InterSystems IRIS vs. Snowflake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
InterSystems IRIS
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform that includes a multi-model transactional data management engine, an application development platform, and interoperability engine, and an open analytics platform. It is is the next generation of InterSystems' data management software. It includes…N/A
Snowflake
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform is the eponymous data warehouse with, from the company in San Mateo, a cloud and SQL based DW that aims to allow users to unify, integrate, analyze, and share previously siloed data in secure, governed, and compliant ways. With it, users can securely access the Data Cloud to share live data with customers and business partners, and connect with other organizations doing business as data consumers, data providers, and data service providers.N/A
Pricing
InterSystems IRISSnowflake
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
InterSystems IRISSnowflake
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
InterSystems IRISSnowflake
Considered Both Products
InterSystems IRIS
Chose InterSystems IRIS
Better integration of Intersystems solution
Better performances
Better support ofr developers
Chose InterSystems IRIS
Tibco was not originally planned to be used for HL7 Integrations and as such we had to create some very complicated processes in order for the messages to parse and validate appropriately. It was simply not built for this type of interoperability. Comparatively, InterSystems …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
My organizations use InterSystems IRIS and i think is a good bet.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
The database, integration engine, and load balancer are all in one place. This is advantageous because 1) there are no hidden costs and it is also far easier to set up the network configuration. 2) The sales engineers are very willing to help in any situation and they are also …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
This have best database management and security provider future

Time saving for complex database management
Chose InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS includes a wide array and assortment of otherwise stand-alone solutions. Having a single platform to support database interoperability, storage, and analytics, let alone Security and SQL tools is a great advantage over solutions that tackle a single aspect of …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
The best software on the market, the capacity for analysis, storage and security in the handling and storage of data, provides you with the certainty of increasing efficiency in all organizational processes, ensuring that you will have your information available at all times, …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
We are using InterSystems IRIS [especially] for database operations as the query performance is really good for [a large] amount of customer data. You can easily integrate for any application like web, desktop, and many more. It also provides BI functionality which is also very …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
Because [it's] a very powerful and efficient tool that has the ability to manage your data in a quick and reliable manner. It's easy to use especially if you work in the area of managing a large number of databases or simply need an extra hand. Inter Systems IRIS can provide …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
The process of migration and scaling due to heavy lifting is also easier, the speed of performance of IRIS is good and fast were able to get a high increase in query performance after our switch and [immense] amount of features integrated with the solution, from the web …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS is more efficient than other applications therefore, it is preferred over the others. Moreover, it is more cost-effective than other applications like Microsoft SQL Server, therefore, many organizations such as small businesses can afford it. Lastly, …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
You definitely need to use it for a fast, solution-oriented experience.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS has the flexibility and power to be more than just a databse engine. We are able to create our business processes and interface with out javascript front end. SQL Server has been useful through the Entity framework connecting both together has been the …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
New docker system is really good, performance improves at the cost of some breaking changes.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
I have always studied other databases, I cannot say if it is a problem for Brazilian colleges, however, after meeting IRIS / Caché, my concept of databases has changed. A much more robust and faster bank.
Now that I have had the opportunity to work with this database, there is …
Chose InterSystems IRIS
The only comparison I can make is that they are all database tools. I strongly believe that just the fact that IRIS is not so widespread and easy to find in research forums is the reason why it is not so "famous". The tool meets and meets all needs for any situation.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS is the union of the best parts of Caché and Ensemble, with a lot of new implementations and some enhancements. IRIS have the same multidimensional database estruture as like Caché and works as an Integration tool like Ensemble.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
We did not consider alternatives; implemented InterSystems IRIS based on a corporate reference.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
Did not consider alternatives; we opted for the free trial and then decided to move ahead with a long-term plan with InterSystems IRIS.
Chose InterSystems IRIS
Did not try other alternatives
Chose InterSystems IRIS
They shared a set of limits:
- speed
- exhaustive memory consumption
Snowflake
Chose Snowflake
We use these tools for applications they are better suited for vs a Snowflake. For e.g. MS Fabric has powerful agentic AI capabilities; Redshift is our go to choice for the TMT vertical within the organization and Databricks is the default choice for AI/ML applications.
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake provides various features, such as integration with Python using Snowpark. The reporting feature that caters to your small reporting needs is Snowsight. The Snowflake data marketplace is where you can get multiple data for free and even some of the data which you can …
Chose Snowflake
These are comparable products that can make sense depending on the specific needs of your organization. All are certainly serviceable and have varying pros and cons. Snowflake seems to provide the greatest degree of flexibility and easy scalability as new data gets brought into …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake stacks up well against many of the other players in the space. We used Teradata before and it seems to perform better.
Chose Snowflake
We needed scalability and a new way of organizing our data; Snowflake allowed us to have a clearer view of our data warehouses and schemas. Snowflake is also way superior in terms of speed and quick insights from the raw data you query, which is very valuable to us.
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake has an attractive pricing model with auto-suspend and auto-resume and pay per use. AWS Redshift requires higher administrative efforts to maintain and scale the platform whereas with Snowflake those admin tasks are not needed or automatically taken care of.
Chose Snowflake
Cloud -Native architecture, Separation of Storage and Compute provides flexibility, Scalable Compute, Cost and Data Security
Chose Snowflake
We had a MS SQL server with over 2 TB of ram & 51 processors that we were using, that could no longer handle our workload. Snowflake can handle 3 times that workload with ease and efficiency.
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake is much faster and easier to write queries and pull data. But the visualization part of Snowflake is not as good as them. Also, Snowflake only supports SQL queries but not python or other languages. So basically Snowflake is the expert in its field but not suitable …
Chose Snowflake
We particularly liked Snowflake's security model as well as its unique storage (whereby everything is essentially a pointer to immutable micro-partitions, which is the key behind its zero-copy cloning, its secure sharing, its time travel, etc.). and also how it separates …
Chose Snowflake
While Snowflake is more open to cloud eco system, SAP integrated well with SAP eco system products like SAP ECC or SAP S/4. So for people who have invested heavily in SAP eco system including SAP ECC or S/4, it makes sense to go with SAP DWC which is also evolving very rapidly. …
Chose Snowflake
In my opinion, the other tools have similar and some different features; however, when I ran proof of technologies between Synapse and Snowflake. Snowflake did things better or just had functionality that the other tools did not. One that stuck out at the time was scale up …
Chose Snowflake
Each of the other solutions were cloud vendor specific, Snowflake can ride on either Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. The fact that they are ANSI-sql compliant and have an effective means of offloading data makes them portable and easy to sell to teams …
Chose Snowflake
Azure and Snowflake compared very similarly, but Snowflake provided more options to integrate and connect with tools/companies that were not partners. It seemed to be a more flexible environment. The barrier for entry on Oracle and Google we just too complicated. In particular, …
Chose Snowflake
I have had the experience of using one more database management system at my previous workplace. What Snowflake provides is better user-friendly consoles, suggestions while writing a query, ease of access to connect to various BI platforms to analyze, [and a] more robust system …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake has won the match because it is giving an excellent performance with its efficient features and reliable results. This is a totally secure program for our precious and important data.
Chose Snowflake
Our initial data warehousing solution was Treasure Data. We had issues with the costly pricing model, which would be exhorbitant if we want to hold our data in memory and query using Presto. As a result, some heavy lifting was done in Hive (managed by Treasure Data); …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake beats these other products in every category it was rated against
Chose Snowflake
In my experience running the data management practice at InterWorks, we believe that cloud data warehouse products will eventually serve the majority of data warehousing use cases and power data analytics at most companies. Of this cohort, we believe that Snowflake is the best …
Chose Snowflake
Redshift compute and storage can be scaled up/down together (though they added some features recently, they don't quite add up). I haven't tried Avalanche or Firebolt but would love to in the near future, due to their pedigree or revolutionary billing methods.
Chose Snowflake
- Cost was the main aspect on the decision.
- Performance was in par or better compared to other tools in the market.
- Snowflake in my opinion stacks better than other tools I have used in the past.
Chose Snowflake
Accommodates future data types such as JSON and XML. Scalability is another advantage. Pay per use is beneficial for organizations like yours. Direct connectors with AWS help us to go with it. No limit on user creation and clone data not eating up extra disk space are a few …
Chose Snowflake
Since we switch from amazon redshift to Snowflake, we found Snowflake is much better than redshift in many ways, including the data integrate and data pull. However, comparing directly pull data from amazon s3, Snowflake is quite slow in terms of data pull speed and the more …
Chose Snowflake
Compared to Amazon Redshift, Snowflake is slightly easier and faster to achieve ROI but based on the user's perspective, the two tools have very little difference since both are leveraging SQL to pull data from AWS S3. Snowflake is also working with Microsoft Azure but it is …
Chose Snowflake
Our issue with Redshift was that it was very expensive. On top of that, queries were still slow and if we used more of Redshift's memory, then it would have cost even more. Snowflake is not cheap, but less costly for us. Plus, the performance was much better. Also, we got to …
Best Alternatives
InterSystems IRISSnowflake
Small Businesses
Google Cloud SQL
Google Cloud SQL
Score 8.7 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Google Cloud SQL
Google Cloud SQL
Score 8.7 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP IQ
SAP IQ
Score 6.0 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
InterSystems IRISSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
7.4
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
InterSystems IRISSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited in the scenario where a single interface is required for providing [a complete end-to-end] solution to the customers. You don't need [a] separate platform to write code or [perform] database operations. All you need is InterSystems IRIS software and you are done. You can also use analytics functionality which is one of the greatest [features] which many customers need for their solution[.]
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If you need a quick query, snowflake is the way to go. It's super simple and scalable; we were struggling before with Azure, and with Snowflake, everything runs smoothly, and we have more control over our schemas and warehouses. Snowflake, in my opinion, is the next step when you want to scale your business and manage data. If your company is still small, there may be cheaper options.
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Pros
  • Connecting with mutliple vendor platforms and systems allowing us to consume and provide data as needed.
  • Allowed us to implement our own RESTful api engine to server data to our internal applications.
  • Setting up their recommendations for high availability allow us to perform server maintenance with minimal down time to our users.
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  • Snowflake scales appropriately allowing you to manage expense for peak and off peak times for pulling and data retrieval and data centric processing jobs
  • Snowflake offers a marketplace solution that allows you to sell and subscribe to different data sources
  • Snowflake manages concurrency better in our trials than other premium competitors
  • Snowflake has little to no setup and ramp up time
  • Snowflake offers online training for various employee types
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Cons
  • Enhanced documentation, more comprehensive and user-friendly documentation, including detailed tutorials and examples
  • Improving compatibility and integrations with others programming languages
  • Introducing tools and techniques to optimize the performance of ObjectScript applications, such as profiling tools, performance monitoring utilities, and code optimization guidelines
  • A better compatibility with Python libraries
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  • Add constraints for views and not just for tables
  • Do not force customers to renew for same or higher amount to avoid loosing unused credits. Already paid credits should not expire (at least within a reasonable time frame), independent of renewal deal size.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
SnowFlake is very cost effective and we also like the fact we can stop, start and spin up additional processing engines as we need to. We also like the fact that it's easy to connect our SQL IDEs to Snowflake and write our queries in the environment that we are used to
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Usability
The interface is very intuitive, the documentation is very good so it is not complicated to operate.
The security is complex, but you can create a special role to access and the user ONLY can operate with the part that it allows.
Also, you can examine the data very quick with the SQL Browser integrated.
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The interface is similar to other SQL query systems I've used and is fairly easy to use. My only complaint is the syntax issues. Another thing is that the error messages are not always the easiest thing to understand, especially when you incorporate temp tables. Some of that is to be expected with any new database.
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Support Rating
The InterSystems WRC has always been helpful and responsive. The folks I have spoken with are always understanding of our needs and questions and regardless of if the question is simple or complex we are always met with the same professionalism and helpfulness every time. I have no hesitations contacting InterSystems for help!
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We have had terrific experiences with Snowflake support. They have drilled into queries and given us tremendous detail and helpful answers. In one case they even figured out how a particular product was interacting with Snowflake, via its queries, and gave us detail to go back to that product's vendor because the Snowflake support team identified a fault in its operation. We got it solved without lots of back-and-forth or finger-pointing because the Snowflake team gave such detailed information.
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Implementation Rating
Will done based on a proper planning, so this will makes execution more easier and better.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Tibco was not originally planned to be used for HL7 Integrations and as such we had to create some very complicated processes in order for the messages to parse and validate appropriately. It was simply not built for this type of interoperability. Comparatively, InterSystems IRIS for Health (HealthConnect) has out of the box HL7 features that would parse messages, offer a variety of validation options, simplified data lookups and transformation and reduced the amount of time it took to develop connections with out vendor systems. InterSystems IRIS also allows one to push just single files into production at a time so there is less of a chance of us pushing something that should not be in production yet as our previous system was set up to with TIBCO deployments
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Snowflake provides various features, such as integration with Python using Snowpark. The reporting feature that caters to your small reporting needs is Snowsight. The Snowflake data marketplace is where you can get multiple data for free and even some of the data which you can buy according to your needs. And the integration options with various tools like Sigma are add-ons.
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Return on Investment
  • Very Fast and scalable software to deal with big data flow, safe and robust.
  • The studio IDE is quite old fashion and lacks a few facilities
  • amazing for complex data consumption, its milyi-model capability wich allows multiple different models for a single set of codes.
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  • With separate compute and storage feature, the queries get executed quickly and it improves our overall productivity.
  • Earlier we were using a different product for analytical purposes, but with Snowflake's in-built analytical feature we are now able to save money.
  • Snowflake is cost efficient, features like auto suspend for compute resources helped to control the costs.
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ScreenShots

Snowflake Screenshots

Screenshot of Snowflake Installation