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IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics 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

IBM Db2 Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (13th)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.
AnandTiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at New Turn Technologies
Has consistently supported integration across diverse environments and streamlined deployment processes
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve their pricing structure. They currently have two separate pricing tiers: full log and partial log. I suggest they implement a single price and reduce charges on logs. They could implement a cap with some free tier or price tier based on the GBs of log collected. This would help customers use Azure more effectively. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an excellent product because it includes both SIEM and orchestration capabilities with playbooks, but the log management part is very costly. Regarding future improvements, I would appreciate more application connectors for integration, particularly for on-premise based solutions. Many customers still maintain on-premise infrastructure, so having more integration possibilities for these environments would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy and practical to use."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."
"The initial setup was really easy; it's Docker compliant, you just pull the image from the IBM repository and that's it, and the deployment must have taken less than an hour, making it really fast to have it completely working."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"They are very reliable and cost-effective."
"I like its performance. It is well-structured and offers a lot of practical options. Because of the visual design of the product, it is very easy to find icons and other visual elements. It took me more than two weeks to understand how it works. I had an intensive training session to understand it, which was enough. It was not hard to understand how it works."
"We haven't had any issues when it comes to customization."
"The product works well with other Azure products."
"The solution has been working well overall."
"The good thing about Synapse is the scale factor, as it can handle a lot more volume of data compared to Azure SQL and is good for processing a huge amount of data due to its parallel processing capability."
"Pretty much all of the features are valuable; the storage and compute are very reliable and cost-effective, it meets the client's requirements, is user-friendly, has a good dashboard, and my team is happy with everything."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are how easy and quick it is to set up the linked services."
 

Cons

"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."
"I previously used DataStage, which I think is better than InfoSphere Warehouse."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"There may be some challenges in terms of connecting with Virtual Networks (VNETs) to Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics."
"For improvement, I would like to see more connectors and better integration for Hadoop."
"Managing workloads and data transformation using Databricks should be a focus."
"It would be of interest to improve things like the web service integration and availability in terms of being easy to create internal web services in the database."
"The product needs a tool that allows for work from a laptop instead of a browser."
"The main areas for improvement are cost and integration with different toolsets within one package."
"It would be beneficial to take the top vendors and identify some kind of straightforward action to work with them. Instead of having to employ a separate vendor tool to be able to move this, it would be nice to be able to go through Microsoft."
"I would like my team to be able to build pipelines that integrate with the Azure Data Factory."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"Microsoft's pricing is relatively high, and it varies according to the extent of our usage. The pricing is directly tied to our consumption. This decision is ultimately a business choice."
"The computer and storage costs are totally separate which allows you to work independently or manage costs."
"We normally pay between $300 and $500 per month, which is quite expensive for how much we actually use it, performance- and usage-wise. They have a cheap version and an expensive version, and our usage usually falls in the middle ground, which makes it not as cost-effective as it could be."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a moderately priced solution."
"Its price could be better. It was a school project, and I got it for free. If I try to pay through my company, it is a little bit more expensive as compared to Oracle."
"Because it's cloud the cost is a different convention and the licensing costs are not the same."
"The cost of the solution depends on the type of license we choose, such as pay-as-you-go, one-year reserve, or three-year reserve."
"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise60
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
I think the licensing cost for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very high, but I have a local system to support that, so I don't consider that in the near future.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
I am hoping that in the future Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics may have AI support.
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Oracle and others in Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.