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Oracle Exadata vs SAP IQ 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.0
Oracle Exadata offers significant ROI in 12-18 months, with cost savings, performance gains, but challenges in ROI calculation.
Sentiment score
6.2
SAP IQ boasts high ROI with substantial hardware savings, low maintenance costs, though some users lack authorization to confirm it.
The investment is good, which is why people choose this hardware.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Oracle Exadata support is generally positive, but response consistency varies, with mixed reactions to Platinum services.
Sentiment score
5.6
Customer service is 24/7 but varies in quality; technical support lacks experts, causing slow escalation and limited advanced assistance.
If I were to rate their support from one to ten, I would say between nine to ten.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
This involved creating blueprints for integrating Oracle products into client systems, followed by technical presentations to Oracle teams and stakeholders.
CISO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Exadata comes with a platinum gateway and comprehensive support, which often gets immediate attention with severity one cases.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
It seems very difficult to get proper advanced assistance on advanced or complicated problems.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The quality of support from SAP is very good; if it's a known problem, they will have a knowledge base, so we will get immediate assistance.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle Exadata provides highly rated scalability, enabling easy expansion and efficient resource addition for varying organizational demands.
Sentiment score
7.4
SAP IQ offers scalable solutions with Simplex and Multiplex architectures, accommodating vast data volumes across PCs or servers.
Within a site, scalability is excellent.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
If we wanted to add more servers into this entire setup, that would be fairly easy, so it's rather good when it comes to scalability.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Oracle Exadata is stable and reliable, with improved updates, despite occasional bugs and initial firmware issues.
Sentiment score
6.0
SAP IQ is stable, effectively managing complex transactions despite occasional issues, making it a reliable choice for implementations.
Once installed, Exadata is very stable.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle Exadata users face high costs and complexity, seeking better performance, support, and integration with cloud technologies.
SAP IQ faces challenges with high costs, inadequate training, stability issues, and integration limitations, impacting performance and adoption.
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
There are minor areas where improvement is needed, such as making the user interface more user-friendly and enhancing configuration and customization options.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
I cannot create an extended rack cluster with one node on one site and another node on a different site.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
When there is an issue, the error messaging we get is not always sufficient to do a fast and solid fix.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Oracle Exadata offers high performance but is costly, suitable for large enterprises with potential cost-saving strategies available.
SAP IQ is cost-effective with various licensing models, though price understanding and negotiation are essential for optimal implementation.
I would rate the price an eight on a scale from one to ten, indicating it is fairly expensive.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
 

Valuable Features

Oracle Exadata offers fast response, high performance, scalability, and efficient data warehousing through advanced features and seamless hardware-software integration.
SAP IQ features column-based architecture, high compression, rapid queries, large-scale data handling, and integration with SAP BusinessObjects.
It also offers high backend speed between self-storage units and servers, which is beneficial for processing.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
The most valuable features of Oracle Exadata are its high availability and cluster environment.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
We can get historical data quickly, and you can fetch information very quickly because every column is indexed.
Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature of SAP IQ for us is that it works very effectively with the SAP BusinessObjects which we use it with.
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Exadata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 9.9%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Exadata9.9%
SAP IQ2.4%
Other87.7%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Has consistently delivered high performance and aligned security while evolving with AI-driven improvements
When discussing Oracle Exadata, the main thing is the specialized database appliance, the flash cache, and the engineered machine on the database for the database itself. Overall, all the features are useful and meaningful for any database like Oracle to run the Oracle database. Regarding Smart Scan technology, it is for better performance. If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself. Oracle Exadata's advanced compression techniques have affected my customer's data storage efficiency positively, with the feature being great, but as of now, our customer is not using that. I find its security measures align with my customer's organization, as security is aligned as per the customer's requirement. It has helped optimize performance and cost.
KK
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Works well with existing platform integration but could improve error messaging and technical support
I do not use SAP IQ's machine learning capabilities. I cannot assess the benefit of SAP IQ's distributed query processing for complex queries, as I am a non-technical operator. I am not sure if we use SAP IQ's data compression features. I think the compression we are doing is on the data storage level and not on the database level. I believe we do not use it, but I'm not certain. We do not utilize SAP IQ's support for unstructured data, as we do not have unstructured data. I do not have any strong opinions on SAP IQ's security features such as data encryption. It's not been something that has been much in focus, neither in our choice of the platform, nor in our daily operations. I guess they're satisfactory as they have not been a problem. I am not aware of the pricing and licensing of SAP IQ, as it's part of a bigger agreement, and I'm not the owner of that agreement. My impression is that SAP IQ is a rather expensive tool in terms of value for money. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SAP IQ a 7.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
880,481 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly. Even you can talk to the d...
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.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
When it comes to SAP IQ, the areas that could be improved or enhanced include the error messaging and the locking capabilities, as that's where we often encounter problems. When there is an issue, ...
What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?
Our usual use cases for SAP IQ is that we have a Software-as-a-Service architecture where this database is the foundation for our SAP BusinessObjects platform. This is where it's getting its data f...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Sybase IQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Exadata vs. SAP IQ and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
880,481 professionals have used our research since 2012.