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IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Oracle Exadata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
Ranking in Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle Exadata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 17.4%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ismail Aboulezz - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancements in data analysis and decision-making elevate overall performance
The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse ( /products/ibm-db2-warehouse-reviews ) 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 response time is very quick, and the technical manuals and support from IBM are of high quality. Additionally, it is easy to install, troubleshoot, operate, and secure the environment.
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
A solid data warehouse for transactional data that needs to be priced more competitively
Since the product is an appliance, it is very costly. And in the current age, people are cautious about spending this amount of money on any of these types of backend products. Some use cases are in real-time, where all other databases are much faster, but if you talk about the data warehouse, business intelligence, and all other perspectives in the transactional world, Oracle has to reduce the cost. Otherwise, a customer wouldn't want to continue this. If the same thing can be done at half or one-third of the cost, why would people stay with Oracle? Oracle Exadata would not have great value in front of a CFO. Other solutions can guard your data and address security concerns. Security, volumetrics, and so on are also provided by other databases, which are not that costly. Apart from Exadata, Oracle has other tools for business intelligence and other things, which they add on top of Exadata when they're selling a general license. For example, the Vertica database, an HP data warehouse. They have come up with their own analytic engine within the database, which gives an edge for the client to use the data analytics engine as a part of their database. Exadata does not have an analytic engine. Even MySQL has some statistical tools within it. If Exadata integrates analytical tools, it will be good for them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"The solution is stable."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"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 most valuable feature is storage offloading."
"Before using this machine, we took no less than two days to run a report. Now, we can do it within five hours. So, there is a lot of improvement."
"The tool's performance is good."
"The technical support team are real professionals. I admire their technical skills and supports. Their supports are really admirable."
"The ease of setup is an eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the storage available."
"Backup/Restore performance: Fast backups, fast restores (especially useful for creating clone environments)."
"This product can noticeably enhance performance of contextual Oracle databases."
 

Cons

"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"There is a feature for security, but it is not included in the first purchase of this solution. That means if you need to increase the security, you need to buy the security feature which doesn't come by default on these solutions."
"The analytics features must be improved."
"We have experienced some issues with processing unstructured data on Exadata. This is an important requirement for our AIML based use case. Reactive analytics data can not be prepared easily in Oracle Exadata."
"Oracle Exadata could improve by having faster data retrieval. We receive data at four or five seconds and want to reduce that number to one second."
"The solution could always be more stable and more reliable."
"Setting up Exadata is complex. You need an Oracle vendor or someone who is Oracle-certified to set it up."
"The solution lacks a visualized console."
"We have a little trepidation with the system as it does have a learning curve. Also changing to a binary logging format for us feels like retrograde motion, but sadly almost all Linux variants have moved in this direction."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"The cost of the product could be improved."
"The price is very high."
"The price of the solution has been expensive to implement."
"You have to pay for the storage and the database in Oracle Exadata. It cost a lot, but it is worth it. It would be a benefit if we could reduce the price for the number of CPUs and extend the memory."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"The majority of our customers are in government or big enterprises, and the projects that we sell come out to several million USD. With this amount of money on the table, it's always better to have an experienced team of consultants, who know Exadata very well, handle the implementation."
"I did note that Oracle does tend to internally oversize things especially if they want to fill up a budget, and hence third-party oversight is essential."
"The price of Oracle Exadata is competitive. There are some features that are outside of the initial purchase license, such as some monitoring packages."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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?
There is room for improvement in optimizing certain processes, but most issues arise from my data, hardware architecture, and resources, not from IBM Db2 Warehouse itself.
What do you like most about Oracle Exadata?
It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
The price is a major consideration. I would rate the price an eight on a scale from one to ten, indicating it is fairly expensive.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
We recently completed an extension of our storage space. There are minor areas where improvement is needed, such as making the user interface more user-friendly and enhancing configuration and cust...
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Oracle Exadata and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.