IBM Informix vs Teradata comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Informix and Teradata based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Relational Databases Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Informix vs. Teradata Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"For IoT business cases, having Informix Enterprise Edition work on edge computers, like Raspberry Pi and using Informix replication, makes complex situations simple to build and maintain.""So far, we do not have a lot of issues. It's pretty problem-free.""The solution's stability, performance, enhanced functionality, and replication are all great features.""IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities.""The stability is incredible. I have customers with uptimes of several years.""This solution has made financial reporting possible by allowing financial people the opportunity to set Informix to "Auto Pilot" so that they can attend other duties.""Replication, all levels of replication, query charting, and the MongoDB embedded are the most valuable features of this solution.""It supports in-house-built applications in .NET and VB6"

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"The flexibility in design is very good.""The functionality of the solution is excellent.""Teradata is a great, industry-leading data warehousing product that has MPP architecture.""Cuts time to process huge amounts of data with efficient analytical queries.""A conventional and easily defined way to build a data warehouse or a layer of data marts.""​Parallel processing features have helped to easily dump any size of data and retrieve data with great performance.""The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good.""Viewpoint, the detailed query logs and performance statistics are valuable features."

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Cons
"The solution really doesn't add new features very often.""It would be helpful to have IBM salespeople know that Informix exists, and sell it. Currently, it is completely ignored by IBM.""The solution lacks some functionality.""The technical support services need substantial improvement.""There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes.""The support team could include local engineers to establish efficient communication. It will help us speed up the escalation process.""This solution is in need of more current tools.""I experienced poor input/output (IO) performance."

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"It's primarily designed for big projects and therefore, the pricing is pretty high. It's not suitable for smaller companies.""The solution is stable. However, there are times when we are using large amounts of data and we can see some latency issues.""It needs a teaching web site with more training on third-party tools used for BI.""The solution needs improvement in its stability, support and pricing.""Teradata could improve by being less complicated. There are some aspects that are not available on the Unix server and a Unix system is required to access some data, such as in case of an emergency.""Limited interest and success in some areas make us hesitate about upgrading.""There is a need to improve performance in high transaction processes, as well as the reporting system.""The SQL Assistant is very basic. This tool can be improved for usability."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The free edition can be enough to handle moderate-size implementations, but you may want a pay for edition to benefit from more functionality, such as replication."
  • "I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."
  • "For me, it's always too expensive."
  • "The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."
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  • "Teradata is not cheap, but you get what you pay for."
  • "Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
  • "In the past, it turned out that other solutions, in order to provide the full range of abilities that the Teradata platform provides plus the migration costs, would end up costing more than Teradata does."
  • "The initial cost may seem high, but the TCO is low."
  • "Teradata is currently making improvements in this area."
  • "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."
  • "Teradata is expensive but gives value for money, especially if you don't want to move your data to the cloud."
  • "Price is quite high, so if it is really possible to use other solutions (e.g. you do not have strict requirements for performance and huge data volumes), it might be better to look at alternatives from the RDBMS world."
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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools.
    Top Answer:The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license.
    Top Answer:The key areas for improvement revolve around understanding the current customer trends and demands, particularly in software and database requirements. The product's performance could be better… more »
    Top Answer: 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… more »
    Top Answer: 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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    3,372
    Comparisons
    1,981
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    394
    Rating
    7.0
    Views
    5,818
    Comparisons
    4,861
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    451
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    SQL Server logo
    Compared 20% of the time.
    Snowflake logo
    Compared 12% of the time.
    Oracle Exadata logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    MySQL logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    BigQuery logo
    Compared 7% of the time.
    Also Known As
    Informix
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    IBM
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    Overview

    IBM Informix is a widely used and scalable relational database management system designed to handle large amounts of data and high transaction volumes. It is known to provide exceptional performance, thanks to its Parallel Data Query Engine (PDQ) that enables parallel processing of queries and operations, significantly reducing response times for complex queries and large data sets. Additionally, Informix supports online operations like backup, restore, index maintenance, and table reorganization, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous availability.

    Informix provides robust high availability and replication features, including shared-disk clustering, remote data replication, and high-availability data replication (HDR). These features ensure data redundancy, failover protection, and disaster recovery capabilities, making it a reliable choice for mission-critical applications. Furthermore, Informix offers specialized features for data warehousing and analytics, such as in-database analytics, data compression, and parallel load capabilities, making it suitable for business intelligence (BI) and data analysis applications.

    Informix can be deployed as an embedded database, allowing it to be tightly integrated with applications and systems, reducing overhead and simplifying deployment. It includes workload management capabilities, enabling organizations to prioritize and manage different types of workloads, such as online transaction processing (OLTP) and analytical queries, ensuring efficient resource utilization and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs). Informix also provides robust security features, including role-based access control, data encryption, auditing, and compliance with industry standards like FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria.

    Teradata is a multi-cloud data platform company that provides data warehouse and relational database tools. The brand has an extensive portfolio of big data analytic solutions, integrated marketing applications, and services. The products that Teradata offers can be categorized in the following ways:

    • Software: The products in this category include Teradata Vantage, an advanced SQL engine and Teradata database.

    • Cloud: The solutions can work with popular cloud services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and VMware. Teradata Cloud and customer cloud are also included in this product category.

    • Ecosystem management: The products in this section include IntelliSphere, business continuity manager, data lab, data mover, data stream, QueryGrid, and viewpoint.

    • Hardware: This category includes backup, archive, and restore (BAR) and IntelliFlex.

    • Applications: Master data management (MDM) and Teradata analytics for enterprise applications are the two products in this category.

    One of the most popular and commonly used products by Teradata is Teradata Vantage. This is a connected multi-cloud data platform for enterprise analytics. The product unifies data lakes, analytics, and data warehouses, as well as data sources and types. The solution offers its customers scalability, which allows them to scale dimensions to handle massive workloads of data. Teradata Vantage utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to power more models and enhance quality.

    Through Vantage Console, businesses can benefit from role-based, no-code software to organize and manage their data. The product offers deployment on many popular public clouds, on premises, and on commodity hardware. Teradata Vantage unifies and integrates all data types from sources and provides companies with a single source of information. It achieves this by supporting all common data types and formats. The product also provides organizations with tools for monitoring, analyzing, and connecting data throughout the organizations.

    Part of this product is also VantageCloud, which offers a modern cloud-native architecture as well as hybrid and multi-cloud deployment options. This solution offers new ways for clients to deploy their platforms. These include the next-generation, cloud-native architecture of Teradata VantageCloud Lake.

    Teradata Features

    The different products that Teradata offers have various features which facilitate data management for customers. Some of the key capabilities of the solutions offered by Teradata include:

    • Connectivity: Users can benefit from connections to the mainframe or network-attached systems. The product provides its own extension for interaction with data stored in the tables. It also supports SQL.

    • Linear scalability: Teradata solutions are highly scalable and linear. The solution can handle large volumes of data effectively while also supporting the ability to scale up to 2048 nodes.

    • Load and unload utilities: The product offers features to move data in and out of the product's system effectively.

    • Mature optimizer: Part of this feature is Teradata Optimizer, which is an advanced product that can handle up to 64 joins in a single query.

    • Robust utilities: The solution includes multiple robust utilities in this category of features that facilitate data handling in and out of the product's systems. The tools include MultiLoad, FastLoad, and FastExport.

    • Shared nothing architecture: This set of features, connected to the architecture of Teradata, is known as “shared nothing architecture” because the nodes, processors, and disks all work independently. These capacities ensure better value for a given task.

    • Unlimited parallelism: These features divide large volumes of data into smaller processes that are executed in parallel. This contributes to the execution of complex tasks in a timely manner.

    Teradata Benefits

    Through its multiple solutions, Teradata offers various benefits for its clients. Some of these include:

    • The solution facilitates prototype creation and offers faster times for completion.

    • Through Teradata, users are able to use faster, simpler, and easier solutions for data-related tasks.

    • The product eliminates the need for unnecessary data movement, which contributes to performance improvements.

    • Teradata offers developers the ability to decide where in the architecture different parts of an application run.

    • Teradata allows database administrators to manage databases from a single point of control.

    • The solution provides the option to get the same data on multiple deployment options.

    • The product supports Online Analytical Programming (OLAP) functions, which allows it to perform a complex analytical process of data.

    • Teradata uses the Service Workstation to provide a single operation view for the multi-node system of the product.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Martin P., a services manager at Bytes Systems Integration, describes Teradata as a product that is very fast with good database control and excellent support.

    Blaine V., principal at Insight Data Consulting, rates Teradata highly because of its excellent native features, highly stable, and impressive automation.

    Sample Customers
    Shaspa, Hildebrand, Kaifa, Ranhill Powertron, Federaci‹ Farmacutica (FedeFarma), Camden Council, The German Aerospace Center (DLR), Myers, Votorantim Group, Doosan Infracore, GreenIvory
    Netflix
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company22%
    Retailer11%
    Logistics Company11%
    Outsourcing Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization53%
    Retailer5%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Computer Software Company5%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider26%
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm26%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business53%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise59%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise56%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise77%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Informix vs. Teradata
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Informix is ranked 14th in Relational Databases Tools with 16 reviews while Teradata is ranked 7th in Relational Databases Tools with 54 reviews. IBM Informix is rated 8.6, while Teradata is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM Informix writes "Quite stable and flexible but not very innovative". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Teradata writes "Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities". IBM Informix is most compared with Oracle Database, SQL Server, IBM Db2 Database, MySQL and Oracle Database In-Memory, whereas Teradata is most compared with SQL Server, Snowflake, Oracle Exadata, MySQL and BigQuery. See our IBM Informix vs. Teradata report.

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    We monitor all Relational Databases Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.