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Snowflake vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Teradata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (3rd), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (17th), Relational Databases Tools (7th), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Marketing Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2024, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Snowflake is 17.8%, down from 19.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 16.8%, up from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

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.
SurjitChoudhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 20, 2024
Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities
We created and constructed the warehouse. We used multiple loading processes like MultiLoad, FastLoad, and Teradata Pump. But those are loading processes, and Teradata is a powerful tool because if we consider older technologies, its architecture with nodes, virtual processes, and nodes is a unique concept. Later, other technologies like Informatica also adopted the concept of nodes from Informatica PowerCenter version 7.x. Previously, it was a client-server architecture, but later, it changed to the nodes concept. Like, we can have the database available 24/7, 365 days. If one node fails, other nodes can take care of it. Informatica adopted all those concepts when it changed its architecture. Even Oracle databases have since adapted their architecture to them. However, this particular Teradata company initially started with its own different type of architecture, which major companies later adopted. It has grown now, but initially, whatever query we sent it would be mapped into a particular component. After that, it goes to the virtual processor and down to the disk, where the actual physical data is loaded. So, in between, there's a map, which acts like a data dictionary. It also holds information about each piece of data, where it's loaded, and on which particular virtual processor or node the data resides. Because Teradata comes with a four-node architecture, or however many nodes we choose, the cost is determined by that initially. So, what type of data does each and every node hold? It's a shared-no architecture. So, whatever task is given to a virtual processor it will be processed. If there's a failure, then it will be taken care of by another virtual processor. Moreover, this solution has impacted the query time and data performance. In Teradata, there's a lot of joining, partitioning, and indexing of records. There are primary and secondary indexes, hash indexing, and other indexing processes. To improve query performance, we first analyze the query and tune it. If a join needs a secondary index, which plays a major role in filtering records, we might reconstruct that particular table with the secondary index. This tuning involves partitioning and indexing. We use these tools and technologies to fine-tune performance. When it comes to integration, tools like Informatica seamlessly connect with Teradata. We ensure the Teradata database is configured correctly in Informatica, including the proper hostname and properties for the load process. We didn't find any major complexity or issues with integration. But, these technologies are quite old now. With newer big data technologies, we've worked with a four-layer architecture, pulling data from Hadoop Lake to Teradata. We configure Teradata with the appropriate hostname and credentials, and use BTEQ queries to load data. Previously, we converted the data warehouse to a CLD model as per Teradata's standardized procedures, moving from an ETL to an EMT process. This allowed us to perform gap analysis on missing entities based on the model and retrieve them from the source system again. We found Teradata integration straightforward and compatible with other tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a cloud solution with many useful features. It has the data science capability. It can transform data and prepare data for a data science project with scalability."
"The overall ecosystem was easy to manage. Given that we weren't a very highly technical group, it was preferable to other things we looked at because it could do all of the cloud tunings. It can tune your data warehouse to an appropriate size for controlled billing, resume and sleep functions, and all such things. It was much more simple than doing native Azure or AWS development. It was stable, and their support was also perfect. It was also very easy to deploy. It was one of those rare times where they did exactly what they said they could do."
"Time travel is one feature that really helps us out."
"Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."
"The most valuable feature of Snowflake is it's an all-in-one data warehousing solution."
"The platform's most valuable features include its ability to effectively summarize and manage large datasets, allowing multiple teams to analyze and generate insights."
"In addition to the database, Snowflake also provides ingestion capabilities."
"The querying speed is fast."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of uploading data from multiple sources."
"We did performance testing. We had a set of real life MicroStrategy reports. Our conditions were: Not allowed to redesign data model, not allowed to rewrite the queries, all queries should be generated by MicroStrategy, no aggregates. Teradata appeared to be way faster than a similarly configured (in terms of hardware) Oracle server."
"The cloud is ten times better than physical hardware; it is more cost-effective and the upgrade process is ten times easier."
"Teradata can be easily used in ETL mode transformations, so there is no need for expensive and inconvenient ETL tools"
"It is very stable. It's 100% uptime. Speed and resilience are one of the greatest features of this product. In almost twenty years we've never had downtime, except for outages for patches and upgrades. We've never had a system failure in twenty years."
"The product is reliable."
"Intelliflex is very scalable. In fact, scalability has improved 100 times by Intelliflex, in my personal opinion."
"The ability to handle machine data parallel processing is the most valuable feature of Teradata."
 

Cons

"In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data."
"We would like to be able to do modeling with Snowflake. It should support statistical modeling."
"Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing."
"Product activation queries can't be changed while executing."
"There is a need for improvements in the documentation, this would allow more people to switch over to this solution."
"They need to incorporate some basic OLAP capabilities in the backend or at the database level. Currently, it is purely a database. They call it purely a data warehouse for the cloud. Currently, just like any database, we have to calculate all the KPIs in the front-end tools. The same KPIs again need to be calculated in Snowflake. It would be very helpful if they can include some OLAP features. This will bring efficiency because we will be able to create the KPIs within Snowflake itself and then publish them to multiple front-end tools. We won't have to recreate the same in each project. There should be the ability to automate raised queries, which is currently not possible. There should also be something for Exception Aggregation and things like that."
"To ensure the proper functioning of Snowflake as an MDS, it relies heavily on other partner tools."
"The solution could improve by allowing non-structured data, such as PDFs, images, or videos. We cannot see the data."
"Teradata is an old data warehouse, and they're not improving in terms of new, innovative features."
"The only issue our company has with Teradata IntelliFlex is that it is not cost-effective because of the way the product has been designed."
"We tried to use case Teradata for a data warehouse system, but we had some problems in relation to the Teradata system, CDC tools, and source databases. We were unable to transfer data from HPE Integrity mainframe to Teradata."
"I would like more security and speed."
"The solution’s pricing, scalability, and technical support response time could be improved."
"If I want to implement an upgrade, I'd like to see how it will be different. Ideally, Data Lab should help me test production items and also do future things. Future releases should be downloadable and testable in Data Lab."
"I would like more security and speed."
"The primary challenge with Teradata lies in its cost structure, encompassing subscription fees, software licenses, and hardware expenses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Snowflake has consumption-based costs; users only pay for storage and computing."
"Oracle is less expensive than Snowflake."
"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."
"Snowflake is expensive, but when I consider what we get for that price, it's fair. I rate the solution three out of five for affordability, right in the middle."
"There is a licensing for this solution and we purchased an enterprise license. Overall the solution is cost-effective."
"It is per credit. It has a use-it-as-you-go model. We bought a chunk of 20,000 credits, and they were lasting us for at least a year. We didn't have the scale of data like a much larger company to consume more credits. For us, it was very inexpensive. Their strategy is just to leverage what you've got and put Snowflake in the middle. It doesn't make it expensive because most of the organizations already have reporting tools. Now, if you were starting from scratch, it might be cheaper to go a different way."
"Snowflake goes by credits. For a financial institution where you have 5,000 employees, monthly costs may run up to maybe $5,000 to $6,000. This is actually based on the usage. It is mostly the compute cost. Your computing cost is the variable that is actually based on your usage. It is pay-per-use. In a pay-per-use case, you won't be spending more than $6,000 to $7,000 a month. It is not more than that for a small or medium enterprise, and it may come down to $100K per year. Storage is very standard, which is $23 a terabyte. It is not much for any enterprise. If you have even 20 terabytes, you are not spending more than $400 per month, which may turn out to be $2,000 to $3,000 per annum."
"We use Snowflake pretty heavily. We pay a significant amount of money for the tool. I'd say we pay $300k to $400K every year."
"The initial cost may seem high, but the TCO is low."
"The tool costs about 30,000 euros a month, while Azure Synapse SQL only costs 10,000."
"It comes at a notably high cost for what it offers."
"The cost is significantly high."
"Teradata is currently making improvements in this area."
"The cost is substantial, totaling around $1.2 million, solely dedicated to upgrading the hardware."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee for Teradata IntelliFlex, which is very expensive."
"It is still a very expensive solution. While I very much like the pure technological supremacy of the software itself, I believe Teradata as a company needs to become more affordable. They are already losing the market to more flexible or cheaper competitors."
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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
34%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Snowflake Computing
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
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