IBM Db2 Warehouse vs SAP IQ comparison

IBM and SAP are both solutions in the Data Warehouse category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8, while SAP is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.0. IBM holds a 2.6% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to SAP’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of SAP users who would recommend it.

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Read 12 IBM Db2 Warehouse reviews

1,238 Views
879 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

SAP IQ

Read 21 SAP IQ reviews

955 Views
487 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Warehouse

SAP IQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

SAP IQ and IBM Db2 Warehouse are competing in the data management space, with each product offering unique advantages. SAP IQ stands out for its cost-effective pricing and high customer satisfaction, while IBM Db2 Warehouse is favored for its extensive features that are often deemed worth the investment.

Features: SAP IQ is known for its data retrieval speed, robust data compression, and efficient query performance due to its columnar storage architecture. IBM Db2 Warehouse excels in advanced analytics, seamless cloud integration, and scalability, making it suitable for meeting modern data demands.

Room for Improvement: SAP IQ could benefit from enhanced cloud integration, improved scalability for extensive datasets, and more advanced analytics capabilities. IBM Db2 Warehouse may improve by reducing its setup complexity, optimizing cost efficiency, and enhancing on-premise deployment options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP IQ offers a straightforward deployment process with efficient support options, appealing to organizations focusing on minimal setup complexity. IBM Db2 Warehouse presents a more complex deployment but provides significant cloud integration support, catering to customers seeking hybrid solutions.

Pricing and ROI: SAP IQ is attractive for cost-sensitive organizations due to its lower setup cost and rapid ROI. IBM Db2 Warehouse requires a higher initial investment, yet delivers strong ROI through features that support scalability and advanced analytics, offering valuable returns justified by its functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. SAP IQ Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. SAP IQ

August 2025

Download the complete report

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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

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP IQ

Ranking in Data Warehouse

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (27th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.6%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Sherpard Muzuva

Senior Technical Manager- IBM Enterprise Systems 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.

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Tejas Raj

Manager at Capgemini

Columnar database, so pulling records is easy but there isn't enough documentation for installation

I've seen very few SAP IQ systems in recent years. So people are moving away from SAP IQ In the last three years, I've rarely encountered customers using it. Fewer systems with SAP IQ usage among our customers. Most of them have moved on to HANA. There are parallel products, and there are also viable alternatives from AWS, so many have migrated to those.

Read full review

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."

"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."

"Provides good security and reliability."

"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."

"The solution is stable."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."

"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 analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse pros

"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."

"The product is easy to learn."

"All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions."

"The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves moving data from SAP HANA to SAP NLS, which is essentially archiving. This allows us to retain access to the data via a link whenever it is required."

"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."

"Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database."

"The initial setup is easy."

"Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance."

More SAP IQ pros

Cons

"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."

"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."

"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."

"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."

"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."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."

"Multiplex is very problematic. There are consistency problems in the metadata, meaning it is possible to lose metadata consistency. You should make sure you have healthy backups."

"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."

"The organization who owns the product does not support it well and appears not to be doing significant development for the future."

"There is very little documentation available."

"Concurrency and functional error messaging."

"The tool gets stuck sometimes."

"The only negative aspect of IQ is the cost, which can be challenging for companies in Peru."

More SAP IQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."

"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."

"Negotiation is very important."

"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."

"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."

"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."

"Negotiate based on the features required."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

42%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP IQ?

The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?

I worked on implementing new databases, migration data in production, and developer environments with SAP IQ.

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 39% of the time

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 22% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

Magnitude vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Db2 Warehouse Competitors

Snowflake vs SAP IQ

Compared 21% of the time

SAP HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 16% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP IQ

Compared 13% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs SAP IQ

Compared 8% of the time

Apache Hadoop vs SAP IQ

Compared 8% of the time

More SAP IQ Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse

August 2025

Download IBM Db2 Warehouse product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ

July 2025

Download SAP IQ product report

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse

Sybase IQ

Overview

InfoSphere Warehouse is a suite of products that combines the strength of DB2 with a data warehousing infrastructure from IBM. You can use InfoSphere Warehouse to build a complete data warehousing solution that includes a highly scalable relational database, data access capabilities, and front-end analysis tools.

IBM

SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

SAP

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. SAP IQ

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. SAP IQ

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. SAP IQ and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

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