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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 (11th)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"The solution is stable."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"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."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"The ability to scale out services on-demand and scale them down when they are not required is most valuable. You are in control of your expenditures, and you are also in control of the horsepower that you need. That's a major advantage."
"The initial setup process is straightforward."
"-"
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are the interface and the agility of the on-cloud platform."
"I like SQL post, which is for storage and distributed computing. Another good feature is the copy activity."
"The fact that we can ingest from different types of sources, whether they are internal systems or external sources."
"I love the way all the application resources from Microsoft can synchronize, help me with a lot of stuff, and reduce the time or hour of having maybe a resource for an hour a day while also being able to use artificial intelligence."
"The speed is great and the architecture is excellent."
 

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."
"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."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"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."
"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."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"In our company, we always want to improve our data management, including how to manage structured and unstructured data."
"It could be more stable."
"I'm not entirely happy with the billing model. I'm not entirely happy with how the enterprise services are pretty expensive, but that's about it."
"Synapse Analytics is generally stable, but its performance can be slow when performing very large datasets."
"In the future, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve the performance, there are other solutions that are better, such as Databricks."
"This solution needs to have query caching so that if the same query is run and the results are available, it will return the data from the cache without having to re-run the query."
"The need to improve a little bit in terms of user-friendliness."
"The performance needs to improve in future releases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"The licensing fees for this solution are on a pay-per-use basis, and not very expensive."
"The costs are billed such that we pay for what we use, which is a good thing."
"The solution is expensive at the enterprise level."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"The cost of the licensing depends on the size of the warehouse, where the cost of storage is approximately $130 USD per terabyte."
"Price varies by use-case. You pay for the database itself in addition to any consumed data within Serverless plus other fees if you use the Data Factory that is inside."
"My company pays for the license and I am not sure about the price."
"We have a licensing cost to pay."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.
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...
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 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
I think the price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very expensive, but that's not only for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics—it's for the cloud in general. The cloud is not cost-effective. I...
 

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 IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
862,624 professionals have used our research since 2012.