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AWS Lake Formation vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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

AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Teradata
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (6th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (17th), Relational Databases Tools (7th), Data Warehouse (3rd), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Marketing Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.2%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 8.9%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ramesh Raghavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better
There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.
SurjitChoudhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities
We created and constructed the warehouse. We used multiple loading processes like MultiLoad, FastLoad, and Teradata Pump. But those are loading processes, and Teradata is a powerful tool because if we consider older technologies, its architecture with nodes, virtual processes, and nodes is a unique concept. Later, other technologies like Informatica also adopted the concept of nodes from Informatica PowerCenter version 7.x. Previously, it was a client-server architecture, but later, it changed to the nodes concept. Like, we can have the database available 24/7, 365 days. If one node fails, other nodes can take care of it. Informatica adopted all those concepts when it changed its architecture. Even Oracle databases have since adapted their architecture to them. However, this particular Teradata company initially started with its own different type of architecture, which major companies later adopted. It has grown now, but initially, whatever query we sent it would be mapped into a particular component. After that, it goes to the virtual processor and down to the disk, where the actual physical data is loaded. So, in between, there's a map, which acts like a data dictionary. It also holds information about each piece of data, where it's loaded, and on which particular virtual processor or node the data resides. Because Teradata comes with a four-node architecture, or however many nodes we choose, the cost is determined by that initially. So, what type of data does each and every node hold? It's a shared-no architecture. So, whatever task is given to a virtual processor it will be processed. If there's a failure, then it will be taken care of by another virtual processor. Moreover, this solution has impacted the query time and data performance. In Teradata, there's a lot of joining, partitioning, and indexing of records. There are primary and secondary indexes, hash indexing, and other indexing processes. To improve query performance, we first analyze the query and tune it. If a join needs a secondary index, which plays a major role in filtering records, we might reconstruct that particular table with the secondary index. This tuning involves partitioning and indexing. We use these tools and technologies to fine-tune performance. When it comes to integration, tools like Informatica seamlessly connect with Teradata. We ensure the Teradata database is configured correctly in Informatica, including the proper hostname and properties for the load process. We didn't find any major complexity or issues with integration. But, these technologies are quite old now. With newer big data technologies, we've worked with a four-layer architecture, pulling data from Hadoop Lake to Teradata. We configure Teradata with the appropriate hostname and credentials, and use BTEQ queries to load data. Previously, we converted the data warehouse to a CLD model as per Teradata's standardized procedures, moving from an ETL to an EMT process. This allowed us to perform gap analysis on missing entities based on the model and retrieve them from the source system again. We found Teradata integration straightforward and compatible with other tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"The product's scalability is great. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of uploading data from multiple sources."
"Teradata is a great, industry-leading data warehousing product that has MPP architecture."
"The flexibility in design is very good."
"The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Teradata is security. It runs on Unix and Linux platforms which provide better security."
"The functionality of the solution is excellent."
"It's very mature from a technology perspective."
 

Cons

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"You need to have data experience to use the product."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"Teradata's UI could be improved."
"Query language and its functionality are rather limited, compared to Oracle or even SQL Server. However, it is possible to perform any kind of logic in it (though some workarounds may be required)."
"The solution’s pricing, scalability, and technical support response time could be improved."
"Teradata needs to pay attention to the cloud-based solution to make sure it runs smoothly."
"Since I was working on the very basic, legacy systems, the memory thing was always a challenge. If Teradata is moving to the cloud, the space constraint or the memory issue that my company generally faces will eventually resolve, in time. What I'd like to see in the next release of Teradata is that it becomes full-fledged on the cloud, apart from better connectivity to various systems. For example, if I have to read or include a Python script, if I write some basic codes, I should be able to read even unstructured data. I know that it's not supported even in Snowflake, but at least semi-structured data support, if that can be a little more enhanced, that would be good."
"​I think the UI is not there yet. It could be improved by being more user-friendly.​"
"An additional feature I would you like to see included in the next release, is that it needs to be more cloud-friendly."
"Teradata's pricing is quite high compared to Redshift, Synapse, or GCP alternatives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"The cost is significantly high."
"Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
"In this day and age, we want to get things done quickly. So, we go to the AWS Marketplace."
"Teradata is currently making improvements in this area."
"​I would advise others to look into migration and setup as a fixed price and incorporate a SaaS option for other Teradata services​."
"We had a lot of parties involved when purchasing from the AWS Marketplace. They are very flexible and aggressive in trying to close the deal. They are good at what they have to offer and listening to the customer. It's a two-way street."
"The price of Teradata is expensive. However, what they deliver they are outstanding. If you're looking for an inexpensive solution to run a database, this isn't your tool. It's the Ferrari of databases for data warehousing."
"Teradata pricing is fine, and it's competitive with all the legacy models. On a scale of one to five, with one being the worst and five being the best, I'm giving Teradata a three, because it can be a little expensive, when compared to other solutions."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?
It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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