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IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Oracle Exadata comparison

 

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

IBM Db2 Warehouse
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle Exadata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 16.9%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ismail Aboulezz - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancements in data analysis and decision-making elevate overall performance
The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse ( /products/ibm-db2-warehouse-reviews ) include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support. The response time is very quick, and the technical manuals and support from IBM are of high quality. Additionally, it is easy to install, troubleshoot, operate, and secure the environment.
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
A solid data warehouse for transactional data that needs to be priced more competitively
Since the product is an appliance, it is very costly. And in the current age, people are cautious about spending this amount of money on any of these types of backend products. Some use cases are in real-time, where all other databases are much faster, but if you talk about the data warehouse, business intelligence, and all other perspectives in the transactional world, Oracle has to reduce the cost. Otherwise, a customer wouldn't want to continue this. If the same thing can be done at half or one-third of the cost, why would people stay with Oracle? Oracle Exadata would not have great value in front of a CFO. Other solutions can guard your data and address security concerns. Security, volumetrics, and so on are also provided by other databases, which are not that costly. Apart from Exadata, Oracle has other tools for business intelligence and other things, which they add on top of Exadata when they're selling a general license. For example, the Vertica database, an HP data warehouse. They have come up with their own analytic engine within the database, which gives an edge for the client to use the data analytics engine as a part of their database. Exadata does not have an analytic engine. Even MySQL has some statistical tools within it. If Exadata integrates analytical tools, it will be good for them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"The key capability of Exadata, which is not found in any other solution or appliance, is its enhancement specifically for databases."
"We have used this solution for a long period of time so it has become easy for us to query any kind of data from Oracle Exadata which has been valuable."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Oracle has reliable solutions and this one is no different."
"They just have a lot of products, and they work well together."
"We can use virtualization on Exadata."
"Oracle Exadata's performance is one of its best features. We very satisfied with it."
"Compression is a great feature, where one can really save a lot of storage."
 

Cons

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"The solution lacks a visualized console."
"The solution could always be more stable and more reliable."
"The improvement could be made on the hardware level as the habit in the industry is to go better and faster and larger with every iteration."
"The analytics features must be improved."
"The technical support is in need of improvement."
"The integration with third-party applications regarding access management security could be better."
"Patching must be simplified."
"Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten."
"We pay for an annual license and it is expensive."
"You have to pay for the storage and the database in Oracle Exadata. It cost a lot, but it is worth it. It would be a benefit if we could reduce the price for the number of CPUs and extend the memory."
"I think it's free."
"Our customers are always looking to reduce the license's cost."
"The solution takes a lot of time to clone the environment. I would like to see some improvement in the cloning support or the time it takes on the storage side."
"It is quite expensive."
"I'm giving Oracle Exadata five out of ten in terms of pricing. Its price could be lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
There is room for improvement in optimizing certain processes, but most issues arise from my data, hardware architecture, and resources, not from IBM Db2 Warehouse itself.
What do you like most about Oracle Exadata?
It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
The price is a major consideration. I would rate the price an eight on a scale from one to ten, indicating it is fairly expensive.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
We recently completed an extension of our storage space. There are minor areas where improvement is needed, such as making the user interface more user-friendly and enhancing configuration and cust...
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Oracle Exadata and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.