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Amazon Redshift vs SAP IQ 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Amazon Redshift ROI varies; cloud transition boosts sales but data volume impacts cost-effectiveness compared to databases like Netezza.
Sentiment score
6.2
SAP IQ boasts high ROI with substantial hardware savings, low maintenance costs, though some users lack authorization to confirm it.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon Redshift's customer service is praised for efficiency and professionalism, though some desire easier phone access and consistent availability.
Sentiment score
5.6
Customer service is 24/7 but varies in quality; technical support lacks experts, causing slow escalation and limited advanced assistance.
Whenever we need support, if there is an issue accessing stored data due to regional data center problems, the Amazon team is very helpful and provides optimal solutions quickly.
analyst at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
It's costly when you enable support.
Senior Analyst at Esri India
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.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Redshift is popular for its easy scalability on AWS, although some users face challenges with large cluster configurations.
Sentiment score
7.4
SAP IQ offers scalable solutions with Simplex and Multiplex architectures, accommodating vast data volumes across PCs or servers.
The scalability part needs improvement as the sizing requires trial and error.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
If we wanted to add more servers into this entire setup, that would be fairly easy, so it's rather good when it comes to scalability.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon Redshift is stable with minor scaling challenges, appreciated AWS support, and noted visibility concerns versus Snowflake.
Sentiment score
6.0
SAP IQ is stable, effectively managing complex transactions despite occasional issues, making it a reliable choice for implementations.
Amazon Redshift is a stable product, and I would rate it nine or ten out of ten for stability.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Redshift users struggle with data management, pricing, performance, integration, UI support, and compatibility with various data types.
SAP IQ faces challenges with high costs, inadequate training, stability issues, and integration limitations, impacting performance and adoption.
Integration with AI could be a good improvement.
analyst at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Redshift offers competitive pricing with scalable costs, ideal for large enterprises, though not as economical for smaller companies.
SAP IQ is cost-effective with various licensing models, though price understanding and negotiation are essential for optimal implementation.
The cost of technical support is high.
Senior Analyst at Esri India
It's a pretty good price and reasonable for the product quality.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
The pricing of Amazon Redshift is expensive.
Co-Founder, Director at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Redshift offers scalable, efficient, and secure data warehousing with fast processing, AWS integration, and flexible configurations for analytics.
SAP IQ features column-based architecture, high compression, rapid queries, large-scale data handling, and integration with SAP BusinessObjects.
Amazon Redshift's performance optimization and scalability are quite helpful, providing functionalities such as scaling up and down.
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Scalability is the best feature of Amazon Redshift. Amazon Redshift handles scalability automatically, so we do not need to scale up or down; it is all managed by Redshift.
analyst at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
Scalability is also a strong point; I can scale it however I want without any limitations.
Co-Founder, Director at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
We can get historical data quickly, and you can fetch information very quickly because every column is indexed.
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.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Redshift
Ranking in Data Warehouse
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (8th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (9th)
SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift is 4.9%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Redshift4.9%
SAP IQ2.4%
Other92.7%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

PJ
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Performance optimization and scaling adaptations enable efficient data management
Amazon Redshift does not work alone and requires integration with other AWS tools like S3 and Glue for a complete ecosystem. They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift. Either they should move Amazon Redshift under Glue, or Glue should be brought under Amazon Redshift. The initial setup could also be improved, particularly in terms of sizing, as it requires trial and error to get right.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Media Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Amazon Redshift?
The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good.
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

No data available
Sybase IQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Redshift vs. SAP IQ and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.