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AWS Lake Formation vs Oracle Big Data Appliance 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Lake Formation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th)
Oracle Big Data Appliance
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.
reviewer1031826 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analytics Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Platinum partnership leverages advanced storage and fosters seamless data integration
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less than even one-fourth or one-fifth of the Oracle price. For my side, the last time I worked with Oracle was in '21, '22. The price is a challenge that they have to look after. From the storage and data management perspective, I cannot recall anything that they have to improve, but they have to improve the visualization part significantly because they offer Oracle BI, which is an extremely not-matured application.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"We have observed measurable benefits in terms of cost savings, time savings, resource savings, and efficiency improvements in our workflows."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."
"The best thing about the product is that the end-user can build the reports by themselves without really knowing anything about databases."
"Because Big Data Appliance allows me to have a single source of truth, it means I have clean data that can be monetized and leveraged to gain more insights with real-time reports from the dashboard."
"The best feature of Oracle Big Data Appliance, from a price perspective for the storage, is because they have technology called the ZFS technology; it offers huge storage with a decent price."
"This is a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy."
 

Cons

"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"Rather than creating an additional hundred tools, optimizing a tool to have a centralized location to do governance would be beneficial."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."
"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."
"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."
"It seems like the deployment of repositories has become more difficult in later versions of the product rather than easier."
"The product should be simplified for the average user."
"From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"Oracle's prices are too high compared to others in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
What needs improvement with Oracle Big Data Appliance?
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less th...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance?
The typical use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance, which my clients use, is usually that the customer who has an Oracle application uses it because they can leverage the storage part. I don't need...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Caixa Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Oracle Big Data Appliance and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.