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Apache Spark 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Spark
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Compute Service (4th), Java Frameworks (2nd)
SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (4th), Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, able to expand, and handle large amounts of data well
We use batch processing. It works well with our formats and file versions. There's a lot of functionality. In our pipeline each hour, we make a copy of data from MongoDB, of the changes from MongoDB to some specific file. Each time pipeline copied all of the data, it would do it each time without changes to all of the tables. Tables have a lot of data, and in the last MongoDB version, there is a possibility to read only changed data. This reduced the cost and configuration of the cluster, and we saved about $150,000. The solution is scalable. It's a stable product.
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like Apache Spark's flexibility the most. Before, we had one server that would choke up. With the solution, we can easily add more nodes when needed. The machine learning models are also really helpful. We use them to predict energy theft and find infrastructure problems."
"The memory processing engine is the solution's most valuable aspect. It processes everything extremely fast, and it's in the cluster itself. It acts as a memory engine and is very effective in processing data correctly."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its capacity for processing large amounts of data."
"We use Spark to process data from different data sources."
"There's a lot of functionality."
"The product is useful for analytics."
"The good performance. The nice graphical management console. The long list of ML algorithms."
"The solution has been very stable."
"The data in HANA is stored in columns rather than rows, which speeds up searches and aggregations."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"It is very flexible to integrate with SaaS components."
"The solution is marvelous because it controls everything including workflow and that makes our company more productive."
"The memory is the solution's most valuable feature. It's the main feature of HANA. Others are still the regular IT databases that are on storage and are therefore much slower than HANA. The solution is quite fast."
"Some functions have good performance."
"We have found that the Fiori Apps are particularly good."
"The in-memory database is excellent."
 

Cons

"It should support more programming languages."
"Include more machine learning algorithms and the ability to handle streaming of data versus micro batch processing."
"I would like to see integration with data science platforms to optimize the processing capability for these tasks."
"When you are working with large, complex tasks, the garbage collection process is slow and affects performance."
"When you want to extract data from your HDFS and other sources then it is kind of tricky because you have to connect with those sources."
"At the initial stage, the product provides no container logs to check the activity."
"They could improve the issues related to programming language for the platform."
"We've had problems using a Python process to try to access something in a large volume of data. It crashes if somebody gives me the wrong code because it cannot handle a large volume of data."
"Unlike other databases, it lacks management features that legacy databases like Oracle or SQL servers have. They need to make the solution easier to manage and offer tools that make management more effective. A lot of things you have on traditional databases you have to develop into HANA."
"SAP HANA isn't user-friendly, and it's very hard to train newcomers to use it."
"Needs graphical programming without coding."
"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."
"A documents preview could be helpful."
"It's a complex initial setup."
"I give the scalability of SAP HANA a six out of ten."
"The pricing could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source platform. We do not pay for its subscription."
"I did not pay anything when using the tool on cloud services, but I had to pay on the compute side. The tool is not expensive compared with the benefits it offers. I rate the price as an eight out of ten."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"Considering the product version used in my company, I feel that the tool is not costly since the product is available for free."
"On the cloud model can be expensive as it requires substantial resources for implementation, covering on-premises hardware, memory, and licensing."
"Licensing costs can vary. For instance, when purchasing a virtual machine, you're asked if you want to take advantage of the hybrid benefit or if you prefer the license costs to be included upfront by the cloud service provider, such as Azure. If you choose the hybrid benefit, it indicates you already possess a license for the operating system and wish to avoid additional charges for that specific VM in Azure. This approach allows for a reduction in licensing costs, charging only for the service and associated resources."
"They provide an open-source license for the on-premise version."
"It is quite expensive. In fact, it accounts for almost 50% of the cost of our entire project."
"It comes with a significant cost."
"Setup and licensing require planning and proper budgeting, as it is not cheap."
"The licensing cost for SAP HANA is approximately $200 per user per month."
"Price-wise, the product falls on the higher side of the spectrum. There is no need to pay for maintenance and support additionally. Support is available for bug fixes in the product."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"The price of licensing is dependent on the size of the project, however, we have found that there is scope to negotiate the cost. If the solution is implemented on-premises there may be some extra costs for hosting etc."
"There is an annual payment needed to use the solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
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 Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Compared to other solutions like Doc DB, Spark is more costly due to the need for extensive infrastructure. It requires significant investment in infrastructure, which can be expensive. While cloud...
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
The Spark solution could improve in scheduling tasks and managing dependencies. Spark alone cannot handle sequential tasks, requiring environments like Airflow scheduler or scripts. For instance, o...
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

No data available
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.