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Amazon EMR vs Oracle Exadata comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.8
Amazon EMR offers cost savings and ROI benefits, with some users experiencing up to 20% cost reduction and high returns.
Sentiment score
6.0
Oracle Exadata offers significant ROI in 12-18 months, with cost savings, performance gains, but challenges in ROI calculation.
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
7.9
Amazon EMR customer service varies, with generally responsive support despite reported delays and occasional gaps in integration assistance.
Sentiment score
6.6
Oracle Exadata support is generally positive, but response consistency varies, with mixed reactions to Platinum services.
I would rate the technical support from Amazon as ten out of ten.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We get all call support, screen sharing support, and immediate support, so there are no problems.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
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
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon EMR efficiently scales for businesses, offering customizable cluster options to manage diverse data sizes and enterprise demands.
Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle Exadata provides highly rated scalability, enabling easy expansion and efficient resource addition for varying organizational demands.
Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Within a site, scalability is excellent.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR is praised for stability and reliability, with high ratings due to its configurability and robust features.
Sentiment score
7.8
Oracle Exadata is stable and reliable, with improved updates, despite occasional bugs and initial firmware issues.
Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Once installed, Exadata is very stable.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR users face challenges with customization, stability, onboarding, cost optimization, task speed, and demand enhanced integration and security.
Oracle Exadata users face high costs and complexity, seeking better performance, support, and integration with cloud technologies.
The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
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
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR pricing is variable, potentially costly, but users can manage expenses with strategic resource and instance management.
Oracle Exadata offers high performance but is costly, suitable for large enterprises with potential cost-saving strategies available.
Cost optimization can be achieved through instance usage, cluster sharing, and auto-scaling.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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

Amazon EMR offers scalable, cost-effective big data management with integration, flexibility, security, and seamless Hadoop and Spark processing.
Oracle Exadata offers fast response, high performance, scalability, and efficient data warehousing through advanced features and seamless hardware-software integration.
Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box solutions with Spark and Hive.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We are using it to clean the data and transform the data in such a way that the end-user can get the insights faster.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd), Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
Oracle Exadata
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1343079 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has simplified ETL workflows with on-demand processing but needs improved cost efficiency and visibility
I have used AWS Glue with S3 for making tables and databases, but regarding Amazon EMR, I do not remember much as we are currently using it very minimally. This is my observation: In EKS, we have had to deploy by ourselves because EKS does not provide the Hadoop framework, Spark, Hive, and everything, but we have completed all the deployment ourselves. Whereas Amazon EMR provides all these things. The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2. In Qubole, the interface was very good. I could see many details because in Amazon EMR console, very few details are available. In Qubole, at one link, you can get all the details of what is happening, how the processes are running, and the cost decreased by using Qubole. I found Qubole more user-friendly and cost-effective. From the security point of view, we had to open some access rights to Qubole, which might be a drawback in comparison to Amazon EMR which is native to AWS.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?
I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.
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...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
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 Amazon EMR vs. Oracle Exadata and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.