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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
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
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 May 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 17.4%, down from 19.1% 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

"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"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."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"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."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse 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."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"The solution is stable."
"The ease of setup is an eight out of ten."
"It offers a significant advantage for accommodating a large number of users."
"It has improved the performance, now we run with more performance cores with less CPU to attend all the database demands. Reducing Time to Market, increase our ability to face the competition with speed and low cost."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the storage available."
"Parallelism is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is storage offloading."
"The most valuable feature is that you have the same familiar environment of an Oracle database but with the additional performance you get from this architecture."
"Compression is a great feature, where one can really save a lot of storage."
 

Cons

"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."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"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 biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"The setup is a little bit complex. We would like to see the installation part get easier."
"Sometimes it takes too long time to get help with technical issues."
"It is difficult to evaluate return-on-investment because of the way billing is handled for the product. This should be improved by oracle."
"Oracle Exadata could improve by having faster data retrieval. We receive data at four or five seconds and want to reduce that number to one second."
"The analytics features must be improved."
"The integration with third-party applications regarding access management security could be better."
"I would like to add some features to run applications or microservices-based applications on Exadata."
"We have a little trepidation with the system as it does have a learning curve. Also changing to a binary logging format for us feels like retrograde motion, but sadly almost all Linux variants have moved in this direction."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"Our customers are always looking to reduce the license's cost."
"Exadata is an expensive tool, but, considering the ROI, it's worth going for the solution."
"All things considered, the price of this product is fairly high, as is always the case with Oracle."
"The cost of the solution is high."
"The solution is expensive."
"I did note that Oracle does tend to internally oversize things especially if they want to fill up a budget, and hence third-party oversight is essential."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
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.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.