Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Db2 Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (12th)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Ismail Aboulezz - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancements in data analysis and decision-making elevate overall performance
The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse ( /products/ibm-db2-warehouse-reviews ) include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support. The response time is very quick, and the technical manuals and support from IBM are of high quality. Additionally, it is easy to install, troubleshoot, operate, and secure the environment.
Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"The solution is stable."
"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."
"The solution's best feature is its predictive analytics."
"The initial setup process is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the incremental load because we do not need to refresh the entire data on a daily basis."
"Azure Synapse combines the strengths of SQL technologies for effective enterprise data management."
"We can have the dedicated SQL up and running within 15 minutes."
"Synapse Analytics' best features are notebooks, pipelines, and monitoring."
"This is a stable solution with many functionalities."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the pipeline that is the ETL tool. It's very well designed and is overall very good. We usually don't use the ETL tool in Databricks, but we use the ETL tool in this solution."
 

Cons

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."
"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"Unfortunately, we have had some issues with the dashboard reporting. Sometimes, the data for specific periods would just appear blank on the dashboard. To investigate this, we worked with a Microsoft incident agent and it turned out to be a result of bugs in the platform when dealing with specific types of queries in Azure Data Factory."
"Synapse Analytics' performance slows down if you don't get your distribution right because it gets queued and goes into a single node."
"I would like to see version control implemented into the data warehouse."
"They should automate some of the features. There are some things, such as the creation of external tables, that you have to do manually. They should be automated."
"It's stable, but its stability could be better. However, we understand that it's in production, and new features are getting added and upgraded, so you do get hiccups sometimes."
"We'd, of course, always like to pay less for the service if we can."
"The solution should offer a serverless model like Snowflake."
"I would like to see them provide the ingestion of images."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"The pricing is competitive, but only when you pay upfront. If you pay as you go, it's not as competitive. I'd give pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
"You have to be very careful with one specific service inside Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics which is called the Sequel Data Warehouse Dedicated. It is very reliable and performs well, but it's expensive. You need to define the tier well because you can choose between several tiers and you have to define which suits your needs and not overperform the tier because it's quite expensive."
"We are on a monthly payment plan for the use of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics."
"The pricing is quite reasonable in comparison to other products."
"The costs are billed such that we pay for what we use, which is a good thing."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a moderately priced solution."
"We normally pay between $300 and $500 per month, which is quite expensive for how much we actually use it, performance- and usage-wise. They have a cheap version and an expensive version, and our usage usually falls in the middle ground, which makes it not as cost-effective as it could be."
"This is an expensive solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
58%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
5%
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
Db2 Warehouse or IBM products are pretty expensive. There are cheaper tools on the market. However, if the client is satisfied with paying for the Db2 Warehouse license, especially for cloud-based ...
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues. The technical support quality is good, but the response time needs improvement.
How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
We use an enterprise-level subscription for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. I would rate our satisfaction with the price around five, as I have not focused much on cost aspects presently.
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.