Alibaba Cloud vs SAP S4HANA on AWS comparison

Alibaba and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Alibaba is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.5, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.9. Alibaba holds a 11.4% mindshare in ISI, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Alibaba users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

Alibaba Cloud

Read 19 Alibaba Cloud reviews

6,774 Views
5,309 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

SAP S4HANA on AWS

Read 40 SAP S4HANA on AWS reviews

2,865 Views
2,428 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Alibaba Cloud

SAP S4HANA on AWS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

SAP S4HANA on AWS and Alibaba Cloud compete in cloud computing, focusing on ERP and infrastructure services respectively. SAP S4HANA on AWS seems to have the technological upper hand with advanced features and robust database management, but it faces criticism for high costs, while Alibaba Cloud offers a more economical solution with flexibility for SMEs.

Features: SAP S4HANA on AWS offers high-performance capabilities with the HANA database, enabling efficient real-time processing and integration. Its AWS integration minimizes the need for extensive on-premises setups, enhancing scalability. Alibaba Cloud provides economical solutions with flexible tools similar to AWS, offering a user-friendly interface and appealing pricing for SMEs, especially in Asia.

Room for Improvement: SAP S4HANA on AWS could benefit from reduced complexity and a better user interface, alongside more comprehensive documentation and expanded cloud provider support. Alibaba Cloud needs to address latency issues outside China, improve technical support, and enhance its SDK services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP S4HANA on AWS offers reliable integration across various cloud environments, supported by AWS's robust infrastructure support, although costly. User satisfaction with support varies. Alibaba Cloud is noted for its simplicity in deployment within public cloud infrastructures but requires improvements in technical support and community resources.

Pricing and ROI: SAP S4HANA on AWS is a high-cost solution justified by its advanced features and long-term cloud hosting savings. Pricing varies with licensing models. Alibaba Cloud, with its competitive pricing, is attractive to businesses in Asia, promising cost savings and a stable ROI compared to major competitors.

To learn more, read our detailed Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 842,161 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

8th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP S4HANA on AWS

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 11.4%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP S4HANA on AWS is 3.8%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Aderonke Adeyegbe

CEO at Comercio Limited

Good storage, great for smaller companies, and has impressive support

We're all aware that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation, and we believe that Alibaba, due to its pedigree, has what it takes to take small businesses to the cloud. It's a game-changer, for sure. The storage is very useful. It is easy to set up. Technical support is good. It is quite stable.

Read full review

Bhavesh Shah

SAP Cloud Engineer SAP Commvault Backup Administrator- DC Migrations on AWS at CLARIANT SE

With good documentation in place, the solution offers good technical support to its users

CPU architecture is an area where the solution currently has some issues. Improvement in CPU architecture could improve the performance side and the adherence to the parameters set by SAP. As suggested by SAP, we should do HANA mini checks on a daily or weekly basis. All the parameters related to HANA should be equal to improve performance. So, some of the parameters I can see on the SAP side are related to memory, and so we have to check on each landscape whether the parameters related to SAP are properly set or not. Regarding the right CPU from AWS and SAP recommended nodes, we have to check whether the performance is good or not because we have to give this almost on HANA since, on some side, we have to be swapping that on voice level also, and so that screening part is a requirement from OS/DB side. In short, we have to check all parameters. My solution is IOPS related to EC2. So I have just done a very good optimization. I have seen some parameters related to Linux that is from SAP side, where the problem is very fast, and CPU load is very low. So that is an OS/DB recommendation parameter from the SAP that it should be set over there on all systems. As a basic start, we have to check OS/DB recommendation settings, and everything should be kept on. Those experienced in SAP S4HANA need not worry about any part. I think overlay IP should be linked to gateway web architecture. It should be in a proper way to the community for the security part. Apart from that, we have to follow Amazon and SAP books. There have to be some adjustments made from the finance and GRC side. So, we have to check some of the functional sides and whether these parameters are properly set in for SAP s1 in terms of logistics, MRV, and some of the code. I can recommend that SAP's 86 custom code should be a proper way to develop a very good experience going online for the custom tools. So, it would be good to improve such features and everything. Also, the system should not be at any end of support since it will impact its performance. I have faced some of the, you know, clients, where they have some end of support, comes into 7209, and they just back it up. I need to get some extended support from the SAP, and some software should be there. So before the end of maintenance, everybody has to awaken all the features of the solution. On a daily production side, we can do this maintenance activity, whether it may be outdated or not outdated, and support patches should be done properly.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."

"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."

"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."

"We use the solution to run VMs."

"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."

"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."

"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."

More Alibaba Cloud pros

"The most valuable features of SAP S/4HANA on AWS include its availability and performance."

"This product is currently the leading product within this category."

"I like that they are very familiar with our VM which makes it easy to use."

"The product’s high availability is its best feature."

"I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten because it covers all the fields, has a big maturity, and has something other solutions are missing, which is speed."

"Reporting transparency and user-friendliness are the key benefit of deploying SAP S4HANA on AWS. Furthermore, the solution offers a plethora of modules that have proven to be valuable, and there are regular updates available."

"They have their own instances where you can host your database."

"The solution is scalable."

More SAP S4HANA on AWS pros

Cons

"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."

"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."

"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."

"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."

"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."

"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."

"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."

"It is not robust."

More Alibaba Cloud cons

"The initial setup could be easier. It's complex."

"I would like scalability to be improved in the future for faster performance."

"SAP S4HANA on AWS could improve by having the entire solution available as a web solution. They only have Fiori right now, and it's a solution for certain modules, but not for all the modules that SAP currently has. We would like to see the GUI removed, it is not very good. We want it to be web-based."

"The drawback of this tool versus an on-site tool is that you've got to upgrade the tool. The software is upgraded as it gets upgraded and you've got to be ready to change whatever processes and do whatever training you need to do."

"S4HANA is expensive. It costs much more than SuccessFactors."

"The AI aspect of SAP S4HANA can be improved."

"The pricing is a little bit high."

"We had some storage and legacy migrations problems with SAP S4HANA on AWS."

More SAP S4HANA on AWS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."

"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."

"The product is not that expensive."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."

"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."

"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."

"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."

"The cost is better than similar solutions."

More Alibaba Cloud pricing and cost advice

"It's expensive. It would be good if AWS and Azure could reduce the computing cost for people who move to the public cloud."

"It is a significant investment, around six hundred thousand dollars, and it involves both a one-time on-premises installation on servers and a cloud subscription with different flavors for SAP S4HANA."

"I rate the product price a six on a one to ten scale, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The price of SAP S4HANA on AWS is reasonable, given how much it costs to maintain a scratch-built system. To upgrade the support there is a fee."

"SAP S4HANA's pricing model should be more flexible and transparent - there's a lot of negotiation and internal factors, and some customers get better value and services for the same product."

"I rate the price of SAP S4HANA on AWS an eight out of ten."

"Licensing fees are on an annual basis."

"We pay a monthly fee for the use of SAP S4HANA on AWS for approximately five years. That's the time of the contract."

More SAP S4HANA on AWS pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?

ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?

Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP S4HANA on AWS?

With extensive data and a sizable client base, this ensures seamless operations, responsiveness, and overall reliability, addressing our enterprise-scale needs effectively.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP S4HANA on AWS?

SAP is not cheap, with many hidden costs encountered during implementation. On a scale of one to ten for expense, SAP is a nine out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP S4HANA on AWS?

There are many things already there. There just needs to be a document approval workflow, which is not limited to procurement and other documents. There might be an additional document approval wor...

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 34% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 31% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Alibaba Cloud Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs SAP S4HANA on AWS

Compared 70% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs SAP S4HANA on AWS

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud vs SAP S4HANA on AWS

Compared 9% of the time

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud vs SAP S4HANA on AWS

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP S4HANA on AWS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud

March 2025

Download Alibaba Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP S4HANA on AWS

March 2025

Download SAP S4HANA on AWS product report

Also Known As

No data available

SAP S/4HANA on AWS

Overview

Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support growing enterprises worldwide, including data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks.

Alibaba

SAP customers of all sizes can fully realize all the benefits of the SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition on the AWS Cloud. With SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition on the AWS Cloud you can:

Achieve faster time to value with the AWS on-demand infrastructure
Rapidly provision infrastructure for SAP S/4HANA with no upfront cost or long-term commitment
Pay for only what you need Don't spend upfront costs purchasing hardware for what you can't forecast
Test and evaluate SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition with a free trial offering from SAP on AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint

Brigade Group, DoHome, Royal FloraHolland

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS

March 2025

Free Report: Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS

Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS report.

See our list of best Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) vendors.

We monitor all Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) 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.