Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon EMR vs SAP HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Companies using Amazon EMR often experience significant ROI, with savings up to 20% and substantial returns over on-premise systems.
Sentiment score
6.6
SAP HANA offers efficiency and customization but has integration challenges; some appreciate its free features despite resource demands.
We do not feel we're getting value for the investment due to the additional resources needed for integration and maintenance.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon EMR support is generally proactive and efficient, but experiences vary, especially during open-source product integration.
Sentiment score
6.3
Customer service excels but technical support varies, with delays on complex issues and room for improving response times.
They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.
While issues are resolved eventually, the first level of support is not as good as we would like.
The support is lacking and not worth the premium price.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon EMR effectively scales to enterprise needs, with auto-scaling and adaptability, despite occasional peak demand resource allocation delays.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA efficiently scales for diverse enterprises, supporting thousands of users and large applications with minimal downtime.
Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.
Our operations have grown from a hundred data operations a day to as many in a couple of seconds.
There is enough scalability offered by SAP to meet our deployment needs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EMR is generally stable and reliable, despite occasional data-related stability issues, with robust failover and monitoring features.
Sentiment score
7.9
SAP HANA is stable and reliable, with users satisfied, though some prefer traditional databases; regular maintenance is crucial.
Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.
We have not had any problems in the last seven to eight years.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR struggles with a steep learning curve, complex configurations, unpredictable costs, and needs enhancements in stability and support.
SAP HANA struggles with pricing, integration, customization, and performance, necessitating better support, user interface, and training solutions.
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.
The main issue is the ecosystem, which lacks the widespread support that SQL enjoys.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR's costs vary by resources used, with potential high monthly expenses, requiring careful management to prevent surprises.
SAP HANA's pricing is high, benefiting large enterprises, but costly for small businesses despite flexible licensing options.
Cost optimization can be achieved through instance usage, cluster sharing, and auto-scaling.
It's a recurring subscription model, which is expensive compared to legacy systems with just a maintenance fee.
SAP is not a cheap company, and its licenses are expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EMR is scalable, easy to use, cost-effective, integrates well with Hadoop, and supports diverse analytics applications.
SAP HANA offers real-time capabilities, rapid data retrieval, seamless integration, advanced analytics, and robust security for diverse organizational functions.
Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.
The concept enhances speed, allowing the database to serve and move data quickly.
This architecture allows for faster data processing and real-time analytics that were not possible with traditional databases.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd), Cloud Data Warehouse (12th)
SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (4th), Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless data integration enhances reporting efficiency and an easy setup
Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources. The service charges are based on processing only, depending on the resources used, which can help save money. It is easy to integrate with other services for storage, allowing data to be shifted to cheaper storage based on usage.
Jayarami Reddy Pujeri - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Hadoop solutions are best for your needs.
849,210 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EMR?
Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
Compared to others, Amazon seems efficient and is considered good for Big Data workloads. Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 ( /products/amazon-ec2-reviews ) instances...
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ) buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integrati...
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...
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...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,210 professionals have used our research since 2012.