Amazon Aurora vs SAP HANA comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SAP are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.2, while SAP is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.4% mindshare in SQL, compared to SAP’s 12.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Amazon Aurora

Read 15 Amazon Aurora reviews

3,317 Views
2,999 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SAP HANA

Read 84 SAP HANA reviews

9,402 Views
8,203 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Amazon Aurora

SAP HANA

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

SAP HANA and Amazon Aurora both compete in the database management system category. Based on the data comparisons, Amazon Aurora has the upper hand due to its cost-efficiency, scalability, and seamless integration with AWS services.

Features: SAP HANA offers robust real-time database capabilities, high memory, and performance efficiency, and superb in-memory computing with extensive integration options. Amazon Aurora is known for SQL standardization, auto-scaling, and seamless integration with AWS services, making it easy to manage with advanced scalability.

Room for Improvement: SAP HANA could improve its ease of use, integration, and cost-efficiency. It also faces setup complexity and high memory requirements. Amazon Aurora could benefit from improved performance insights, better pricing, and extended compatibility with non-Amazon systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP HANA supports on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments but requires technical expertise due to complexity. It has mixed reviews for customer service, with slow response times reported. Amazon Aurora, primarily deployed on public and private clouds, has simpler deployment but is critiqued for pricing and lack of on-premise options. Its support is generally viewed positively, though some users seek more proactive assistance.

Pricing and ROI: SAP HANA is considered expensive and may deter small enterprises despite its strong performance. Amazon Aurora provides cost-effective solutions for cloud environments with pricing aligned to usage, offering a better balance of cost and performance, although users suggest lower hourly rates for better accessibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Aurora vs. SAP HANA Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. SAP HANA

January 2025

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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

Amazon Aurora

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP HANA

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.4%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA is 12.0%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Rajitha Jatothu

Aws Devops Engineer at LTIMindtree

Achieve high performance with fault-tolerant and highly available database management

Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability. It is faster than RDS and supports multi-region clusters and scalability. One feature we value is Aurora's ability to provide a reader endpoint, allowing applications to connect without tracking replicas. It supports auto-scaling and offers several options for monitoring and optimizing database performance. Aurora's fault tolerance and ability to handle multiple replicas contribute to its reliability and high performance.

Read full review

Jayarami Reddy Pujeri

ERP Head at ID Fresh Food

Comprehensive system with real-time analytics for versatile industry applications

Our primary use case is working with various clients in industries such as pharmaceuticals and other services. We support clients as implementers of SAP HANA, providing expertise in functionality, finance, logistics, and processes The solution is very user-friendly and supports all kinds of…

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

"The solution’s scalability is good since we don’t need to take a maintenance window during unpredictable workloads. I like the solution’s behind-the-scenes happenings. It is a great feature."

"Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability."

"The most valuable features of Amazon Aurora include the global instance with the global writer endpoint, which allows failovers and instance switches without requiring changes in my code, thanks to the default global Route 53 endpoint."

"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."

"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider. I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora is SQL standardization, it doesn't have its own syntax which is good. It has a lot of hands-off self-management type of activities, such as log rolling and auto-scaling."

"We had better control over the parameters that we could tweak in terms of intermediate storage and better indexing capabilities."

"Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code."

More Amazon Aurora pros

"The main feature is that the processes are very flexible, they are able to be adapted to the business and their departments."

"The feature that I like the most is that we can transport the data to our web data application. SAP HANA's performance is really perfect. We're working on big data, and SAP HANA is really working on high performance. We are happy working with it."

"It's very convenient and very innovative."

"A very feature-rich solution with excellent performance."

"What I like best about SAP HANA is that it's faster than Microsoft SQL Server."

"The solution operates well."

"All features are valuable."

"The product's initial setup phase was really easy."

More SAP HANA pros

Cons

"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."

"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."

"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."

"In Oracle, tools like Veridata allow for comparing databases and certifying data accuracy, even offering repair capabilities, which are missing in Aurora. There should be a similar comparison tool in Aurora."

"Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience."

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."

"There is improvement needed to have more developer focus. Additionally, it would be helpful to have a stand-alone solution outside of Amazon. Amazon has a tendency to favor developing web-based clients, which may not always provide the fastest or most responsive solution as desired."

"It is a bit costly. The features are quite good, and I wouldn't say it requires any technical improvements. But from a cost perspective, some clients wouldn't go for Aurora because of that."

More Amazon Aurora cons

"The initial setup was very, very complex, tedious, and costly and required someone with great expertise to complete it."

"SAP HANA is not strong like Oracle when it comes to finance. They are only strong with the logistic business project."

"You cannot apply mulit-join inside the calculation views, for example, when you are joining tables."

"The pricing is expensive."

"FI, or the financial module of SAP, has room for improvement. It has to have some better localization for the Middle East, especially in regards to taxes and the letter of credit cycle. I would like to see better localization from the HCM."

"The SAP HANA interface has room for improvement because it takes more work to manage than the Microsoft SQL Server interface."

"SAP HANA isn't user-friendly, and it's very hard to train newcomers to use it."

"Ease of use could be improved in SAP HANA. I like SAP because SAP solutions can be used by anyone, which means even laymen can start working on SAP tools, but in SAP HANA modeling, you'll need to know some other technologies and sequel scripting, and you need a separate skillset, so if you don't have the skillset, you won't be able to work on SAP HANA. Making SAP HANA low-code would make it even better."

More SAP HANA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."

"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."

"It is quite expensive."

"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"There is an annual payment needed to use the solution."

"The pricing is a bit on the high side."

"Set up a consortium of consulting partners and hardware vendors to define your tech. Landscape TCO (total cost of ownership) and then approach the OEM for pricing (on-premise or on cloud or a hybrid model). Check if you can bring your own licenses for some of the existing application licenses on the new platform, to reduce TCO."

"It is expensive."

"There is an annual license to use SAP HANA."

"I would rate the pricing of the solution a ten on ten. The pricing for on-prem SAP HANA is on a yearly basis and expensive. I am not aware of the actual pricing but it is based on 64 Gigabytes. For instance, if you consider $10,000 for 64 Gigabytes, then you can calculate the cost for Terabytes in case you have one. You will have to buy expensive hardware as well which is quite a lot."

"The price is on the expensive side, at eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"The tool has a high price. I rate the solution’s pricing, one on a scale of ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap."

More SAP HANA pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Aurora?

Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?

The price of Aurora is generally reasonable. It fluctuates based on performance levels and usage, yet maintains a good balance with our operational demands.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?

Currently, I am unsure what aspects of Aurora require improvement. The solution meets our needs in terms of high availability, durability, and backups. However, room for improvement might be in the...

See all answers

What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?

Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...

See all answers

Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?

We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...

See all answers

Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?

SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 38% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 24% of the time

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 9% of the time

CockroachDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 5% of the time

YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Aurora Competitors

SQL Server vs SAP HANA

Compared 24% of the time

Oracle Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 23% of the time

MySQL vs SAP HANA

Compared 12% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 9% of the time

SAP IQ vs SAP HANA

Compared 1% of the time

More SAP HANA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

February 2025

Download Amazon Aurora product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP HANA

January 2025

Download SAP HANA product report

Also Known As

No data available

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA

Overview

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.

Amazon Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases. It provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost. Amazon Aurora is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.

Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance. It delivers high performance and availability with up to 15 low-latency read replicas, point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across three Availability Zones (AZs).

Visit the Amazon RDS Management Console to create your first Aurora database instance and start migrating your MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

SAP HANA, also known as SAP High-performance Analytics Appliance, is a multi-model database that stores data in its memory, allowing users to avoid disk storage. The product combines its robust database with services for creating applications. SAP HANA is faster than other database management systems (DBMS) because it stores data in column-based tables in main memory and brings online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) together.

The column-oriented in-memory database design allows users to run high-speed transactions alongside advanced analytics, all in a single system. This provides companies with the ability to process very large amounts of data with low latency and query data in an instant. By combining multiple data management capabilities, the solution simplifies IT, helps businesses with innovations, and facilitates digital transformation.

The solution is structured into five groups of capabilities, categorized as:

Database design
Database management
Application development
Advanced analytics
Data virtualization

There are three more SAP products that work alongside SAP HANA and complete the experience for users together. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a ready-to-run cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP). SAP BW/4HANA is a packaged data warehouse, based on SAP HANA, which allows users to consolidate data across the enterprise to get a consistent view of their data. Finally, SAP Cloud is a single database as a service (DBaaS) foundation for modern applications and analytics across all enterprise data. All three products can combine with SAP HANA to deliver to users an optimized experience regarding their data.

SAP HANA Features

Each architectural group of capabilities of SAP HANA has various features that users can benefit from. These include:

Parallel processing database: SAP HANA utilizes a single platform to run transactional and analytical workloads.
ACID compliance: This feature ensures compliance with requirements for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) standards.
Multi-tenancy: This feature allows multiple tenant databases to run in one system while sharing the same memory and processors.
Multi-tier storage and persistent memory support: SAP HANA's native storage extension is a built-in capability to manage between memory and persistent storage, including SAP HANA Cloud Data Lake.
Scaling: The scaling feature supports terabytes of data in a single server and distributes large tables across multiple servers in a cluster to scale further.
Data modeling: This feature consists of graphical modeling tools that enable collaboration between stakeholders and the creation of models to execute complex business logic and data transformation in real time.
Stored procedures: The product has a native language to build stored procedures and uses advanced capabilities to create complex logic.
Administration: This feature consists of administration tools for various platform lifecycle, performance, and management operations and automations.
Security: SAP HANA provides its users with real-time data anonymization features to extract value from data while protecting privacy.
Availability and recovery: The tool supports high availability and disaster recovery through an array of techniques, including backup, storage mirroring, synchronous, asynchronous, and multitarget system replication.
Extended application services: Through its built-in application server, users can develop services such as REST and ODATA, as well as web applications that can run on multiple locations.
Client access: The product offers clients the ability to access it via other application platforms and languages, including Java, JavaScript, R, and Go.
Application lifecycle management: This set of features facilitates the building and packaging of applications, transporting them for development to test to production, and then deploying them.
Application development: This feature consists of a set of tools that offer application development on premises and in the Cloud. The programming language ABAP includes additional optimized features to build extensions to SAP applications.
Search: The search feature uses SQL to locate text promptly across multiple columns and textual content.
Spatial processing: This product feature provides native support for spatial data types and spatial functions.
Graph: Through this feature, users of the product can store and process highly connected data using a property graph.
Streaming analytics: This feature combines various data sources that users can utilize to discover trends over a set period.
Data integration and replication: The solution offers comprehensive features to handle all data integration scenarios.
Data federation: This feature allows users to perform queries on remote data sources in real time with data federation.
Caching: The capacity to cache data provides users with the ability to optimize federated queries against remote sources of data.

SAP HANA Benefits

SAP HANA provides many benefits for its users. These include:

This solution offers a high level of data and application security, beginning from a secure setup and providing continuous support.
SAP HANA offers augmentation for applications and analytics with built-in machine learning (ML).
The solution works in a timely manner, as it provides a response to queries within seconds in large production applications.
SAP HANA simplifies work, as it provides a single gateway to all user data with advanced data virtualization.
The product is very flexible, as it allows users to deploy applications in a public or private cloud, in multiple clouds, on premises, or hybrid.
SAP HANA scales easily for data volume and concurrent users across a distributed environment.
This is a powerful solution in terms of querying large datasets with a massively parallel processing (MPP) database.
SAP HANA is a versatile product that supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing as well as many data types.
The product provides a smaller data footprint with no data duplication or advanced compression, and reduces data silos.

Reviews from Real Users

According to a database consultant at a pharma/biotech company, SAP HANA is a very robust solution with good data access.

Bruno V., owner at LAVORO AUTOM INF E COM LTDA, likes SAP HANA because the product offers advanced features, helps reduce hours, and makes it easy to find what you need.

SAP

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. SAP HANA

January 2025

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