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SAP IQ vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (24th)
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
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 SAP IQ is 2.3%, up from 1.3% 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

Tejas Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
May 14, 2024
Columnar database, so pulling records is easy but there isn't enough documentation for installation
It's used for reporting purposes. We can quickly pull in large volumes of records It's a columnar database, so pulling records is easy. This makes it simple to generate reports and analyze data, such as tracking the growth of records. I've seen very few SAP IQ systems in recent years. So people…
VivekSingh 1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 11, 2024
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 column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."
"All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions."
"Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance."
"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."
"Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."
"Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The product is easy to learn."
"I don't think it is difficult to maintain."
"The adaptation to development languages is most valuable. Our developers can SQL code or something else. It has been convenient in that regard."
"It was relatively easy to use, and it was easy for people to convert to it."
"Snowflake has a variety of other ETL provisions that they provide. You can use your own ETL pipeline. Additionally, they provide adapters, and they are always evolving, it is a well-developed solution."
"Everything is automatic, and I don't have to do any maintenance."
"The integration capabilities of the product are good and you get what you pay for when it comes to Snowflake."
"Snowflake is faster than on-premise systems and allows for variable compute power based on need."
"This is the advanced version of the cloud version, so it's really a flexible tool. If you have it implemented at home, you can access it from anywhere."
 

Cons

"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."
"The organization who owns the product does not support it well and appears not to be doing significant development for the future."
"The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised."
"Concurrency and functional error messaging."
"Multiplex is very problematic. There are consistency problems in the metadata, meaning it is possible to lose metadata consistency. You should make sure you have healthy backups."
"The tool gets stuck sometimes."
"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."
"The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better."
"There are some challenges with loading unstructured data and integrating some message queues or brokers. In one project, we had a problem connecting to one of the message queues and we had to take a different route altogether on Microsoft Azure."
"The cost efficiency and monitoring of this solution could be improved. It's easy to spend a lot on Snowflake and it does offer monitoring tools but they're pretty basic."
"These days, they are pushing users towards the GUI or graphical version. However, I am more familiar with the classic version. I'd like to continue to work with it using the older approach."
"It would be helpful if Snowflake could create good reports instead of using Power BI reports."
"The cost of the solution could be reduced."
"The solution could improve by allowing non-structured data, such as PDFs, images, or videos. We cannot see the data."
"In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data."
"Support needs improvement, as it can take several days before you get some initial support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."
"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."
"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
"Negotiate based on the features required."
"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."
"Negotiation is very important."
"Comparing Snowflake to on-prem options such as Oracle or SAP, it seemed more cost-effective."
"On average, with the number of queries that we run, we pay approximately $200 USD per month."
"Users have to pay a licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."
"It is not cheap."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The pricing for Snowflake is competitive."
"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."
"Currently, we have a trial account, so we don't need a license. After our project starts, we would need a permanent license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
43%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
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 SAP IQ?
The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves mo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?
The cost of implementation is about $3,000. However, the cost is not much compared to the performance benefits.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
The only negative aspect of IQ is the cost, which can be challenging for companies in Peru.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Sybase IQ
Snowflake Computing
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP IQ vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.