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Oracle Big Data Appliance vs Oracle Exadata 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Big Data Appliance
Ranking in Data Warehouse
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle Exadata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Big Data Appliance is 1.0%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 18.8%, up from 18.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Hamad - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides clean, centralized data
From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera. Oracle could also improve Big Data Appliance by having one technology on their stack and working on it instead of continually changing the name or technologies or features. In addition, they could have a program to enable their partners to use this technology because right now, I have to have an expert to use the AI elements.
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
A solid data warehouse for transactional data that needs to be priced more competitively
Since the product is an appliance, it is very costly. And in the current age, people are cautious about spending this amount of money on any of these types of backend products. Some use cases are in real-time, where all other databases are much faster, but if you talk about the data warehouse, business intelligence, and all other perspectives in the transactional world, Oracle has to reduce the cost. Otherwise, a customer wouldn't want to continue this. If the same thing can be done at half or one-third of the cost, why would people stay with Oracle? Oracle Exadata would not have great value in front of a CFO. Other solutions can guard your data and address security concerns. Security, volumetrics, and so on are also provided by other databases, which are not that costly. Apart from Exadata, Oracle has other tools for business intelligence and other things, which they add on top of Exadata when they're selling a general license. For example, the Vertica database, an HP data warehouse. They have come up with their own analytic engine within the database, which gives an edge for the client to use the data analytics engine as a part of their database. Exadata does not have an analytic engine. Even MySQL has some statistical tools within it. If Exadata integrates analytical tools, it will be good for them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Because Big Data Appliance allows me to have a single source of truth, it means I have clean data that can be monetized and leveraged to gain more insights with real-time reports from the dashboard."
"The best thing about the product is that the end-user can build the reports by themselves without really knowing anything about databases."
"This is a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the smart scan. We have large TB sessions of approximately 100 per second for each of our three instances. The smart scan allows us the obtain data in time in the enterprise manager."
"Oracle Exadata has very good hardware."
"We like the tool’s features like Smart Scan, Hybrid Columnar Compression, and the TFA."
"They just have a lot of products, and they work well together."
"Oracle is easy to use for peripheral things, such as the data vault and the data firewall, data sync, and partitions. These are the features that give an edge to other databases."
"Backup/Restore performance: Fast backups, fast restores (especially useful for creating clone environments)."
"The offloading of data to the SIM is a valuable feature."
"Exadata is also a very stable environment. Their Smart Scan feature is great for every banking environment and financial institutions willing to implement it."
 

Cons

"The product should be simplified for the average user."
"It seems like the deployment of repositories has become more difficult in later versions of the product rather than easier."
"From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera."
"Tech support sometimes takes some time to identify and rectify issues."
"We had issues with system restoration."
"The improvement could be made on the hardware level as the habit in the industry is to go better and faster and larger with every iteration."
"The solution takes a lot of time to clone the environment. I would like to see some improvement in the cloning support or the time it takes on the storage side."
"Oracle Exadata compatibility with the analytics could be better and the OBIEE could improve. Oracle BI to Exadata needs to be improved. Even if the full analytics practice for Oracle should be improved and when compared with other solutions it is weak."
"Oracle Exadata could improve the platform performance tuning should be easier, automated, and user-friendly."
"Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated."
"Oracle Exadata could improve the monitoring system in the enterprise manager, it could be more user-friendly. In most Oracle tools there is a lot of functionality, and sometimes you need to do five or six clicks to find metrics, and sometimes it's a waste of time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Oracle's prices are too high compared to others in the market."
"The Initial investment price could use improvement"
"Oracle Exadata is not a cheap solution. Pricing is a problem for Oracle, and every client, not just my company, would like the vendor to improve on the price, or lower the price. My company paid for several years' worth of Oracle Exadata licenses. You need to pay for the technical support and other features separately, on different contracts. In terms of affordability, my rating for Oracle Exadata is two out of five."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"I did note that Oracle does tend to internally oversize things especially if they want to fill up a budget, and hence third-party oversight is essential."
"The price of the solution has been expensive to implement."
"The cost of the product could be improved."
"Exadata is an expensive tool, but, considering the ROI, it's worth going for the solution."
"The pricing of Oracle Exadata is too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 pricing of Exadata is high. It is more expensive than usual, making it suitable only for big enterprises or businesses that can afford it.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
Also considered an advantage, the main drawback is the inability to cluster two Exadata systems across sites. For example, with one node on one site and another node on a different site, I cannot c...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Caixa Bank
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 Oracle Big Data Appliance vs. Oracle Exadata and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.