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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
6.3
Oracle Exadata offers early break-even, reduced costs, increased performance, and significant savings despite complex licensing challenges.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Oracle Exadata support praised for expertise, but critiques focus on delays and process efficiency improvement needs.
Sentiment score
5.6
Customer service is 24/7 but varies in quality; technical support lacks experts, causing slow escalation and limited advanced assistance.
This involved creating blueprints for integrating Oracle products into client systems, followed by technical presentations to Oracle teams and stakeholders.
Exadata comes with a platinum gateway and comprehensive support, which often gets immediate attention with severity one cases.
It seems very difficult to get proper advanced assistance on advanced or complicated problems.
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.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle Exadata offers efficient scalability with flexible configurations, easy expansion, and high costs; ensure compatible hardware generations.
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.
We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there.
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.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Oracle Exadata is praised for reliability and stability, with improved models offering redundancy and high availability, minimizing downtime.
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.
It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle Exadata needs cost management, simplified patching, improved support, better customization, enhanced security, and third-party integration.
SAP IQ faces challenges with high costs, inadequate training, stability issues, and integration limitations, impacting performance and adoption.
There are minor areas where improvement is needed, such as making the user interface more user-friendly and enhancing configuration and customization options.
I cannot create an extended rack cluster with one node on one site and another node on a different site.
It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy.
When there is an issue, the error messaging we get is not always sufficient to do a fast and solid fix.
 

Setup Cost

Oracle Exadata's high costs are justified by its performance and reliability, offering value through reduced operational expenses.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle Exadata enhances performance, handles large databases efficiently, and simplifies management with advanced features and intelligent storage capabilities.
SAP IQ features column-based architecture, high compression, rapid queries, large-scale data handling, and integration with SAP BusinessObjects.
The most valuable features of Oracle Exadata are its high availability and cluster environment.
It also offers high backend speed between self-storage units and servers, which is beneficial for processing.
We can get historical data quickly, and you can fetch information very quickly because every column is indexed.
The most valuable feature of SAP IQ for us is that it works very effectively with the SAP BusinessObjects which we use it with.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Exadata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
129
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 14.1%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Exadata14.1%
SAP IQ2.7%
Other83.2%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed-Yehia - PeerSpot reviewer
Exceptional database performance with high availability and good reliability
The major use of Exadata is for running databases, big databases, and also for backing them up. It provides high availability and high performance specifically for databases, and not for applications, just Oracle databases High availability and high performance are very valuable aspects of the…
Tejas Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

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?
The cost of Oracle Exadata is substantial, particularly in terms of maintenance costs and licensing. This pricing strategy has led to strained relationships with IT companies including HP and Cisco...
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
Patching Oracle Exadata can be challenging due to its numerous components including network, blade, CPU, storage, and VMs. The system's complexity extends beyond simple maintenance tasks. The perfo...
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: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.