Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Databricks vs IBM Planning Analytics comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Users experience mixed returns with Databricks, noting cost efficiency and scalability but facing challenges with measuring monetary gains.
Sentiment score
6.6
IBM Planning Analytics improves budgeting efficiency and decision-making, reducing costs and manual entry while enhancing employee motivation.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
Head CEO at bizmetric
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Databricks customer service is praised for prompt, professional support, though some report delays; documentation helps many users.
Sentiment score
6.6
IBM Planning Analytics' support is generally satisfactory, with timely resolutions; improvement needed in speed, responsiveness, and root issue resolution.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
I rate the technical support as fine because they have levels of technical support available, especially partners who get really good support from Databricks on new features.
Data Engineer at CRAFT Tech
We have a multi-level support system, with the initial level handled by the company we bought the license from and subsequent support from IBM.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
Instead, we rely on third-party partners recognized by IBM, who provide cost-effective support.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
They have been very dedicated and provided top-notch solutions.
Senior Software Engineer at J.P Morgan
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for its scalability, elasticity, and auto-scaling, providing high performance and flexibility across industries.
Sentiment score
7.7
IBM Planning Analytics offers scalability and real-time processing, favored by large enterprises for its adaptability and efficient growth accommodation.
The sky's the limit with Databricks.
Governance And Engagement Lead
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
Scalability is quite hard to implement in TM1, largely since the on-premise installation chosen back in 2014.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
Scalability is straightforward but it is pricey since it's a SaaS model priced per user.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Databricks is highly rated for reliability and efficiency, with minor issues quickly resolved, boasting strong user stability scores.
Sentiment score
7.7
IBM Planning Analytics is praised for its stability, robustness, and reliability in handling large data volumes across various sectors.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
This stability is really important as we use it for budget calculation, which is time-consuming.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
IBM Planning Analytics is stable because the reason we switched from IBM Cognos is that IBM Planning Analytics capability allows us to connect to multiple tools, which we could not do before.
Senior Software Engineer at J.P Morgan
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks needs better visualization, integration, clearer errors, UI enhancements, wider platform support, and improved documentation and usability.
IBM Planning Analytics needs improvements in integration, automation, UI design, and data visualization to enhance user experience and performance.
Adjusting features like worker nodes and node utilization during cluster creation could mitigate these failures.
Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
Solution Architect at Mercedes-Benz AG
The abundance of features results in complexity, requiring strict guidelines for developers to ensure simplistic approaches are adhered to.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
IBM's visualization needs significant improvement.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The advanced features are somewhat complex to understand, and if the data set is very large, it takes a lot of time to process, which causes performance to become slower.
Senior Software Engineer at J.P Morgan
 

Setup Cost

Databricks' pricing varies widely based on usage and data volume, making it cost-effective yet potentially expensive for large-scale use.
IBM Planning Analytics has notable setup costs and licensing fees, offering valuable functionalities and flexible licensing options for ROI.
It is not a cheap solution.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
I believe that in terms of credits for Databricks, we're spending between £15,000 and £20,000 a month.
Governance And Engagement Lead
TM1 is quite expensive, and I'd rate the pricing as an eight out of ten.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
While IBM's solutions were costly before, the introduction of SaaS models has reduced prices significantly.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Planning Analytics is that the pricing and licensing cost can be somewhat on the higher side, especially for small organizations.
Senior Software Engineer at J.P Morgan
 

Valuable Features

Databricks excels in ease of use, scalability, integration, and data governance, enhancing productivity and collaboration for data engineering.
IBM Planning Analytics excels in flexibility, real-time calculations, and integration, enhancing planning, budgeting, and forecasting with advanced features.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
Data Engineer at CRAFT Tech
Its stability helps controllers win time in their planning processes.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
It also integrates machine learning and AI engines, enabling us to use algorithms for inventory forecasting which optimizes our inventory and replenishment rates.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Some of the valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics are its intuitive and user-friendly interface, reporting output and scheduling, access control and security, and mobile capabilities.
Senior Software Engineer at J.P Morgan
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
IBM Planning Analytics
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 9.2%, up 6.7% compared to last year.
IBM Planning Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Business Performance Management, holds 4.9% mindshare, down 9.2% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks9.2%
Snowflake16.1%
Teradata8.5%
Other66.2%
Cloud Data Warehouse
Business Performance Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Planning Analytics4.9%
Anaplan7.4%
CCH Tagetik5.7%
Other82.0%
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
Bhavna Aarna - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at J.P Morgan
Planning has become faster and financial teams collaborate seamlessly on annual budgets
The planning efficiency with IBM Planning Analytics is very quick, and data processing can be done efficiently. I also appreciate that it is an AI-based tool for our business, which software mainly focuses on business planning and future forecasting. The best features of IBM Planning Analytics include that the software helps us in doing budget planning. Some of the valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics are its intuitive and user-friendly interface, reporting output and scheduling, access control and security, and mobile capabilities. IBM Planning Analytics has positively impacted my organization as we have noticed specific improvements since we started using it. We are able to forecast the budget for the entire year with significant time savings. All the complex data is easily processed, and with Excel add functionality, it is easier to have all the data in one place, which can be read by pivot or data visualization. The data protection protocols are well set up. Planning efficiency is very good as we can seamlessly plan and work on all budgets on time. By using IBM Planning Analytics, we have been able to automate manual processes, where we have saved time, especially through automating dashboards. It has also increased the activity of the planning team and provided us with ad hoc reporting capabilities.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
What do you like most about IBM Planning Analytics?
The most valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics for streamlining planning processes include a unified database where all data are centralized.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Planning Analytics?
While IBM's solutions were costly before, the introduction of SaaS models has reduced prices significantly. Comparatively, IBM rates may be better than those of competitors, such as Hyperion ( /pro...
What needs improvement with IBM Planning Analytics?
IBM is behind competitors like Tableau ( /products/tableau-reviews ) and Power BI in terms of visualization. Their visuals are less innovative and practical with fewer varieties. IBM's visualizatio...
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Cognos TM1, IBM Cognos TM1
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
ManpowerGroup, Convergys, AIG, Orchard Brands, Citibank, InterGen, Northwestern University, EF Education First, Ironside, Bazan Group, CSOB Insurance, Macquarie Group, Charles Stanley, SATO, Government of Sint Maarten, BMW Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Teradata and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: January 2026.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.