download IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL] product report

Also Known As

No data available

InfoSphere BigInsights

Overview

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop provides a comprehensive platform for efficient data management and analytics, integrating advanced analytics tools with enterprise-grade security and hybrid cloud support.

Designed for handling vast datasets, Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop facilitates seamless data processing through its components such as Hive, Pig, and Spark. It supports both structured and unstructured data management with robust scalability and powerful data handling capabilities. While the latest version focuses on enhancing speed and integration, challenges remain with HBase stability and processing in Cloudera 5 clusters. Organizations leverage it for big data management tasks like data warehousing, log analytics, and real-time data processing using tools like Hadoop and Spark.

What are the key features of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

Cloudera Manager: An intuitive interface streamlining installation and management.
Impala Query Speed: Optimized for fast querying of large datasets.
Security: Enterprise-grade security features for robust protection.
Hybrid Cloud Support: Enhanced flexibility with hybrid cloud integration.
Data Handling Components: Includes Hive, Pig, and Spark for comprehensive data management.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Efficient Data Management: Optimizes both structured and unstructured data handling.
Advanced Analytics: Supports machine learning and ETL processes for improved analytics.
Scalability: Offers robust scalability for handling large datasets.
Responsive Community Support: Continuous feature enhancements and support from the community.
On-premises Deployment: Effective on-premises data management capabilities for extensive information volumes.

In industries such as finance, retail, and healthcare, Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is implemented to enhance data-driven decision-making and operational efficiency. It aids in processing large volumes of data for analytics, data warehousing, and infrastructure building. Companies utilize it to streamline machine learning and log analytics, serving as a data lake for preprocessing substantial datasets.

Cloudera

IBM BigInsights delivers a rich set of advanced analytics capabilities that allows enterprises to analyze massive volumes of structured and unstructured data in its native format. The software combines open source Apache Hadoop with IBM innovations including sophisticated text analytics, IBM BigSheets for data exploration, IBM Big SQL for SQL access to data in Hadoop, and a range of performance, security and administrative features. The result is a cost-effective and user-friendly solution for complex, big data analytics.

IBM

Sample Customers

37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC

Coherent Path Inc., Optibus, Delhaize America, Diyotta Inc., Ernst & Young, Teikoku Databank Ltd., NCSU, Vestas

Find out what your peers are saying about Apache, Cloudera, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Hadoop. Updated: May 2026.

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