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IBM Netezza Performance Server vs SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Netezza Performance Server
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (12th), Hadoop (6th)
SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Netezza Performance Server and SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Netezza Performance Server is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 4.3%, up 4.1% compared to last year.
SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 1.4% mindshare, up 0.9% since last year.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Netezza Performance Server4.3%
Snowflake9.3%
Teradata8.7%
Other77.7%
Data Warehouse
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise1.4%
SQL Server10.6%
Oracle Database10.5%
Other77.5%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Shiv Subramaniam Koduvayur - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at MAF Retail
Parallel data processing streamlines operations while cost and cloud integration challenge adoption
The cost of the solution is on the more expensive side, which is a concern for me. Additionally, its promotion and interaction with cloud applications are limited. The cloud version is only available in AWS, and in the Middle East, it is not well-developed in the Azure environment. For the cost to be reduced, it should match competitors. Many features need to be incorporated on the cloud.
reviewer2784705 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
Long term database experience has supported OLTP workloads and delivers reliable cross platform migrations
SAP is not putting money into modernizing SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. One of the things I discovered on the last project I was on was that they did not incorporate the Intel new instruction set in SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. Intel has augmented its instruction set referred to as new instructions. They did that to make conversion easier. When you migrate SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise cross-platform, you go through a process where it converts the character set. If you are going from AIX to Linux or from Solaris to Linux, Linux is referred to as Little Endian, while AIX or Solaris are considered Big Endian. This is determined by how the product stores data. The word size of these processors is 32 bits long. If you start numbering from the little end, it is referred to as Little Endian. If you start numbering from the big end, it is called Big Endian. To migrate a SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise database from a Big Endian setup like AIX or Solaris to migrate to a Big Endian setup on an Intel, the operating system determines whether it is Little Endian or Big Endian. When you migrate from Big Endian to Little Endian, the database has to go through a character set conversion, and some of these databases are quite large with gigabytes and gigabytes of data. They have to do a character set conversion to the existing database before they do anything else. The worst part is that you have to rebuild all the indexes when you do that. When you switch endianness of the database, you have to rebuild all the indexes. It will automatically do that for system tables, but for actual user databases, you have to rebuild all your indexes, and it takes a long time. SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise is a relational database and is the predecessor of Microsoft SQL Server. All that functionality that Microsoft SQL Server had came from essentially SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. The problem with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise these days is it is not expanding its place in the marketplace or expanding its position in the marketplace. A lot of companies have migrated away from SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. It works fairly well, but the problem is SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise was architected to be an OLTP engine and is now doing things for larger databases that were not in its original intended purpose. The endianness of the RDBMS is a major impediment to continuing to use SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. You have a multi-gigabyte database, and it will go through a conversion process in a single-threaded fashion, and then you have to rebuild the indexes. Rebuilding the indexes is lengthy and time-consuming. The part of the conversion process that is concerned with conversion of the character set is single-threaded. You may have eight cores on your machine or virtual machine and only one can be used in the conversion process. There is another problem with the whole thing in that it will sometimes not operate properly. Under certain workloads, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise will become overwhelmed. When you convert it, it does not operate properly in all circumstances. The root cause of that is that SAP in its desire to save money and desire to orphan the product has not recompiled or redeveloped the product to take advantage of the Intel new instruction set. Other relational databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server have the same issue to deal with, but with those platforms, they are taking advantage of the new instruction set. There are some additional Intel instruction sets or instructions in their Intel instruction set. With SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, they did not bother to incorporate support for the new instruction set instructions. In certain circumstances, the database does not operate properly. It is unable to do what it needs to do. If you do your research and go on the internet and see what happens with Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, what comes back is that it takes 4% longer to perform a lot of the instructions. When you are using the new instruction set, it adds 4% to the runtime of the database.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is quick implementation and considerable outcomes which make the platform a valuable asset to the organization."
"Our BI enviroment with Netezza, Cognos and Data Stage has been a great success"
"The speed has been excellent for us, in pulling information, as well as the batch timing, and the suite of tools that comes with it for the ETL with IBM InfoSphere."
"For every organization that I have been in that has Netezza, the ability to load and run queries is greatly simplified and A LOT faster than any other DBMS out there."
"Data compression. It was relatively impressive. I think at some point we were getting 4:1 compression if not more."
"The performance has meant that we reclaimed many hours in our batch window."
"The underlying hardware that IBM provides with this appliance is made for a specific purpose, to serve performance on a large amount of data, and to do analytics as well. It is faster, when you compare it to any other product."
"There is minimal on-going maintenance."
"I like that SAP ASE can match code and the database index to index data in the programming language. There are many other valuable features, such as the table buffer, tuning, and various control agents like dispatcher. SAP ASE can handle many different data types, including views, domains, data elements, structures, objects, and various table types that are most useful in the application. Its modularization technique is also handy."
"It's pretty good at handling a large number of transactions, which is critical for a banking client."
"Sufficient, robust, power DB."
"During the last 20 years, I have never had a stability problem with this product."
"In SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, there are some built-in stored procedures that you can use to fire those commands and get the data in a very systematic manner where you can see the results."
"The financials is the most valuable feature for us in operational terms because we deal with a lot of services and SAP has integrated everything for us, both financial reporting and operations."
"SAP ERP offers us a robust platform where financial stakeholders spend less time collating and sourcing out records and implementing payments."
"It's user-friendly, especially in the logistics field."
 

Cons

"The solution could implement more reporting tools and networking utilities."
"Functions are difficult to deploy."
"Stability comes and goes."
"We found some bugs - boundary conditions mostly."
"In-DB processing with SAS Analytics, since this is supposed to be an analytics server so the expectation is there."
"Netezza has a single active host node that can become a performance bottleneck."
"LIke Teradata, we can’t add a node/SPU to the existing appliance."
"Service support costs are high."
"Cluster features: The Cluster Edition didn't get the same level of reliability as the Enterprise Edition did."
"There is lack of good support in Mexico - I would prefer Oracle or IBM over SAP in terms of support."
"When we acquire a new project that is sometimes related to data migrations, after getting those data, there are lots of deadlocks happening."
"SAP should refine its debugging method, and the process needs to be a little faster."
"Because the solution is customized. we do occasionally face unique bugs. There are always some changes that need to be made here and there."
"I think that the solution needs to be positioned better within the market as it appears as though the Adaptive Server is being left out of the SAP scope."
"I'd like to see a more friendly user interface."
"The solution should improve view partitioning. The documentation is very confined and available only for users. Distributors also would like access to it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has a yearly licensing fee, and users have to pay extra for support."
"Expensive to maintain compared to other solutions."
"Netezza is a costly solution. It does serve a specific purpose but it's costlier than what's available in the market, if you go to the cloud."
"The pricing is very expensive. It has a lot CPUs with a lot of components in it. It also has built-in redundancy for resiliency reasons."
"For me, mainly, it reduces my costs. It's not only the appliance cost. There are also support costs and a maintenance costs. It does reduce the costs very drastically."
"The annual licensing fees are twenty-two percent of the product cost."
"The licensing cost for ASE is pretty low."
"I rate SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise's pricing a six out of ten."
"Price-wise, the product is worth it since one needs very less infrastructure to use it."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise33
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Netezza Performance Server?
The cost of the solution is on the more expensive side, which is a concern for me. Additionally, its promotion and interaction with cloud applications are limited. The cloud version is only availab...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Netezza Performance Server?
The solution has generally received positive feedback from me and is recommended for continued use by end users. However, the product cost is high compared to others in the market, and this cost ha...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise?
From a pricing perspective, I would say the solution is fairly priced. In Oracle, you have two or three databases at most on one machine. In SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, one machine can have mul...
What needs improvement with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise?
SAP is not putting money into modernizing SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. One of the things I discovered on the last project I was on was that they did not incorporate the Intel new instruction set...
What is your primary use case for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise?
I have worked with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise IQ, and Replication Server. I also worked with SQL Anywhere at one point. SAP acquired Sybase at one point, and the...
 

Also Known As

Netezza Performance Server, Netezza, Netezza Analytics
SAP ASE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Seattle Childrens Hospital, Carphone Warehouse, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Battelle, Start Today Co. Ltd., Kelley Blue Book, Trident Marketing, Elisa Corporation, Catalina Marketing, iBasis, Barnes & Noble, Qualcomm, MediaMath, Acxiom, iBasis, Foxwoods
City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), Takisada-Osaka Co. Ltd., Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Oracle, Teradata and others in Data Warehouse. Updated: June 2026.
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