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Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs SAP IQ 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

Microsoft Analytics Platfor...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
18th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Analytics Platform System is 2.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 3.2%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP IQ3.2%
Microsoft Analytics Platform System2.3%
Other94.5%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

MahmoudMohamed1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at Tatweer Educational Technologies Company - TETCO
Offers smooth data integration between systems, but requires better real-time analytics capabilities
We leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services. This lets us continue using private databases without paying additional licensing fees. Additionally, the license includes Analytics services and Power BI, which work on-premises, unlike most other technologies that require cloud solutions.
KK
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Works well with existing platform integration but could improve error messaging and technical support
I do not use SAP IQ's machine learning capabilities. I cannot assess the benefit of SAP IQ's distributed query processing for complex queries, as I am a non-technical operator. I am not sure if we use SAP IQ's data compression features. I think the compression we are doing is on the data storage level and not on the database level. I believe we do not use it, but I'm not certain. We do not utilize SAP IQ's support for unstructured data, as we do not have unstructured data. I do not have any strong opinions on SAP IQ's security features such as data encryption. It's not been something that has been much in focus, neither in our choice of the platform, nor in our daily operations. I guess they're satisfactory as they have not been a problem. I am not aware of the pricing and licensing of SAP IQ, as it's part of a bigger agreement, and I'm not the owner of that agreement. My impression is that SAP IQ is a rather expensive tool in terms of value for money. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SAP IQ a 7.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Analytics Platform System's most valuable feature is its ecosystems and seamless integration with other Microsoft reporting platforms and databases."
"The Cube Solution is quite different when compared to the rest of the competition and has unique functionality for advanced analytics."
"I think Microsoft Stack offers the end-to-end solution I need."
"This solution will connect to any database, you can combine databases, and you can create a cube or tabular model."
"The most valuable part of the product is that it is a system, with different tools for different services for different kinds of scenarios, making it a very rich, integrated, technology-rich platform whose total integration with the rest of Microsoft products creates flexibility and compatibility and makes the tool a very useful one."
"We help customers in many ways from customized analysis for detection of anomalies in tax, operations, customer relationship, and marketing campaigns, and we also use mining and ML to help them discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"The result is a highly flexible, affordable, and scalable platform that makes large-scale Hub and Spoke EDW architectures a practical reality."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"While queries with previous products could run for hours, with SAP IQ, they run in a matter of minutes or seconds."
"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."
"Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database."
"IQ has enabled our company to load data from our data vendors in under one hour and eliminated multiple copies and hours of processing time."
"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."
"The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."
"We can now have over one billion rows in a table for semi-real trans-national querying."
"Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."
 

Cons

"​Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System could have better support."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product overall as a five. This is probably because there is still a lot of room for improvement, features that other products have that are missing, and a lot of open-source technology nowadays that are very good and people can use instead."
"However, centralized EDW tends to be extremely expensive and very inflexible."
"The flexibility of this solution needs to be improved because you cannot make changes at every one of the different steps."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"Functionality needs to be more up-to-date with competing products."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"It's too complex. This is concerning something that will change immediately."
"Aborts happen, and we don't know why."
"A production database server should never crash in response to user input, but Sybase IQ has repeatedly done that for us, over multiple revisions of the product."
"Technical support for the product has become almost nonexistent for this product."
"There could be more documentation and training."
"The organization who owns the product does not support it well and appears not to be doing significant development for the future."
"There is very little documentation available."
"The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup or Veritas, those software integrated backups are not available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"We are currently paying $200,000 a year for all the different parts of the suite during an ingest model Microsoft now charges us $700,000 a year."
"Negotiation is very important."
"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."
"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."
"Negotiate based on the features required."
"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
26%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?
IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
When it comes to SAP IQ, the areas that could be improved or enhanced include the error messaging and the locking capabilities, as that's where we often encounter problems. When there is an issue, ...
What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?
Our usual use cases for SAP IQ is that we have a Software-as-a-Service architecture where this database is the foundation for our SAP BusinessObjects platform. This is where it's getting its data f...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft APS, MS Analytics Platform System
Sybase IQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Transport for London, E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG, Prometeia, Tangerine, SSM Health Care, Service Corporation International
ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs. SAP IQ and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.