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

IBM Netezza Performance Server vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Netezza Performance Server
Ranking in Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Netezza Performance Server is 4.0%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 17.5%, down from 19.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Shemal Gandhi - PeerSpot reviewer
A cost-effective data warehousing tool, but security features like TDE encryption are missing
The solution's maintenance is quite easy. One person is enough to maintain the solution. If you are using PostgreSQL as a database solution, then using IBM Netezza Performance Server is the logical choice since it is based on open-source Postgres. However, if you are using Oracle, data conversion can be tricky. So, in that case, you want to go ahead with Exadata. Overall, I rate IBM Netezza Performance Server a seven out of ten.
VivekSingh 1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good data ingestion capability, but should include more AI capabilities
The solution's integration aspect is good, and all the connectors are in place. I found Snowflake similar to RDS. We use it for both data in motion and data in transit. It looks like the tool handles the data quite securely. We create ETL patterns. We ingest data from different source systems, and we have to create data pipelines. It would be useful if we could have AI features added to identify what I'm going to do with this data. It would be good if it could look at the data and help me create an automated pipeline instead of me creating a pipeline by myself. I'm from a retail background. I completed my Oracle DBA training a long time ago, about 18 years ago. I was quite familiar with the Snowflake and relational database concepts since I had already completed the Oracle ops, DBA ops, OCP, and OPA courses. For me, it was a journey similar to when I shifted from Oracle RDS to Snowflake. Although I was quite familiar with most of the concepts, there were some learnings. Whosoever is in the data field should at least try Snowflake once. They will then realize the best features in the solution and can continue using it. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature would be the fact that it has been running for awhile in an appliance format."
"The underlying hardware that IBM provides with this appliance is made for a specific purpose, to serve performance on a large amount of data, and to do analytics as well. It is faster, when you compare it to any other product."
"IBM Netezza Performance Server is a cost-effective solution."
"Distribution concurrency control."
"The benefit is really because of the additional speed that we have and, truth be told, the more updated ETL processes and the revamped scheduler in general."
"The performance is most important to me, and it helps our ability to make business decisions quickly."
"The data governance prospect... from what I've seen, that is a really powerful tool as well, to help with data lineage and keeping track of that."
"The most valuable features of the IBM Netezza Performance Server are the NPS server because of the reduced maintenance and overall good performance."
"Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."
"Everything is automatic, and I don't have to do any maintenance."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation."
"All the people who are working with Snowflake are extremely happy with it because it is designed from a data-warehousing point of view, not the other way around. You have a database and then you tweak it and then it becomes a data warehouse."
"Its performance is a big advantage. When you run a query, its performance is very good. The inbound and outbound share features are also very useful for sharing a particular database. By using these features, you can allow others to access the Snowflake database and query it, which is another advantage of this solution. It has good security, and we can easily integrate it. We can connect it with multiple source systems."
"I like the fact that we don't need a DBA. It automatically scales stuff."
"It was relatively easy to use, and it was easy for people to convert to it."
"The product is quite fast."
 

Cons

"Concurrency limit needs to be increased somewhat."
"We are not able to scale. The only way to scale is to get another appliance, but we have a customers who would need us to hydrate the data between the two appliances, and Netezza does not do that."
"Oracle Exadata's security features, like TDE encryption, are missing in IBM Netezza Performance Server."
"IBM Netezza Performance Server could improve its interface, support for big data, and APA-based connectivity should be available."
"LIke Teradata, we can’t add a node/SPU to the existing appliance."
"The only issue is that it's not expandable."
"The scalability is not as expected. The capacity in the black box is not enough."
"In terms of features that I would like to see, one is the ability to actually scale out an architecture. Right now, if you buy one, it's fixed. There is no scale-up availability at all."
"The pricing of the solution should be much easier to calculate or find by yourself."
"We would like to be able to do modeling with Snowflake. It should support statistical modeling."
"Product activation queries can't be changed while executing."
"Its pricing or affordability is one of the big challenges. Pricing was the only thing that we didn't like about Snowflake. In terms of technical features, it is a complete solution."
"For the Snowflake database, there should be some third-party features for the ETL. It would also be good to be able to use some kind of controls to get the data either from another database or a flat file. Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft."
"There are a lot of features that they need to come up with. A lot of functions are missing in Snowflake, so we have to find a workaround for those. For example, OUTER APPLY is a basic function in SQL Server, but it is not there in Snowflake. So, you have to write complex code for it."
"Snowflake has to improve their spatial parts since it doesn't have much in terms of geo-spatial queries."
"If they could bring in some tools for data integration, it would be really great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Netezza is a costly solution. It does serve a specific purpose but it's costlier than what's available in the market, if you go to the cloud."
"The solution has a yearly licensing fee, and users have to pay extra for support."
"The pricing is very expensive. It has a lot CPUs with a lot of components in it. It also has built-in redundancy for resiliency reasons."
"Snowflake is cost-effective."
"Comparing Snowflake to on-prem options such as Oracle or SAP, it seemed more cost-effective."
"Currently, we have a trial account, so we don't need a license. After our project starts, we would need a permanent license."
"The whole licensing system is based on credit points. You can also make a license agreement with the company so that you buy credit points and then you use them. What you do not use in one year can be carried over to the next year."
"Pricing is based on usage. It is the most expensive of our data tools."
"Snowflake’s pricing is transparent. It is one of the cheapest cloud database warehouse providers. The tool follows a credit cost model. Everything on Snowflake is charged on the basis of credits. The credits depend on the cloud region and the public cloud provider that we use. Hence, the cost per credit will be different for AWS in Frankfurt and AWS in India. I think North Virginia is the cheapest region in terms of cost per credit. You will be consuming around 16 credits for large data warehouses."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"It is hard to say because we're usually engaged in the transition as opposed to the long term. Their storage costs are easily within pennies of what AWS S3 would normally cost. Most of the clients I've been working with are in the financial sector, and they're relatively small. I would put them in an SMB connection. The first thing we have to bring up for people is that they're going to build this. They shouldn't store their data in S3. They should pipeline directly into Snowflake and use it on their storage. So, the cost is a big issue because these are small to medium size companies, and that is the biggest thing we had to price point for them."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Educational Organization
73%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
3%
Insurance Company
2%
Educational Organization
35%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Netezza Performance Server?
IBM Netezza Performance Server is a cost-effective solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Netezza Performance Server?
The solution has a yearly licensing fee, and users have to pay extra for support.
What needs improvement with IBM Netezza Performance Server?
Oracle Exadata's security features, like TDE encryption, are missing in IBM Netezza Performance Server.
What do you like most about Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
The pricing part is based on the computing and storage. The costs are different and then there are services costs as well. I have heard that Snowflake is costlier than Redshift or GCP BigQuery. A s...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
I think people do not want to create pipelines for many customers now. Normally, we have this layer architecture, like layer one, layer two, layer three, or layer four, where we have raw data, inte...
 

Also Known As

Netezza Performance Server, Netezza
Snowflake Computing
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Seattle Childrens Hospital, Carphone Warehouse, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Battelle, Start Today Co. Ltd., Kelley Blue Book, Trident Marketing, Elisa Corporation, Catalina Marketing, iBasis, Barnes & Noble, Qualcomm, MediaMath, Acxiom, iBasis, Foxwoods
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Netezza Performance Server vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.