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IBM Netezza Performance Server vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

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
7.1
IBM Netezza Performance Server boosted productivity, reduced costs, and enhanced business intelligence, achieving positive outcomes and high returns.
Sentiment score
6.8
Snowflake users praise its scalability and ease of use, though financial gains vary and may require longer usage periods.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Netezza's customer service is prompt but technical support response and cost affect satisfaction, leading to variable ratings.
Sentiment score
5.7
Snowflake support is responsive and helpful, with high user satisfaction, despite occasional slower response times and ticketing reliance.
Technical support is very costly for me, accounting for twenty-five to thirty percent of the product cost.
I received great support in migrating data to Snowflake, with quick responses and innovative solutions.
The technical support from Snowflake is very good, nice, and efficient.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Netezza Performance Server faces scalability issues with appliance limitations, effective for set operations but not individual tasks.
Sentiment score
7.8
Snowflake offers excellent scalability, adaptable to varying needs, with minimal challenges but requires cost and resource management attention.
It is provided as a pre-configured box, and scaling is not an option.
Snowflake is very scalable and has a dedicated team constantly improving the product.
The billing doubles with size increase, but processing does not necessarily speed up accordingly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
IBM Netezza Performance Server is stable with minimal outages, relying on proper query design and offering effective IBM support.
Sentiment score
8.2
Snowflake offers high stability and reliability with minimal downtime, rapid recovery, and seamless failover across platforms, especially AWS.
Snowflake is very stable, especially when used with AWS.
Snowflake as a SaaS offering means that maintenance isn't an issue for me.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Netezza needs better scalability, concurrency, integration, query optimization, monitoring, and reduced costs to overcome growth and usability challenges.
Snowflake needs interface improvements, better ETL, machine learning features, pricing clarity, advanced tools, and enhanced documentation and security.
The cloud version is only available in AWS, and in the Middle East, it is not well-developed in the Azure environment.
Enhancements in user experience for data observability and quality checks would be beneficial, as these tasks currently require SQL coding, which might be challenging for some users.
Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Netezza Performance Server is costly yet valuable for enterprises needing robust analytics, scalability, and built-in redundancy.
Snowflake offers competitive pay-as-you-go pricing with some concerns over transparency, predictability, and potential cost escalation.
Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side.
Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating resource usage.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Netezza Performance Server provides fast data processing, easy management, and enhances analytics with high performance and low maintenance.
Snowflake excels in scalability, efficiency, ease of use, AI/ML capabilities, security, and seamless third-party integration, enhancing user experience.
It operates as a high-speed data warehouse, which is essential for handling big data.
Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses.
Being able to perform AI and Machine Learning in the same location as the data is quite advantageous.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Netezza Performance Server
Ranking in Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Netezza Performance Server is 4.7%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 14.0%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Shiv Subramaniam Koduvayur - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Transformation in data querying speed with good migration capabilities
Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses. One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations. It also has tools for migrating data from legacy databases like Oracle. Its stability and efficiency enhance performance greatly. Tools in the AI/ML marketplace are readily available without needing development.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Netezza Performance Server?
IBM Netezza Performance Server is a cost-effective solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Netezza Performance Server?
The solution has a yearly licensing fee, and users have to pay extra for support.
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 do you like most about Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
It is complicated to understand how requests impact warehouse size. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Databricks ( /products/databricks-reviews ), Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating ...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Pricing is quite high for Snowflake Data Cloud, which is an area that could be improved. Snowflake Data Cloud is still beneficial to use, but only if you can afford it. It can be cost-effective if ...
 

Also Known As

Netezza Performance Server, Netezza
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

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
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Netezza Performance Server vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.