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IBM Netezza Performance Server vs SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise comparison

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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 Netezza Performance Server
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (11th), Hadoop (6th)
SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Netezza Performance Server and SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Netezza Performance Server is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 4.3%, up 4.2% compared to last year.
SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 1.6% mindshare, up 1.0% since last year.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Netezza Performance Server4.3%
Teradata9.0%
Snowflake8.9%
Other77.8%
Data Warehouse
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise1.6%
SQL Server10.3%
Oracle Database10.3%
Other77.8%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Shiv Subramaniam Koduvayur - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at MAF Retail
Parallel data processing streamlines operations while cost and cloud integration challenge adoption
The cost of the solution is on the more expensive side, which is a concern for me. Additionally, its promotion and interaction with cloud applications are limited. The cloud version is only available in AWS, and in the Middle East, it is not well-developed in the Azure environment. For the cost to be reduced, it should match competitors. Many features need to be incorporated on the cloud.
reviewer2784705 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
Long term database experience has supported OLTP workloads and delivers reliable cross platform migrations
SAP is not putting money into modernizing SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. One of the things I discovered on the last project I was on was that they did not incorporate the Intel new instruction set in SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. Intel has augmented its instruction set referred to as new instructions. They did that to make conversion easier. When you migrate SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise cross-platform, you go through a process where it converts the character set. If you are going from AIX to Linux or from Solaris to Linux, Linux is referred to as Little Endian, while AIX or Solaris are considered Big Endian. This is determined by how the product stores data. The word size of these processors is 32 bits long. If you start numbering from the little end, it is referred to as Little Endian. If you start numbering from the big end, it is called Big Endian. To migrate a SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise database from a Big Endian setup like AIX or Solaris to migrate to a Big Endian setup on an Intel, the operating system determines whether it is Little Endian or Big Endian. When you migrate from Big Endian to Little Endian, the database has to go through a character set conversion, and some of these databases are quite large with gigabytes and gigabytes of data. They have to do a character set conversion to the existing database before they do anything else. The worst part is that you have to rebuild all the indexes when you do that. When you switch endianness of the database, you have to rebuild all the indexes. It will automatically do that for system tables, but for actual user databases, you have to rebuild all your indexes, and it takes a long time. SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise is a relational database and is the predecessor of Microsoft SQL Server. All that functionality that Microsoft SQL Server had came from essentially SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. The problem with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise these days is it is not expanding its place in the marketplace or expanding its position in the marketplace. A lot of companies have migrated away from SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. It works fairly well, but the problem is SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise was architected to be an OLTP engine and is now doing things for larger databases that were not in its original intended purpose. The endianness of the RDBMS is a major impediment to continuing to use SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. You have a multi-gigabyte database, and it will go through a conversion process in a single-threaded fashion, and then you have to rebuild the indexes. Rebuilding the indexes is lengthy and time-consuming. The part of the conversion process that is concerned with conversion of the character set is single-threaded. You may have eight cores on your machine or virtual machine and only one can be used in the conversion process. There is another problem with the whole thing in that it will sometimes not operate properly. Under certain workloads, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise will become overwhelmed. When you convert it, it does not operate properly in all circumstances. The root cause of that is that SAP in its desire to save money and desire to orphan the product has not recompiled or redeveloped the product to take advantage of the Intel new instruction set. Other relational databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server have the same issue to deal with, but with those platforms, they are taking advantage of the new instruction set. There are some additional Intel instruction sets or instructions in their Intel instruction set. With SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, they did not bother to incorporate support for the new instruction set instructions. In certain circumstances, the database does not operate properly. It is unable to do what it needs to do. If you do your research and go on the internet and see what happens with Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, what comes back is that it takes 4% longer to perform a lot of the instructions. When you are using the new instruction set, it adds 4% to the runtime of the database.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Netezza can process all this amount of data and give a result in less than 40 seconds."
"It has been the primary driving technology behind the corporate wide transition to Netezza as a standard data platform."
"The performance has meant that we reclaimed many hours in our batch window."
"Billions of data are processed within an optimal amount of time, and it supports almost real-time analytics."
"With a field-programmable gate array, it has the capabilities to do arithmetic calculations at memory level."
"Bottom line, Netezza costs less to own and operate, and is easier to manage."
"We had a lot of POC's on a data warehousing project with the help of Netezza, we have proved that it has really improved time on doing analytics."
"Parallel data processing is a significant feature for me."
"This is a wonderful database that is, in my opinion, underrated."
"It's user-friendly, especially in the logistics field."
"SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise was basically as good as its rivals in my experience."
"I like that SAP ASE can match code and the database index to index data in the programming language."
"SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise is a good transactional database."
"This is a wonderful database that is, in my opinion, underrated. Users are able to get the most out of my experience by taking advantage of its centralized environment."
"This product has my complete confidence."
"It's pretty good at handling a large number of transactions, which is critical for a banking client."
 

Cons

"The only reason I wouldn't give it a 10 is because, early on, there were a couple of maintenance things that we had to do."
"It’s a good product for analytical processing, but they need to conduct more seminars and hands-on training and events."
"IBM Netezza Performance Server could improve its interface, support for big data, and APA-based connectivity should be available."
"I'm not sure of IBM's roadmap currently, as the solution is coming up on its end of life."
"We are not able to scale. The only way to scale is to get another appliance, but we have a customers who would need us to hydrate the data between the two appliances, and Netezza does not do that."
"Administration of this product is too tough. It's very complex because of the tools which it's missing."
"The query optimization is crap, and the machine could use more alerting around bad design and bad queries."
"Netezza does not perform well with a significant volume of individual record operations."
"Cost-wise, SAP is still expensive compared to other available products."
"Because the solution is customized. we do occasionally face unique bugs. There are always some changes that need to be made here and there."
"The solution is kind-of expensive."
"SAP should refine its debugging method, and the process needs to be a little faster. It should use more Pragmas and fewer pseudocomments. I would like if SAP added more features based on advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence and voice control. The modularization and if-else techniques could also incorporate the latest technology to code and solve complex problems. The SAP Editor should be more elaborative, and it should allow many more types of statements for all uses."
"I think that the solution needs to be positioned better within the market as it appears as though the Adaptive Server is being left out of the SAP scope."
"In my opinion, product support is not that great from SAP because they have already declared the end-of-date for SAP ASE. They will be stopping product support."
"They turned a functional product into something where you have to go through a difficult process to do the conversion."
"Cluster features: The Cluster Edition didn't get the same level of reliability as the Enterprise Edition did."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has a yearly licensing fee, and users have to pay extra for support."
"The pricing is very expensive. It has a lot CPUs with a lot of components in it. It also has built-in redundancy for resiliency reasons."
"For me, mainly, it reduces my costs. It's not only the appliance cost. There are also support costs and a maintenance costs. It does reduce the costs very drastically."
"The annual licensing fees are twenty-two percent of the product cost."
"Expensive to maintain compared to other solutions."
"Netezza is a costly solution. It does serve a specific purpose but it's costlier than what's available in the market, if you go to the cloud."
"I rate SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise's pricing a six out of ten."
"Price-wise, the product is worth it since one needs very less infrastructure to use it."
"The licensing cost for ASE is pretty low."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise33
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Netezza Performance Server?
The cost of the solution is on the more expensive side, which is a concern for me. Additionally, its promotion and interaction with cloud applications are limited. The cloud version is only availab...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Netezza Performance Server?
The solution has generally received positive feedback from me and is recommended for continued use by end users. However, the product cost is high compared to others in the market, and this cost ha...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise?
From a pricing perspective, I would say the solution is fairly priced. In Oracle, you have two or three databases at most on one machine. In SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, one machine can have mul...
What needs improvement with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise?
SAP is not putting money into modernizing SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise. One of the things I discovered on the last project I was on was that they did not incorporate the Intel new instruction set...
What is your primary use case for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise?
I have worked with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise IQ, and Replication Server. I also worked with SQL Anywhere at one point. SAP acquired Sybase at one point, and the...
 

Also Known As

Netezza Performance Server, Netezza, Netezza Analytics
SAP ASE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Seattle Childrens Hospital, Carphone Warehouse, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Battelle, Start Today Co. Ltd., Kelley Blue Book, Trident Marketing, Elisa Corporation, Catalina Marketing, iBasis, Barnes & Noble, Qualcomm, MediaMath, Acxiom, iBasis, Foxwoods
City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), Takisada-Osaka Co. Ltd., Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Oracle, Teradata and others in Data Warehouse. Updated: September 2026.
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