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Amazon EMR vs IBM Netezza Performance Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 25, 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
5.4
Companies using Amazon EMR often experience significant ROI, with savings up to 20% and substantial returns over on-premise systems.
Sentiment score
7.1
IBM Netezza Performance Server improves data query speed and efficiency, enhancing business performance and cost savings through compression.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR support is generally proactive and efficient, but experiences vary, especially during open-source product integration.
Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Netezza Performance Server praised for knowledgeable support; mixed feedback on resolution speed post-acquisition, yet communication remains consistent.
We get all call support, screen sharing support, and immediate support, so there are no problems.
They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.
Technical support is very costly for me, accounting for twenty-five to thirty percent of the product cost.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon EMR effectively scales to enterprise needs, with auto-scaling and adaptability, despite occasional peak demand resource allocation delays.
Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Netezza struggles with scalability, requiring extra hardware for expansion, prompting users to consider cloud alternatives for growth.
Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.
It is provided as a pre-configured box, and scaling is not an option.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR is generally stable and reliable, despite occasional data-related stability issues, with robust failover and monitoring features.
Sentiment score
7.8
IBM Netezza Performance Server is stable, offering high uptime and reliable performance, with occasional issues due to maintenance or compatibility.
Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR struggles with a steep learning curve, complex configurations, unpredictable costs, and needs enhancements in stability and support.
IBM Netezza struggles with scalability, user interface, query performance, big data support, and high costs, needing better tools and integration.
The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2.
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.
The cloud version is only available in AWS, and in the Middle East, it is not well-developed in the Azure environment.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR's costs vary by resources used, with potential high monthly expenses, requiring careful management to prevent surprises.
IBM Netezza offers high performance and low maintenance but is considered costly, especially for mid-sized organizations, with significant licensing fees.
Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 instances, instance sizes, Kubernetes, Docker services, storage, and data transfers.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EMR is scalable, easy to use, cost-effective, integrates well with Hadoop, and supports diverse analytics applications.
IBM Netezza Performance Server delivers fast analytics, ease of use, robust support, and efficient data warehousing with minimal maintenance.
Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.
Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop.
It operates as a high-speed data warehouse, which is essential for handling big data.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Ranking in Hadoop
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
IBM Netezza Performance Server
Ranking in Hadoop
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 12.8%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Netezza Performance Server is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hadoop Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon EMR12.8%
IBM Netezza Performance Server1.9%
Other85.3%
Hadoop
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless data integration enhances reporting efficiency and an easy setup
Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources. The service charges are based on processing only, depending on the resources used, which can help save money. It is easy to integrate with other services for storage, allowing data to be shifted to cheaper storage based on usage.
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.
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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
23%
Educational Organization
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EMR?
Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
Compared to others, Amazon seems efficient and is considered good for Big Data workloads. Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 ( /products/amazon-ec2-reviews ) instances...
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ) buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integrati...
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...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Netezza Performance Server, Netezza, Netezza Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. IBM Netezza Performance Server and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.