Microsoft Analytics Platform System Delivers Best

TCO-to-Performance
Published by: Value Prism Consulting
Sponsored by: Microsoft Corporation
Publish date: September 2014

Abstract: Data Warehouse and modern Big Data appliances may be difficult to compare, given that each of the competing
solutions come preconfigured with their proprietary compute and storage configurations, traditional databases and open
source file systems, and other varying specifications. Value Prism Consulting, a management consulting firm, was engaged
by Microsoft Corporation to review and contrast data warehouse and big data analytics offerings from five leading
vendors. In this updated whitepaper aimed at IT decision makers, the firm compared each vendors appliances based on
publicly-available costs and specification data. On a TCO-to-performance scale, Microsoft Analytics Platform System was
seen as the most cost-effective appliance providing high performance and great value.
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2014 Value Prism Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved.

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ii
CONTENTS
Executive Summary ............................................................................................... 1
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3
Total Cost of Ownership ........................................................................................ 4
Appliance Costs ................................................................................................. 5
Installation Costs ............................................................................................... 7
Maintenance and Support Costs ....................................................................... 8
Labor Costs ........................................................................................................ 8
Facilities Costs ................................................................................................... 9
TCO-to-Performance Comparisons ........................................................................ 9
TCO per Terabyte (TB) of Compressed User-Available Storage ...................... 11
TCO per Terabyte (TB) of Uncompressed User-Available Storage .................. 12
TCO per Database Core ................................................................................... 12
TCO per Gigabyte (GB) of Memory ................................................................. 13
TCO per I/O Bandwidth ................................................................................... 13
Microsoft Benefits ............................................................................................... 14
Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 15
Appendix .............................................................................................................. 16

iii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The top four Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) competitors in terms of market share
Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and Teradata represented three-fourths of the overall data
warehouse platform software revenues, with Microsoft showing the largest growth
amongst these at 15.4% CAGR.i Pivotals (formerly EMC) Greenplum platform was yet
another platform showing notable growth. By way of this intense competition and with
vendors offering preconfigured hardware plus software appliance solutions, acquiring a
data warehouse and Big Data platform has become less expensive and easier to install
and manage.

This whitepaper is an update to Value Prism Consultings 2013 data warehouse price-to-
performance whitepaper,ii and is meant to be an aid to organizations IT decision makers
looking to compare and contrast similar appliances from these leading vendors. This
update expands on the previous data warehouse appliance price-to-performance
comparisons by now including the five year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of both EDW
and Big Data appliances.

Appliance offerings from Pivotal, IBM, Microsoft, Teradata, and Oracle were reviewed
and compared. TCO-to-performance1 comparisons have been collected and summarized
across each vendor two based on storage (compressed and uncompressed user-
available storage, as a factor of total costs) and two based on performance (number of
cores and amount of standard memory in GB, again as a factor of total costs). In Figures
1 and 2, results closer to the center show lower cost per specification. From Figure 1, in
all four cases Microsoft has the lowest ratio, showing they are a high-performing and
economic data warehousing appliance. Similarly, Figure 2 indicates that Microsoft still
leads on the TCO-to-performance metrics on adding Big Data Hadoop capabilities as an
appliance. Oracle was, in most cases, not just last, but much more expensive based on
both total cost and performance ratios.

Care should always be taken in assessing the best solution for your situation. This
comparison is based on publicly available costs and specification metrics. Individual
vendors offer different discounts and volume price breaks, so results may be different
than the ones listed here.

1 Refers to the five-year net present value (NPV) of the overall costs of ownership. This includes one-
time appliance hardware costs, software license purchases, and installation costs; and annual
maintenance and support agreements, and management labor costs.
1
 TCO per TB Oracle Pivotal
(compressed):
$120 IBM Teradata

$100 Microsoft

$80

$60

$40

$20
TCO per GB TCO per TB
$-
Memory (uncompressed):

Figure 1: TCO-to-Performance Ratios

across Multiple EDW Platforms (Costs
in U.S. dollars, in Thousands)

TCO per DB Core

TCO per TB Oracle Pivotal

(uncompressed):
$100
IBM Teradata

$80
Microsoft

$60

$40

$20

Figure 2: TCO-to-Performance Ratios

$-
across Multiple EDW + Big Data
Platforms (Costs in U.S. dollars, in
Thousands)

TCO per GB TCO per DB

Memory Core

2
INTRODUCTION
Data Warehouse Appliances
Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) and Big Data analytics solutions currently represent a
included:
multi-billion dollar market and are forecast to grow even bigger with double digit
growth in the segments.i, iii While data warehouse solutions focus on storage and Microsoft Analytics Platform System
analysis of large structured, time-variant, and non-volatile operational data; modern Big (hardware from Quanta)iv
Data solutions cater to largely unstructured or raw, high-velocity, and volatile data. The
choice of optimal platform will be influenced by an organizations business and Oracle Exadata Database Machine
technological needs; however many organizations are seen to invest in both X4-2v
technologies, or add big data capabilities on top of their already invested EDW
Pivotal (formerly EMC) DCA v2 with
platforms. Microsoft Analytics Platform System (APS) has a real advantage here, which
Greenplum Database (GPDB)
unlike its competition offers a single integrated solution that unifies non-relational data
Standard Modulesvi
from HDInsight Microsofts Big Data Hadoop distribution, with relational data from the
massively parallel processing (MPP) capable SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW). IBM PureData System for Analytics
N2001-10vii
Along with Microsoft, most vendors now offer EDW and Big Data solutions as a pre-
configured, pre-optimized, and often single-priced appliances, which include: Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance
2750viii
Hardware components required to run the appliance, including the box, disk drives,
memory, network connectivity, and processors. iv v vi vii viii ix x xi

Software required to run the appliance, including server operating system, database
software, and data management tools, and
Big Data Appliances included:

Installation services for system and software.

Microsoft Analytics Platform
System with HDInsight
By-and-large, purchase of the appliance is a simple process as a fixed set of software
(hardware from Quanta)iv
and hardware if not a single SKU, at least a short list of scalable hardware and
software modules. Customers can often pick an appliance and expect it will be nearly Oracle Big Data Appliance X4-2ix
ready to plug and play with much less setup and configuration than a custom or build-it-
yourself solution, which could take many months. Pivotal (formerly EMC) DCA v2
with HD Server Modulesvi
However with the appliance model, it has also become harder to compare and contrast
similar solutions, especially when vendors make various claims in each of their public IBM PureData System for
datasheets. IBM says it is a low cost option with low total cost of ownership. Pivotal Hadoop H1001-10x
claims their appliance has an industry leading TCO. Teradata says they offer the best
price for performance platform in the marketplace. And, Oracle claims that their Big Teradata Appliance for Hadoop
Data appliance has a low overall total cost of ownership. 3xi

In this study commissioned by Microsoft, several primary EDW appliances and Big Data
Hadoop appliances, as listed in the sidebar, have been reviewed, summarized, and
compared. Each vendor provides via its Website an appliance datasheet that has been
used as the primary source for specification data (such as storage, cores, etc.). List
pricing and other annual costs details are cited specifically, and are also taken from
public sources. For each vendor, one leading appliance (if they offer more than one) was
selected for comparison. Full rack pricing and specifications were used for both EDW
and Big Data appliances to ensure consistent comparison.
3
 Big Data Hadoop capabilities were considered added to the existing data warehouse
appliances. Most vendors, except Microsoft and Pivotal, that were looked at do not
support part data warehouse and part HDInsight Hadoop capabilities within the same
appliance. Thus for an apples-to-apples comparison of adding Hadoop capabilities, we
have looked at configurations involving a full rack data warehouse plus a full rack
Hadoop appliance. The fact that Microsoft supports an integrated data warehouse and
Hadoop appliance, can in reality, further improve the discussed TCO metrics for
customers adopting the Microsoft Analytics Platform System.

To make a more accurate comparison, these solutions were also measured against
several TCO-to-performance ratios:

TCO per terabyte of compressed and uncompressed user space is used as a storage
value approximation that can help provide more comparison details when the
amount of user space and compression ratios are not the same across all
appliances.

TCO per database core and gigabyte of memory were also used, as more compute
performance-related metrics.

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

The total cost of ownership (TCO) over a five-year period was calculated to include both
initial investments in hardware, software licenses, and installation; and annual
investments in appliance maintenance and support, facilities power, cooling, and
space, and labor costs associated with management of the databases. The TCO
summary for the EDW and additional Big Data appliances is presented as a five year NPV
of costs, which assumes a discount rate of 10%.

NOTE: This comparison is based on the list price and publicly available cost and
specification metrics. Each unique customer discount situation will be different, and
more information (and customization) is likely available from each vendor so the
comparison may be different than the one using only list prices and specifications. All
prices are listed in U.S. dollars and rounded to the nearest hundreds for sub-categories
and nearest thousands for totals.

Costs Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata

Appliance $1,330,100 $18,476,000 $6,385,300 $2,235,000 $2,798,200
Installation $10,200 $10,500 $11,900 (Included) $8,000
Total one-time costs $1,340,000 $18,487,000 $6,397,000 $2,235,000 $2,806,000
Maintenance + Support $373,200 $4,042,700 $1,340,800 $335,000 $657,600
Labor $125,500 $266,900 $110,500 $496,800 $583,600
Facilities $19,200 $22,100 $17,600 $14,200 $17,300
Table 1: TCO summary for EDW
Total annual costs $518,000 $4,332,000 $1,469,000 $846,000 $1,259,000 Appliances (Costs in U.S. dollars)
5 Year NPV of Costs $3,304,000 $34,909,000 $11,966,000 $5,442,000 $7,579,000

Big Data Hadoop capabilities are considered added to above full-rack data warehouse
appliances.
4
Costs Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata
Appliance $1,663,900 $24,905,000 $7,102,700 $2,735,000 $3,102,200
Installation $13,000 $24,700 $23,800 (Included) $16,000
Total one-time costs $1,677,000 $24,930,000 $7,127,000 $2,735,000 $3,118,000
Maintenance + Support $386,900 $5,446,600 $1,452,700 $410,000 $729,000
Labor $252,400 $533,800 $221,000 $993,600 $1,167,200
Facilities $38,400 $40,400 $34,700 $31,800 $39,600
Table 2: TCO summary for EDW + Big
Total annual costs $678,000 $6,021,000 $1,708,000 $1,435,000 $1,936,000 Data Appliances (Costs in U.S. dollars)
5 Year NPV of Costs $4,247,000 $47,754,000 $13,602,000 $8,175,000 $10,457,000

Appliance Costs
The total price of each full rack appliance is based on publicly-available information
directly from the vendor, from a reseller that has listed appliance pricing, or if necessary
from news or blog articles that have published price estimates. Total retail price for each
appliance, along with the pricing source, is listed below.

EDW + Big
Vendor EDW Price Source and Assumptions
Data
Microsoft $1,330,100 $1,663,900 Vendor furnished pricing data for the whitepaper.
Oracle $18,476,000 $24,905,000 Oracles hardwarexii and softwarexiii price lists.
PEPPM EMC price listxiv for hardware and vendor 2012
Pivotal $6,385,300 $7,102,700
price list for software.
Table 3: Appliance Costs, includes
Gemini licensing website, an IBM partner (includes
IBM $2,235,000 $2,735,000 Hardware and Software (Costs in U.S.
install and 12 months support).xv xvi dollars)
Teradatas Pricing Brochure (unspecified support time
Teradata $2,798,200 $3,102,200
plus installation are included).xvii

Data Warehouse Appliance Costs

The price estimates for EDW appliances are derived based on the following sources and
assumptions:

Microsofts pricing is based on retail software pricing for Microsoft SQL Server PDW,
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard, and System Center 2012 Standard
licenses totaling to U.S. $999,900. The hardware appliance cost for a Quanta full
rack appliance with 3TB hard drives is approximately U.S. $330,200. The pricing was
furnished by the vendor for the purpose of this whitepaper. Customers also have an
option of purchasing APS hardware from Dell and HP.

Oracle provides an Engineered Systems price listxii covering the appliance hardware,
which is priced at U.S. $1,100,000 for the full rack. The Exadata X4-2 Datasheetv
identifies a number of software licenses required to run the appliance. This list was
used along with the software price listxiii to total up software license pricing, as
show in the sidebar table.

o Oracle lists software license prices per core, and then references the Oracle
Processor Core Factor Tablexviii to adjust the number of cores based on the
specific processor type/family to be considered for software license purposes.
5
 The core factor ranges from 0.25 to 1.0; and is 0.5 for Xeon processors that is
Oracle Database Software and
used in the Exadata machine.
Add-ons Pricing:

o The Oracle Exadata X4-2 appliance includes 192 database cores, so the total
Oracle Database EE $47,500
software license cost is calculated as: U.S. $163,500 x 192 x 0.5 = U.S.
Real Application
$15,696,000. Additionally, customers need to purchase Exadata Server $23,000
Clusters
Software, which is priced per disk for the 168 disk drives in the X4-2 appliance, Active Data Guard $11,500
totaling: U.S. $10,000 x 168 = U.S. $1,680,000. Advanced
$11,500
Compression
Pivotal does not publish pricing information; however, a publicly available Advanced Security $11,500
Technology Bidding and Purchasing Program (PEPPM) price list for EMC Real Application
$11,500
Corporationxiv lists the pricing for Pivotal DCA v2 standard module at U.S. $355,100, Testing
which gives us a total hardware price of 4 modules per full rack x U.S. $355,100 = Diagnostic Pack $7,500
U.S. $1,420,400. The Greenplum Database (GPDB) software is priced per ingested Tuning Pack $5,000
Partitioning $11,500
TB, or as defined by Pivotal, the amount of TB that would be filled by
Data Integrator EE $23,000
uncompressing all the data contained in all tables in a GPDB system. xix A 2012 price
Total Software Cost
list indicates that the GPDB perpetual license is tiered per ingested TB range, $163,500
per Core
starting at U.S. $30,000 per TB for the first 14TB and lowers down to U.S. $4,500 per
TB beyond 1,000TB+. Using this table the effective software price was calculated at Oracle Big Data Software and
U.S. $4,964,900 for the 440TB of compressed available user data. Add-ons Pricing:

IBM also does not publish pricing information; however, Gemini, an IBM partner, Cloudera Software Included
sells the IBM PureData System for Analytics N2001-10 Appliance and lists IBM List Cloudera Manager Included
pricing as shown above.xv While Geminis site lists slightly discounted pricing, the Big Data Connectors $2,000
IBM List retail pricing has been used since all other vendor appliances are listed Data Integrator EE $23,000
with retail pricing. Geminis pricing does state that 12 months of support plus
Configuration
installation services are included; it is assumed this is also included in IBMs list
Management for $5,000
price.
Applications
Cloud Management
Teradata does provide pricing, but only very generally. For the Teradata Data $5,000
Pack for Testing
Warehouse Appliance 2750 (the 2000 Series), Teradata lists a price of U.S. $34,000
Oracle Audit Vault
per TB of uncompressed user available storage,xvii which gives us U.S. $34,000 x $6,000
& Database Firewall
82.3TB = U.S. $2,798,200.
Total Software Cost $41,000
per Core
EDW + Big Data Hadoop Appliance Costs
The price estimates for Big Data appliances are derived based on the following sources
and assumptions: Oracle pricing, as listed in its Oracle
Technology Global Price List,
provides details on each software
Microsofts pricing is based on retail software pricing for Microsoft SQL Server PDW, application and add on. The
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard and System Center 2012 Standard column for Processor License is
licenses totaling to U.S. $1,028,500. Note that the HDInsight software is included for listed above (though actually the
free and the full rack with HDInsight modules does not require any SQL Server PDW pricing is per-core). The above per-
core price is multiplied by the
licenses. The hardware appliance cost for a Quanta full rack PDW plus full rack
number of cores, which itself is
HDInsight appliance with 3TB hard drives is approximately U.S. $635,400. The adjusted based on the Oracle
pricing was furnished by the vendor for the purpose of this whitepaper. Processor Core Factor Table.
6
 Oracle Engineered Systems price listxii identifies a full rack Big Data appliance X4-2 is
Microsoft PolyBase:
priced at U.S. $525,000. The Big Data X4-2 Datasheetix suggests 288 cores need to
be licensed. Referring the software price list xiii and the core factor adjustment
PolyBase is a technology exclusive
table,xviii the total software license cost is calculated as: U.S. $41,000 x 288 x 0.5 = to Microsoft APS that integrates
U.S. $5,904,000. The costs are added to the Oracle Exadata data warehouse full data warehousing capabilities with
rack appliance costs of U.S. $18.5 million. Hadoop into a single appliance.
This breakthrough in data
For Pivotal, the PEPPM price listxiv lists the price per Pivotal DCA v2 Greenplum HD processing technique enables
(GPHD) module at U.S. $147,400, resulting in a total hardware price of 4 modules seamless querying of data stored in
per rack x U.S. $147,400 = U.S. $589,600. A 2012 price list indicates that the GPHD Hadoop and the SQL Server PDW
perpetual license starts at U.S. $7,988 per node for the first 24 nodes. Using this by using Transact-SQL (T-SQL).
table the effective software price was calculated at U.S. $127,800 for the 16 full Learn more about PolyBase at
http://bit.ly/Ylw7x1.
rack nodes (4 nodes per module x 4 modules per full rack). The costs are added to
the Pivotal data warehouse full rack appliance costs of U.S. $6.4 million. Most vendors in this report have
similar tools to PolyBase but a
For IBM, Geminis sitexvi lists retail pricing for the H1001-10 appliance at U.S. unique differentiator for PolyBase
$500,000, which includes 12 months of support plus installation services. These are is that it is relatively agnostic to the
added to the IBM N2001-10 data warehouse appliance costs of U.S. $2.2 million. Hadoop distribution and the
hardware on which Haddop runs.
As an example, Oracle recently
Teradata lists a price of U.S. $2,000 per TB of uncompressed user available storage
announced Oracle Big Data SQL to
for its Big Data Appliance for Hadoop,xvii which gives us U.S. $2,000 x 152TB = U.S.
support SQL based queries across
$304,000 in total costs. These are added to the Teradata 2750 data warehouse
data warehouse and Big Data
appliance costs of U.S. $2.8 million.
platforms. However it is limited to
Oracle 12c database on Exadata
Installation Costs
servers; requiring investments in
Appliance installation are fixed costs of system installation and software configuration
both Exadata and Big Data
provided as a SKU by the vendor. Some vendors, e.g. IBM and Teradata, have the appliances, making the cost to
installation costs combined as part of the appliance costs. leverage this capability much
EDW + Big higher than that of PolyBase. For
Vendor EDW Price Source and Assumptions more information, visit
Data
http://bit.ly/1nahOHR.
Microsoft $10,200 $13,000 Vendor furnished pricing data for the whitepaper.
Oracle $10,500 $24,700 Fact Point Group whitepaperxx and ESG whitepaper.xxi
Pivotal $11,900 $23,800 GP DCA Installation from PEPPM EMC price list.xiv
IBM $0 $0 Included in appliance costs.
Table 4: Appliance Installation Costs
Implementation Services and System Installation at
Teradata $8,000 $16,000 (Costs in U.S. dollars)
$8,000 per rack. (Source: Teradata SME)

NOTE: Installation is only part of the overall deployment cost considerations. Customers
should carefully evaluate overall project management, migration, and testing costs,
which are highly variable and may not be similar across platforms. For example,
Microsoft APS customers can expect their appliances to be ready to run in 45 - 60 days
(based on SMEs and Microsoft partner feedback), compared to a typical deployment
period of 4-7 months for other vendors, such as Oracle (4.25 months for a Big Data
appliance,xxi 5 months for half rack Exadata + Exalogic appliancexxii) and Teradata (196
days average for data warehouse appliancesxxiii). Although not calculated for the
purpose of this whitepaper, these delays in deployment also translate to significant lost
7
 opportunity costs where the appliances could have been put to use in many revenue
generating BI activities.
. With [Microsoft] Analytics
Platform System you rely on
Maintenance and Support Costs
commodity hardware and proven
Most vendors require customers to pay an annual hardware and software support fee SQL Server database technology.
as a percentage of the initial acquisition costs. The table below summarizes these costs The advantages are two fold one
along with the source and assumptions: you lower the risk of getting skilled
people, two you lower the costs of
EDW + Big
Vendor EDW Price Source and Assumptions getting people. Moreover you have
Data
the ability to do things yourself
Typical Software Assurance fee at 25% of total license
rather than rely on more expensive
$386,900 costs + $40,700 and $8,200 Microsoft Premier Support
Microsoft $373,200 professional services or
for full rack PDW and HDI appliances. Numbers are
average considering 5% YoY increment. (Source: Vendor) consultants. Managing Director
Software Update and License Support fee at 22% of total for data services partner in Asia-
$5,446,600 license costsxiii + Premier Support for Systems at 12% of Pacific region.
Oracle $4,042,700
hardware costsxii + Premier Support for OS at 8% of
hardware costs.xii
Annual maintenance fee at 23% of perpetual license
Pivotal $1,340,800 $1,452,700 costs (Source: 2012 Price List) + Annual support fee at
14% of hardware cost (Source: Partner interview)
Annual Appliance Maintenance + Subscription and
IBM $335,000 $410,000
Support Renewal at 15% of appliance costs.xv xvi
Annual Software Subscription at 6% and Premier
Teradata $657,600 $729,000 Appliance Support at 14-21% of appliance net selling Table 5: Appliance Maintenance and
price. (Source: Teradata SME) Support Costs (Costs in U.S. dollars)

Labor Costs
Appliances offer a simplified architecture requiring little maintenance; still a significant
amount of time is invested in building data models, managing and tuning databases, and
other related database administration tasks. Full time staffing for database
administration is significantly lower in case of Microsoft Analytics Platform System, since
highly skilled SQL Server resources are readily available at wages that are typically 10%-
15% lower compared to DBAs for other database technologies. For IT departments,
being able to use existing SQL Server skills to implement and manage a solution on the
APS is a big advantage. Also familiar features of SQL Server and T-SQL based query tools
(with PolyBase available only in APS) minimizes an organizations investments in training
and acquiring Hadoop-based skills, such as MapReduce.

The table below summarizes the annual DBA labor costs. A 30% burden is added to all
annual wages to estimate a fully burdened labor cost to the organization.

8
 EDW + Big
Vendor EDW Price Source and Assumptions
Data
1 FTE per rack at $97kxxiv annual salary for DBAs with SQL
Microsoft $125,500 $126,900 Server skills and $98kxxv annual salary for DBAs with T-
SQL skills.
2 FTEs per rackxx at $103kxxvi annual salary for DBAs with
Oracle $266,900 $266,900
Oracle Exadata skills.
1 FTE per rack at $85kxxvii annual salary for DBAs with
Pivotal $110,500 $110,500
PostgreSQL skills.
4 FTEs per rack at $96kxxiii for DBAs with PureData /
IBM $496,800 $496,800 Table 6: Administration Labor Costs
Netezza skills.
(Costs in U.S. dollars)
Teradata $583,600 $583,600 4 FTEs per rack at $112kxxiii for DBAs with Teradata skills.

Facilities Costs
Facilities include power, cooling, and floor space requirements for the appliance. All
vendors list out the typical power consumption either in KW, W, or VA; cooling
requirements in BTU/hour; and floor space in inches. When power was expressed in VA,
it was converted to W by multiplying with a unity (= 1) power factor. Further the cooling
requirements of BTU/hour was converted to W by multiplying with a factor of 0.293.
The effective energy costs were calculated using the U.S. average retail price of 10.6
cents per KWH (kilowatt-hour).xxviii For all floor space calculations, an additional 3 feet
clearance was assumed for front and rear panel access. A real-estate average rate of
U.S. $23.23/sq.ft./year was used for calculation of floor space costs.xxix The total facilities
costs are summarized below:

EDW + Big
Vendor EDW Price Source and Assumptions
Data
EDW & Big Data: 10,508W; 35,832BTU/hr; 24 x
Microsoft $19,200 $38,400
42 (Source: Vendor)
EDW: 12,100W; 41,300BTU/hr; 23.62 x 47.24v
Oracle $22,100 $40,400
Big Data: 10,000W; 34,142BTU/hr; 23.62 x 47.24ix
EDW: 9,600W; 32,750BTU/hr; 24 x 42vi
Pivotal $17,600 $34,700
Big Data: 9,300W; 31,800BTU/hr; 24 x 42vi
EDW: 7,500W; 27,000BTU/hr; 25.51 x 40vii
IBM $14,200 $31,800
Big Data: 9,600W; 32,757BTU/hr; 25.51 x 40x Table 7: Appliance Facilities Costs,
EDW: 10,300W; 29,100BTU/hr; 24 x 47viii xxx includes power, cooling, and floor
Teradata $17,300 $39,600 space (Costs in U.S. dollars)
Big Data: 12,250W; 41,700BTU/hr; 24 x 47xi xxxi

TCO-TO-PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS
The tables in the following page summarize key specifications of the Enterprise Data
Warehouse (EDW) and the Big Data appliances as obtained from their data sheets, along
with the five-year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

As seen in the tables, the appliances have varying numbers of drives, cores, and user
storage, so simply looking at total costs is not a reasonable comparison. To provide
additional comparison perspectives, scaled metrics have been calculated and presented.

9
 The first two are related to total appliance size, the other two are related to appliance
power and performance. The first (TCO per terabyte of compressed, user-available
storage) is the standard data warehouse comparison metric.

Specifications Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata

Total Cores 144 192 256 112 192
Memory (GB) 2,304 2,048 1,024 896 4,096
Compression 5 to 1 10 to 1 4 to 1 4 to 1 3 to 1
Usable Storage
203 300 110 48 82
Uncompressed (TB)
Usable Storage
1,017 3,000 440 192 247
Compressed (TB)
I/O Bandwidth (Scan Table 8: Data Warehouse Appliance
36 100 40 31 Unknown Specifications and 5 Year NPV of Costs
Rate) (GB/s)
(Costs in U.S. dollars)
5 Year NPV of Costs $3,304,000 $34,909,000 $11,966,000 $5,442,000 $7,579,000

Specifications Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata

Total Cores 288 480 512 328 384
Memory (GB) 4,608 3,200 2,048 2,624 6,144
Usable Storage Table 9: EDW + Big Data Hadoop
406 559 254 264 234
Uncompressed (TB) Appliance Specifications and 5 Year
5 Year NPV of Costs $4,247,000 $47,754,000 $13,602,000 $8,175,000 $10,457,000 NPV of Costs (Costs in U.S. dollars)

We assume no compression and ignore the TCO per compressed TB metric for the Big
Data Hadoop appliances. This doesnt meant that compression cannot be achieved on
Big Data appliances. In fact, many native Hadoop formats like Hive-RC, Parquet, and
others that are resident data formats for files in Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS)
offer reasonable compression. However, unlike data warehouse appliances where we
are comparing different database technologies across vendors, with Big Data Hadoop
appliances we are fundamentally comparing appliances that rely on the same open
source file system - HDFS.

Performance Metrics:
TCO per terabyte of compressed user-available storage, as a measure of the
value of useable storage space. This includes any compression factors that each
vendor provides compression shrinks the amount of space data takes,
allowing organizations to make better use of existing hardware so that more
data can be stored on each drive and I/O transactions are smaller.

TCO per terabyte of uncompressed user-available storage, as an additional

measure of the value of useable storage. Since each organization provides
different compression technologies and recommendations (and each
organization decides on their own compression factor), this allows a
comparison regardless of compression.

10
 TCO per database core, as one measure of performance. As more cores
provide capacity for more concurrent database and compute tasks.

TCO per gigabyte of memory, as a second measure of performance. Since

memory is able to store information in a quickly-accessible place, more
memory means more information can be stored without having to write to a
disk, which means transactions can be processed more quickly.

In case of enterprise data warehouse and the Big Data Hadoop appliances, Microsoft
APS provides the best TCO-to-performance ratio across all above metrics. Oracles data
warehouse and Hadoop appliances were seen as the worst performing across all except
the TCO per terabyte compressed metrics mainly because of the high appliance
software and annual software subscription costs. The TCO per terabyte compressed was
offset by the 10x compression ratio for Oracle data warehouse appliance compared to
3x 5x for the remaining appliances. A detailed breakdown of these metrics is discussed
below.

TCO per Terabyte (TB) of Compressed User-Available Storage

The estimate of reasonable compression within the data warehouse appliance varies
across vendors. Microsoft appliance by Quanta based on the 1TB drives claims a 5:1
compression ratio.iv Similarly, Pivotalvi and IBMvii data sheets suggest a compression
ratio of 4:1 for their appliances. Oracle lists a 5x 20x, with 10x typical compression
based on proprietary compression processes. v An efficient compression (but not
detrimental to performance) of 10:1 for Oracle is used in this whitepaper.

Teradata does not list a specific compression metric in their datasheet specs and
marketing materials, but in its pricing datasheet it lists a compression range of 50% to
80%, or in ratio form, from 2:1 to 5:1.xvii Various other sources including Teradata
forum,xxxii technical whitepapers,xxiii and news articlesxxxiii suggest a range of 1.7:1 to
5.7:1. As an average, an efficient (i.e., that wont likely overly impact performance)
compression of 3:1 is used in this whitepaper. The compression estimates for each
Data Warehouse Appliance
vendor are listed in the table to the right.
Compression Ratios:

For TCO-to-compressed storage for full rack appliances, Microsoft APS has the lowest
Vendor Ratio
ratio at a little less than U.S. $3,250 per TB. That is nearly three and a half times better
Microsoft 5:1
than the next option and Oracle, and six times better than the average. Oracles high
Oracle 10:1
software price is greatly offset by its 10:1 compression ratio (at least twice as high as
Pivotal 4:1
any other appliances), but is still a more expensive option on a TCO per user-available
IBM 4:1
storage (compressed) comparison to Microsoft. Teradata 3:1

11
 Usable Storage TCO per TB of Usable
Vendor TCO per TB (compressed):
(Compressed, in TB) Storage (Compressed) $40

EDW Appliance $30

Thousands
Microsoft 1,017 $3,249
$20
Oracle 3000 $11,636
$10
Pivotal 440 $27,195
IBM 192 $28,344 $-
Teradata 247 $30,697 Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft

Exhibit 1: Summary of TCO per TB of

TCO per Terabyte (TB) of Uncompressed User-Available Storage Compressed Usable Storage (Costs in
Uncompressed user-available storage for a full rack appliance is included to provide U.S. dollars)
perspective of total useful storage provided outside of compression. For TCO-to-
compressed storage, Microsoft data warehouse and big data appliances again
outdistance the competition with a much better TCO-per-terabyte ratio, about three to
eight times better than the competing appliance configurations.

Usable Storage TCO per TB of Usable Usable Storage TCO per TB of Usable
Vendor
(Uncompressed, in TB) Storage (Uncompressed) (Uncompressed, in TB) Storage (Uncompressed)
EDW Appliance EDW + Big Data Appliance
Microsoft 203 $16,244 406 $10,463
Oracle 300 $116,363 559 $85,428
Pivotal 110 $108,782 254 $53,551
IBM 48 $113,375 264 $30,966
Teradata 82 $92,090 234 $44,631

TCO per TB (uncompressed): TCO per TB (uncompressed):

$150 $100

$100
Thousands

Thousands

$50
$50

$- $-
Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft

Exhibit 2: Summary of TCO per TB of

TCO per Database Core Uncompressed Usable Storage (Costs
Database processors and cores provide the engines for running data management and in U.S. dollars)
analysis tasks. With more cores, database applications and virtual machines run more
efficiently, meaning that databases can handle a large user load and manage new data
collection, while still providing high performance results. So more is better, but with
appliances that can scale by adding more modules or racks, even more important is the
TCO per core. Note that the number of cores is not exactly correlated with higher price
some licenses are not required for every core, but TCO-per-database core provides a
view into the performance of each appliance as a factor of total costs. When viewed in
relation to TCO for full rack appliances, Microsoft data warehouse appliance again leads
the pack, nearly three times better than average, and almost eight times better than
Oracle. For the Big Data Hadoop configurations, Microsoft still led the pack being two
and half times better than the average.

12
Vendor Server Cores TCO per Server Core Server Cores TCO per Server Core
EDW Appliance EDW + Big Data Appliance
Microsoft 144 $22,944 288 $14,747
Oracle 192 $181,818 480 $99,488
Pivotal 256 $46,742 512 $26,566
IBM 112 $48,589 328 $24,924
Teradata 192 $39,474 384 $27,732

$200
TCO per DB Core $150
TCO per DB Core

$150
$100
Thousands

Thousands
$100
$50
$50

$- $-
Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft

Exhibit 3: Summary of TCO per Server

TCO per Gigabyte (GB) of Memory Core (Costs in U.S. dollars)
Like cores, the amount of memory included in a full rack appliance is a significant
indicator of potential performance. Large amounts of memory allow for faster
processing of data by keeping more information in memory to be processed, instead of
having to make read/write calls to the hard drive. Memory is much more expensive than
disk drives (for equal units of storage), so in addition to the storage ratios above, it is
important to include TCO-per-memory ratio comparison as well. Again, Microsoft data
warehouse appliance provides better value over others, at five times better than
average, and nearly twelve times better than Oracle, based on complete TCO. For Big
Data configurations, Microsoft is again almost six times better than the average.

Vendor Memory (in GB) TCO per GB Memory Memory (in GB) TCO per GB Memory
EDW Appliance EDW + Big Data Appliance
Microsoft 2,304 $1,434 4,608 $922
Oracle 2,048 $17,045 3,200 $14,923
Pivotal 1,024 $11,686 2,048 $6,642
IBM 896 $6,074 2,624 $3,115
Teradata 4,096 $1,850 6,144 $1,702

TCO per GB Memory TCO per GB Memory

$20 $20

$15 $15
Thousands
Thousands

$10 $10

$5 $5

$- $-
Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft

Exhibit 4: Summary of TCO per GB

TCO per I/O Bandwidth Memory (Costs in U.S. dollars)
Many of the data warehouse vendors now offer Solid State Drives (SSDs) and other
higher performance storage caches with their appliances, and tout their scan rates as a
measure of high storage performance. While I/O Bandwidth data was only available for
13
 4 of 5 vendors, and thus not considered in the data warehouse TCO-to-performance
overview above, it is an important enough performance metric to include and discuss,
as an indicator of throughput performance capabilities. Added to the point that
Microsoft Analytics Platform System is rarely I/O bound and that the SQL Server Buffer
Manager is very efficient at keeping hot data in RAM, the data warehouse platform also
showed two and a half times better TCO-to-performance ratio compared to the average
for all vendors.

Vendor I/O Bandwidth (GB/s) TCO per I/O Bandwidth

TCO per I/O GB
EDW Appliance $400

Microsoft 36 $91,778 $300

Thousands
Oracle 100 $349,090
$200
Pivotal 40 $299,150
$100
IBM 31 $174,423
$-
Teradata Not available Not available
Oracle Pivotal IBM Teradata Microsoft

Exhibit 5: Summary of TCO per I/O

MICROSOFT BENEFITS Bandwidth in GB/s (Costs in U.S.
dollars)
Based on this comparison, Microsofts Analytics Platform System (APS) was seen to
provide the most cost-effective solution in terms of total cost, as well as being the top
performer in the TCO-to-performance metrics comparison. In addition to being cost-
effective, APS offers several other advantages:
High performance, true scale-out, MPP data warehouse architecture with SQL
Server PDW.
Integrated enterprise-ready Big Data Hadoop distribution with HDInsight.
Hybrid Hadoop scenarios to query across Hortonworks, Cloudera, and cloud-
based Microsoft Azure HDInsight and Azure Blob storage using Transact SQL (T-
SQL) in PolyBase.
Reduced storage footprint and costs with Windows Server Storage Spaces and
SQL Server In-Memory Columnstore.
Lowest number of database vulnerabilities and greater uptime.
Commodity hardware choice options from multiple vendors: Quanta, HP, and
Dell.

When preparing a business case or determining the Return on Investment (ROI) for data
warehouse and big data investments, it is important not only to look at the TCO and
direct cost savings, but also any indirect benefits that the appliance provides. Some of
the indirect benefits achieved from Microsoft Analytics Platform System are discussed
below.

Query Performance
Improvements in query performance directly translates to greater employee
productivity and time spent on revenue generating activities. The combination of MPP
technology and In-Memory Columnstore in Microsoft Analytics Platform System allows

14
 employees to achieve up to 100x faster query performance compared to traditional
Query Performance Customer
SMP data warehouse solutions.
Evidence:
Security Improvements
Reduce complex query execution
A recent report by Ponemon Institute and Symantec indicates that the organizational
time from 2 days to 7 minutes.
cost of data breaches averaged U.S. $4 million per year.xxxiv The losses may include costs
Improve employee productivity by
related to legal and penal fee, revenue loss due to lost customers, and loss of 40%. Royal Bank of Scotland
competitive advantage. The high cost of breach thus puts a greater emphasis on having
a secure data appliance that protects the business data against common threats to IT Realize 10x performance
systems. improvement with SQL Server. SBI
Liquidity Market
Featuring SQL Server, Microsoft APS customers are more protected against database
vulnerabilities. When it comes to high severity vulnerabilities due to software flaws, the With PolyBase, achieve twice as fast
National Vulnerability Database reports that Oracle database averages 1.5 performance as their previous best
vulnerabilities per year compared to SQL Servers far less 0.5 per year.xxxv Hive/Hadoop environment.
Shinsegae Corporation

CONCLUSION Create reports 50% to many times

Overall, Microsoft not only provides data warehouse and big data appliances that are faster when compared to previous
competitively priced compared to other vendor options, but also the best TCO-to- system. - Crossmark
performance value.

15
APPENDIX

Methodology
In a study commissioned by Microsoft, similar Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) and
Big Data Hadoop appliances from five leading vendors have been reviewed,
summarized, and compared, based on publicly-available costs and specification
information. The five vendors compared in this study were:
Microsoft
Oracle
Pivotal (formerly EMC)
IBM
Teradata

These solutions were chosen as some of the top vendors and appliances discussed in the
December, 2013 Forrester Wave report on enterprise data warehousing platforms. xxxvi

For EDW and Big Data appliances, High Capacity appliance options were selected for
consistent comparison. Full racks were compared, to ensure standard comparisons
across large-capacity appliances.

Summary metrics, total costs, total user storage space (compressed and uncompressed),
and performance were compared. TCO per terabyte of user space is used as a
price/value approximation that can help provide more comparison details when the
amount of user space is not the same across all appliances.

Comparisons are based on the list price and publicly available cost and specification
metrics. In addition to the appliance price, which is only part of the cost considerations,
the overall TCO analysis included facility, installation, maintenance, and support costs.

Each discussion with vendors and their customer discount situation will be different,
and more information (and customization) is likely available from the vendors.
Individual results may thus be different than the ones listed here. Customer should
carefully evaluate installation, migration, and on-going management costs specific to
their solution requirements before making a decision.

About Value Prism Consulting

Value Prism Consulting is a valuation and management consulting firm that provides
services to a broad range of clients worldwide. Our Management Consulting Practice
assists clients with business case development and decision support analysis. Our
solutions measure the results of various options related to business process
improvement, capital and major budget-spending decisions, including infrastructure
upgrades, and the value of new product introductions. Visit www.valueprism.com for
more information.

16
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18