SAP IQ vs Teradata comparison

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SAP IQ

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

SAP IQ and Teradata are both prominent contenders in the data management sector. SAP IQ's columnar architecture offers high compression and fast query execution, advantageous for BI/Analytics, whereas Teradata's strength lies in scalability and parallel processing, for handling large datasets efficiently.

Features: SAP IQ's columnar storage ensures high compression and speedy queries, making it space-efficient and easy to use for analytical workloads. It supports scalability with a straightforward learning curve. Teradata's features include its massively parallel processing architecture for consistent performance, a shared-nothing setup for handling large data volumes, and comprehensive query execution capabilities.

Room for Improvement: SAP IQ could enhance error messaging, backup, and marketplace visibility. Its integration and support require attention, with a noted shortage of skilled professionals. Teradata faces challenges with high costs and handling unstructured data. It needs advanced cloud features, with licensing and initial setup perceived as complex.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP IQ is primarily on-premises, limiting in a cloud-centric market and criticized for slow, less expert support. Teradata offers versatile deployment options across on-premises and cloud environments. It generally provides better customer service, though improvements are noted as possible.

Pricing and ROI: SAP IQ is competitively priced with savings in hardware and implementation but could simplify license classification. Teradata, although more expensive, justifies its cost through performance and features. Its cloud capabilities are evolving to address pricing concerns.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP IQ vs. Teradata Report (Updated: January 2026).

SAP IQ vs. Teradata

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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

6.2

SAP IQ boasts high ROI with substantial hardware savings, low maintenance costs, though some users lack authorization to confirm it.

Sentiment score

6.9

Teradata significantly boosts speed, efficiency, and ROI, with studies showing a 427% average ROI over three years.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

At least fifteen to twenty percent of our time has been saved using Teradata, which has positively affected team productivity and business outcomes.

Shugoyal Shugoyal

Senior product analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Independent research showed that Teradata VantageCloud users achieved an average ROI of 427% across three years with payback under a year, demonstrating the platform's ability to deliver a strong financial return.

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

We have realized a return on investment, with a reduction of staff from 27 to eight, and our current return on investment is approximately 14%.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Interim and Fractional CIO and CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Customer Service

Sentiment score

5.6

Customer service is 24/7 but varies in quality; technical support lacks experts, causing slow escalation and limited advanced assistance.

Sentiment score

7.1

Teradata's support is praised for professionalism and responsiveness, but feedback on speed is mixed; training resources enhance service.

It seems very difficult to get proper advanced assistance on advanced or complicated problems.

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The quality of support from SAP is very good; if it's a known problem, they will have a knowledge base, so we will get immediate assistance.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The customer support for Teradata has been great.

Interim and Fractional CIO and CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

They are responsive and knowledgeable, and the documentation is very helpful.

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Customer support is very good, rated eight out of ten under our essential agreement.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Team Leader for Data Base Administrators at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.4

SAP IQ offers scalable solutions with Simplex and Multiplex architectures, accommodating vast data volumes across PCs or servers.

Sentiment score

7.5

Teradata offers scalable cloud and on-premise solutions with strong adaptability, overcoming hardware limitations and cost challenges efficiently.

SAP IQ is actually quite effective when it comes to scalability.

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Whenever we need more resources, we can add that in Teradata, and when not needed, we can scale it down as well.

Shugoyal Shugoyal

Senior product analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

This flexibility allows organizations to scale according to their needs, balancing performance, cost, and compliance requirements.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

This expansion can occur without incurring downtime or taking systems offline.

RajeshKumar25

Principal Consultant & Director at Quensulting

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.0

SAP IQ is stable, effectively managing complex transactions despite occasional issues, making it a reliable choice for implementations.

Sentiment score

8.3

Teradata's robust architecture ensures exceptional stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and high user ratings despite some integration challenges.

It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Its massively parallel process architecture allows the platform to distribute workload efficiently, enabling organizations to run heavy analytic queries without compromising speed or stability.

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

I find the stability to be almost a ten out of ten.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Team Leader for Data Base Administrators at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The workload management and software maturity provide a reliable system.

RajeshKumar25

Principal Consultant & Director at Quensulting

Room For Improvement

SAP IQ faces challenges with high costs, inadequate training, stability issues, and integration limitations, impacting performance and adoption.

Teradata requires improvements in transaction processing, scalability, UI, cost-effectiveness, analytics features, integration capabilities, and security measures.

When there is an issue, the error messaging we get is not always sufficient to do a fast and solid fix.

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I want to highlight two features for improvement: first, storing data in various formats without requiring a tabular structure, accommodating unstructured data; and second, adding AI ML features to better integrate Gen AI, LLM concepts, and user-friendly experiences such as text-to-SQL capabilities.

Ganesh Verma

Data Engineer at Tredence Inc.

Unlike SQL and Oracle, which have in-built replication capabilities, we don't have similar functionality with Teradata.

Team Leader for Data Base Administrators at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most challenging aspect is finding Teradata resources, so we are focusing on internal training and looking for more Teradata experts.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Interim and Fractional CIO and CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Setup Cost

SAP IQ is cost-effective with various licensing models, though price understanding and negotiation are essential for optimal implementation.

Teradata offers high-value analytics with flexible pricing, excelling in performance and ROI, ideal for large enterprises and data-intensive sectors.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Teradata is much more expensive than SQL, which is well-performed and cheaper.

Team Leader for Data Base Administrators at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initially, it may seem expensive compared to similar cloud databases, however, it offers significant value in performance, stability, and overall output once in use.

RajeshKumar25

Principal Consultant & Director at Quensulting

Role-based access control (RBAC), strong audit and compliance features, high availability, fault tolerance, and encrypted data at rest and in-transit are key features.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Valuable Features

SAP IQ features column-based architecture, high compression, rapid queries, large-scale data handling, and integration with SAP BusinessObjects.

Teradata excels in parallel processing, scalability, and performance, offering robust data management, security, and integration for efficient data warehousing.

The feature I appreciate the most about SAP IQ is the compression, which is very good; we cannot compare with any other type of EDW.

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable feature of SAP IQ for us is that it works very effectively with the SAP BusinessObjects which we use it with.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Teradata's security helps our organization meet compliance requirements such as GDPR and IFRS, and it is particularly essential for revenue contracting or revenue recognition.

Interim and Fractional CIO and CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Its architecture allows information to be processed efficiently while maintaining stable performance, even in highly demanding environments.

For more quotes and insights, download the Teradata report

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

It facilitates data integration, where we integrate and analyze data from various sources, making it a powerful and high-quality reliable solution for the company.

reviewer2783274

Senior Data Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Categories and Ranking

SAP IQ

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

24th

Ranking in Data Warehouse

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Teradata

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

6th

Ranking in Data Warehouse

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Experience Management (6th), Backup and Recovery (15th), Data Integration (15th), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th), Marketing Management (5th), Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 9.5%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Teradata	9.5%
SAP IQ	2.4%
Other	88.1%

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Compression performance gets high marks but user-friendly interface needs improvement

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The downside of SAP IQ, from what I understood from the management side, is that the front end for the DBA, for the admin, is not that user-friendly. If you compare it with SQL Server Management Studio, it is not that user-friendly GUI for the admin. But the engine is very strong and powerful. It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy. The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup, those software integrated backups are not available. So, if you want to take a backup, you need to take it locally, and then only you can back it up to any storage or anything. Those features such as integrated backup, which would allow it to stripe into an appliance or something similar, are not present. One thing I notice as a downside is that if the CPU utilization is very high, there is no direct way we can find out which query is taking the most CPU. In any other RDBMS, there are DMVs available to find out which query is taking most of the CPU, but those features are not present in SAP IQ. If our CPU is hitting at 100%, it is not easy to identify which connection is taking the most CPU.

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Delivers consistent performance and enables advanced analytics across complex data environments

Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Teradata stands out as a solid platform for managing and analyzing large volumes of data. Its architecture allows information to be processed efficiently while maintaining stable performance, even in highly demanding environments. One of its most notable strengths is the ability to run complex queries at high speed, which is essential for organizations that require timely and reliable analytics. Teradata offers a well-integrated ecosystem that supports working with different types of data and enables scalability as organizational needs grow. Its focus on advanced analytics, integration with modern business intelligence tools, and the ability to operate both on-premise and in the cloud make it a versatile solution for data warehousing and large-scale processing. Teradata's stability, technological maturity, and the availability of strong documentation and best practices are noteworthy. I consider Teradata to be a tool with great potential for any organization looking to enhance its analytical capabilities, optimize data processing, and move toward more data-driven decision-making. Teradata stands out as a solid platform for managing a large volume of data in different projects. Its architecture allows information to be processed efficiently while maintaining stable performance, even in high-demanding environments. A well-integrated AI ecosystem that supports working with different types of data and enables scalability as organizational needs grow across different kinds of enterprises or organizations. The focus on advanced analytics integration with modern business intelligence tools is particularly valuable. Teradata combines a powerful parallel process and optimizing SQL engine with a highly scalable architecture allowing businesses to execute complex queries and analytics in real-time. It supports multi-cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments, giving organizations flexibility to choose the setup that best aligns with their strategy. One of the biggest strengths is the ability to unify disparate data sources and support high concurrency, enabling different teams, such as analytics, operations, BI, and data science, to access consistent, trusted data across the enterprise.

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Comparison Review

it_user232068

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

36%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	52

Questions from the Community

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...

Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?

I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...

Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?

Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...

Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?

Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...

Oracle Database vs SAP IQ

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Compared 7% of the time

Snowflake vs Teradata

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

SAP IQ

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Also Known As

Sybase IQ

IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture, Teradata Vantage Enterprise (DIY)

Overview

SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

SAP

Teradata is a powerful tool for handling substantial data volumes with its parallel processing architecture, supporting both cloud and on-premise environments efficiently. It offers impressive capabilities for fast query processing, data integration, and real-time reporting, making it suitable for diverse industrial applications.

Known for its robust parallel processing capabilities, Teradata effectively manages large datasets and provides adaptable deployment across cloud and on-premise setups. It enhances performance and scalability with features like advanced query tuning, workload management, and strong security. Users appreciate its ease of use and automation features which support real-time data reporting. The optimizer and intelligent partitioning help improve query speed and efficiency, while multi-temperature data management optimizes data handling.

What are the key features of Teradata?

Parallel Processing Architecture: Enables efficient handling of substantial data volumes.
Cloud and On-Premise Deployment: Offers seamless adaptability across environments.
Query Tuning: Improves speed and performance of data retrieval processes.
Workload Management: Ensures optimal resource allocation for enhanced performance.
Robust Security: Provides high levels of data protection and system integrity.
Data Integration: Facilitates cohesive data management from multiple sources.
Automation for Real-time Reporting: Enhances timely data insights and decision-making.
Optimizer and Intelligent Partitioning: Further increase query speed and system efficiency.
Multi-Temperature Data Management: Optimizes the handling and retrieval of data.

What benefits and ROI do users look for?

Efficient Data Management: Facilitates smooth integration and processing of diverse data sets.
Scalability: Easy adjustment to increasing or decreasing data requirements.
Improved Performance: Fast query speeds and optimized resource use.
Comprehensive Security: Safeguards data integrity and accessibility.
Ease of Use: Simplifies data handling and operational processes.

In the finance, retail, and government sectors, Teradata is employed for data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytical processing. It handles vast datasets for activities like customer behavior modeling and enterprise data integration. Supporting efficient reporting and analytics, Teradata enhances data storage and processing, whether deployed on-premise or on cloud platforms.

Sample Customers

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.

Netflix

SAP IQ vs. Teradata