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Dell PowerStore vs SAP BW4HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Dell PowerStore
Ranking in Data Warehouse
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 0.7%. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.5%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Brian Ricci - PeerSpot reviewer
It's constantly enhanced and has impressive reliability and data compression
The maintenance is a bit expensive. The service and support are there for three years, but after the third year, it is pretty pricey for renewal. I hope Dell addresses that. Everything is pricey these days anyway. It is not like the old days of Compellent. We used to be able to see the metrics for our customers. On Compellent, we could look up that customer and see all the metrics. That is not allowed for us now. We cannot do that anymore. I have to be explicitly allowed by the customer to do that, and some companies' security does not allow that.
Csaba Grünblatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities
SAP BW4HANA improved data reporting processes significantly. Performance on HANA database is good. Well-built data models ensure consistent and fast reporting. Reusable models enhance efficiency, even for SaaS services. In-memory computing, especially since HANA, has greatly improved performance in data analysis tasks. It eliminates the need for complex optimizations like creating indexes or aggregates. Queries that once took minutes now run in seconds, enabling real-time reporting, especially for SAP ECC on HANA. SAP BW4HANA's integration capabilities are streamlined with a simplified architecture and more virtual layers. You can directly load data into optimized layers, reducing the need for extra storage. The introduction of Open ODS Views allows for additional logic and master data inclusion, making integration faster and simpler. The learning curve for SAP BW4HANA is much faster now compared to ten years ago, thanks to abundant free resources like documentation, videos, blogs, and learning journeys provided by SAP. It is simpler to learn with these resources available compared to the past when you had to attend courses and rely on books. I would recommend SAP BW4HANA to users looking to implement it, especially if they want to keep their systems on-premise and already have SAP systems. Those with BW on HANA have two choices: BW4HANA or DataSphere, depending on their cloud strategy. If they are advanced in their cloud strategy and want to migrate off-premise, DataSphere is a good choice. However, for a robust solution on-premise or in a private cloud, BW4HANA is an excellent option. Overall, I would rate BW4HANA as a nine out of ten. It performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities. We use it traditionally, with complex transformations and models but with less emphasis on real-time processing and third-party sources.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspects of Dell PowerStore are integration with VMware and reliability."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores..."
"Dell PowerStore is an easy and fast tool to work through our company's data."
"The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor."
"It is a stable solution."
"PowerStore is easy to use. All the drives use soft encryption. To upgrade it, you download the app, and it runs by itself. It's very easy to deploy, share, and create volumes."
"Moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster is quite easy based on my experience with Dell PowerStore."
"The data encryption is good and available in a standard license. There are snapshot and backup capabilities."
"We like that it is an SAP product, so we can easily connect with the SAP ERP system."
"The solution is easier to maintain than traditional SAP products."
"The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that the infrastructure is easy to understand."
"The most valuable feature is that it's robust."
"The UI is completely new, beautiful, and user-friendly. There are some other helpful features like global filters and advanced tools. We can perform custom calculations easily From a technical perspective, the performance has been enhanced and optimized for a limited number of flows. The content settings are more advanced, and there are so many other features that I can't name them all."
"I like the reporting features of the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
 

Cons

"It doesn't support SSD or Flash."
"We need to find a way to ensure the cache data is safe and secure."
"I have not seen anything specific. The only thing I can think of that needs improvement is the price."
"The data resiliency and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are just normal and would be considered medium; we need additional components such as cybersecurity vault for increased resilience."
"Dell PowerStore is an unfinished product compared to the HPE systems because it is relatively new."
"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."
"When you create a case on Dell's support website, you don't always get someone who is experienced in the kind of systems you need help with...making it an area where Dell's support team needs to make improvements."
"The data resiliency and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are just normal and would be considered medium; we need additional components such as cybersecurity vault for increased resilience."
"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."
"The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning."
"The monitoring for the remodeling feature is very difficult to understand."
"There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP."
"One thing that could be enhanced in SAP BW4HANA is the user interface for process chains."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"There's one area where the other vendors have an upper edge, which is the data lake. I think SAP is trying to figure out whether to stick with IQ, their own data lake solution, or push customers toward customer-preferred vendors, like Azure Data Lake, AWS, or any other provider."
"I don't see SAP actively supporting the solution now...a better support from SAP would be appreciated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Dell PowerStore could improve. The price should be managed more compared to Huawei Dorado or IBM All-Flash series."
"The rate is always too high. Nobody likes paying for it. I have not seen a client yet who says that the price should be higher. Initially, people look at it, but when they see what the benefits are, it is a no-brainer. We can give them good pricing at the outset."
"The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment."
"In terms of licensing, my organization has Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA), but I don't know exactly how it works, though it is a big bundle of licenses for Dell Data Domain, Dell EMC Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Dell ECS, and all such kinds of storage arrays."
"The solution's price was comparable to other products for the use case, size, and setup."
"The price of Dell EMC PowerStore could be better, it is a bit expensive."
"We are happy with the pricing that we get from Dell."
"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."
"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"In general, it's quite expensive."
"For some, the rates offered by SAP can be costly while for others it may seem cheap. The price ultimately depends on how you have negotiated your contract with SAP."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...
What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?
We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.
 

Also Known As

PowerStore
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.