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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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: July 2026).

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Hadoop

July 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 (9th)

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

"The solution's most valuable feature is the enterprise data platform."

"CDH has a wide variety of proprietary tools that we use, like Impala, and from that perspective, it's quite useful as opposed to something open-source, as we get a lot of value from Cloudera's proprietary tools."

"This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise."

"The main advantage is the storage is less expensive."

"Cloudera is a very manageable solution with good support."

"The features I find most valuable is that the solution is that it is easy to install and to work with. It starts with the installation and from there on the management is very simple and centralized."

"Cloudera really has no competition."

"We had a data warehouse before all the data. We can process a lot more data structures."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pros

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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

"The pricing needs to improve."

"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."

"It needs more standardized documentation on Hive."

"The stability is problematic. We did encounter quite a lot of issues with the cluster going down quite frequently."

"It is quite complicated to configure and install."

"The areas of improvement depend on the scale of the project. For banking customers, security features and an essential budget for commercial licenses would be the top priority. Data regulation could be the most crucial for a project with extensive data or an extra use case."

"Spark with R integration is missing. Also, it is lacking Spark SQL support."

"I had a bad experience connecting the Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cluster to my other resources in the company, like the active directory or firewall."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cons

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

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

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

"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)."

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be better for the product."

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

"The solution is expensive."

"I haven't bought a license for this solution. I'm only using the Apache license version."

"Cloudera requires a license to use."

"The solution is fairly expensive."

"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."

"The tool is expensive...For the SMB market or customers whose environments are not that complex and do not have multiple systems running, Cloudera might not be a good option."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Marketing Services Firm

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.

See all answers

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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Comparisons

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Oracle NoSQL vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

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Apache Spark vs IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL]

Compared 25% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

August 2026

Download Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop product report

Buyer's Guide

Hadoop

July 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: July 2026.

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