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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
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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.

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Hadoop
March 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
51
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (2nd), NoSQL Databases (8th)
IBM InfoSphere BigInsights ...
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

SA
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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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 most valuable feature is Impala, the querying engine, which is very fast."
"The solution is stable."
"The pricing is very competitive, it's not bad."
"The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable."
"I don't see any performance issues."
"Cloudera is a great product and, overall, there are many features."
"Cloudera is a very manageable solution with good support."
"Implementing a Hadoop cluster has become relatively straight-forward using CDH."
More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pros
"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."
"It gives us the option of extending our analytics system."
"It integrates with JSqsh, enabling us to submit long-running exports from the shell."
"Watson is the perfect engine for text analysis for us, but in 2014 it doesn’t support the Russian language."
"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."
"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."
"The thing that I have found most valuable in this solution is the BIQSQL implementation which is fully SQL ANSI compliant."
 

Cons

"The user infrastructure and user interface needs to be improved, as well as the performance. The GUI needs to be better."
"Sometimes the heavy queries do not finish at all."
"The procedure for operations could be simplified."
"The licensing was by node."
"There is a maximum of a one-gigabyte block size, which is an area of storage that can be improved upon."
"Cloudera CDH5.5.x does not support SparkR."
"The only thing that needs improvement is the cost, it's a very expensive solution and one of the main reasons companies are not attracted to the product."
"It could be faster and more user-friendly."
More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cons
"The UI was not interactive: Responses used to be very slow and hang up at times."
"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."
"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”."
"Unfortunately the stability of the platform was an issue."
"Initial setup is rather complex in comparison with Cloudera."
"I have found a lot of issues in Fluid Query and BigInsights Applications to move data in the enterprise version."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The product’s price depends from project to project."
"Cloudera requires a license to use."
"The solution is expensive."
"I haven't bought a license for this solution. I'm only using the Apache license version."
"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."
"It is an expensive product."
More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.
See all answers
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
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Apache Spark vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Logo
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Compared 7% of the time
Couchbase Enterprise vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Logo
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Compared 6% of the time
Amazon EMR vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Logo
Amazon EMR vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop
Compared 6% of the time
More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Competitors
No data available
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop
April 2026
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop reportDownload Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop product report
Buyer's Guide
Hadoop
March 2026
IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL] reportDownload IBM InfoSphere BigInsights [EOL] product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
InfoSphere BigInsights
 

Overview

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is the world's most complete, tested, and popular distribution of Apache Hadoop and related projects. CDH is 100% Apache-licensed open source and is the only Hadoop solution to offer unified batch processing, interactive SQL, and interactive search, and role-based access controls. More enterprises have downloaded CDH than all other such distributions combined.
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
Buyer's Guide
Hadoop
March 2026
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