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SAP IQ vs Vertica 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

SAP IQ
Ranking in Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (19th)
Vertica
Ranking in Data Warehouse
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vertica is 8.5%, up from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Tejas Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
Columnar database, so pulling records is easy but there isn't enough documentation for installation
I've seen very few SAP IQ systems in recent years. So people are moving away from SAP IQ In the last three years, I've rarely encountered customers using it. Fewer systems with SAP IQ usage among our customers. Most of them have moved on to HANA. There are parallel products, and there are also viable alternatives from AWS, so many have migrated to those.
T Venkatesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Processes query faster through multiple systems simultaneously, but it could support different data types
We use the solution for various tasks, including preparing data marts and generating offers. It helps extract data based on rules from the policy team and provides insights to enhance business operations. We also analyze transactions to target customers and improve business performance The…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."
"All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions."
"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 moving data from SAP HANA to SAP NLS, which is essentially archiving. This allows us to retain access to the data via a link whenever it is required."
"Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database."
"The product is easy to learn."
"Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance."
"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."
"Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."
"I like the projection feature, which increases query performance."
"The feature of the product that is most important is the speed. I needed a columnar database, and its speed is what it's built to do, and so that's what really does differentiate Vertica from its competitors."
"Speed and resiliency are probably the best parts of this product."
"The fast columnar store database structure allows our query times to be at least 10x faster than on any other database."
"Its analytics has enabled Pythian's clients to get the business insights as quick as they wanted. Its lower maintenance has also improved the ROI."
"Bulk loads, batch loads, and micro-batch loads have made it possible for our organization to process near real-time ingestions and faster analytics."
"Vertica is easy to use and provides really high performance, stability, and scalability."
"Eighty percent of the ETL operations have improved since implementing this solution."
 

Cons

"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."
"The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised."
"There is very little documentation available."
"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."
"Concurrency and functional error messaging."
"The tool gets stuck sometimes."
"The only negative aspect of IQ is the cost, which can be challenging for companies in Peru."
"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."
"Monitoring tools need to be lightweight. They should not take up heavy resources of the main server."
"If you do not utilize the tuning tools like projections, encoding, partitions, and statistics, then performance and scalability will suffer."
"The geospatial functionality could be designed better."
"We faced some challenges when trying to use the temporary tables feature."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"I have found that coding support could be simplified."
"The documentation of Vertica is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required."
"It would be great if this were a managed service in AWS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."
"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."
"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."
"Negotiation is very important."
"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
"Negotiate based on the features required."
"Start with license per 1TB. Starting from hundreds of TB there is unlimited licensing to be considered. Move historical data to HDFS/S3 which are significantly cheaper or even free."
"The price is reasonable. We use a pay per license model. Firstly, you need to buy a license. After that, you mainly pay the annual support fee of around 20% or 25%. I think their prices are quite reasonable."
"Vertica is an expensive tool."
"The price could be cheaper and it is best to negotiate the price."
"The solution is free and we pay for the storage."
"It's an expensive product"
"The pricing for this solution is very reasonable compared to other vendors."
"From a cost perspective, the software is less than most of its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
46%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
4%
 

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?
IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru.
What do you like most about Vertica?
Vertica is easy to use and provides really high performance, stability, and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vertica?
The solution is relatively cost-effective. Pricing and licensing are reasonable compared to other solutions.
What needs improvement with Vertica?
The product could improve by adding support for a wider variety of data types and enhancing features to better compete with other databases.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Sybase IQ
Micro Focus Vertica, HPE Vertica, HPE Vertica on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Cerner, Game Show Network Game, Guess by Marciano, Supercell, Etsy, Nascar, Empirix, adMarketplace, and Cardlytics.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP IQ vs. Vertica and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.