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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 9.1%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 1.4%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Sunil Gidwani - PeerSpot reviewer
No competitors provide the entire solution to one place
I rate Azure Synapse Analytics eight out of 10. No competitors provide the entire solution to one place like Synapse. For example, a database just focuses moving and manipulating data, etc. But Synapse is like an all-inclusive workspace. I advise other people to go with Databricks Notebook if you need a computation engine. It has a solid SQL storage procedure. Suppose you are dealing with complex transformation logic and manipulation of run-time data flows. In that case, it's better to use Databricks than any Microsoft ADF. DataBricks looks more promising in terms of computing in memory, so we integrated Databricks in Synapse.
JavedKhan1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers powerful analytics and integration capabilities but requires improved upgrade processes
SAP Business Warehouse could have been better. There is room for improvement from a technical perspective. So, from a technical perspective, when we are upgrading a Business Warehouse server or we are migrating from one place to another, the capability required for this upgradation has many manual activities. It took us around a month to streamline our server. Let’s say there are some transaction codes. Transaction code is a set of programs, and when you want to run a program from the backend, you need to hit the transaction code. It is called a T-code. So during the upgrade, many transaction codes get affected, and as a security consultant, it is my responsibility to recheck those transaction codes which are affected. Sometimes more than 100 codes may get affected, sometimes 500, and sometimes more as well. So, it takes a hell lot of time to integrate them again. That is a limitation or defect within the SAP Business Warehouse. SAP Business Warehouse should come up with proper solutions. Upgradation is an automatic activity. It should happen by itself. We just need to initiate it, and the backend SAP server is automatically upgraded. But it should handle the transactional code as well. They should not get absolutely, and any authorization object should not get deleted from the transaction codes. So, that functionality SAP Business Warehouse should come up with.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integrated workspace in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics where everything comes together, such as Power BI and Data Factory, is very good. Additionally, the ability to do dedicated SQL pooling is a benefit."
"They are very reliable and cost-effective."
"The solution operates like a typical SQL Server environment so there is no alienation in terms of technical knowledge."
"It's scalable; you can scale up and scale down."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"We find the serverless tool to be the most valuable feature ."
"I like the keynotes and their simplicity. Like other Microsoft products, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is simple to understand and use."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are its serverless flexibility and complete power have allowed me to explore various different use cases. While I am not an expert in the product, my experience in programming in Databricks has shown me that Microsoft's investments in Synapse could potentially lead to it becoming a complete replacement for Databricks in the future."
"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."
"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."
"The product is very stable."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is its ability to feed data into new, multiple systems in various formats. It can open its data to any system over gateway services or a portal or application that needs to consume and analyze data."
"Predominantly, our company uses SAP Business Warehouse for reporting purposes across various departments, especially for managers to gain a quick understanding of their current standing and make informed decisions."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is transformation, where I extract data from different sources, particularly the raw data. Then I do some transformations and store that in a format that allows me to do reporting easily."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its user interface. You can use it for analytical purposes, but its platform should be a little bit more user-friendly. Another small point for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its stability. It's good currently, but it could still be improved. Microsoft is combining different tools and technologies into one solution, so in the future, I'm expecting to see even more improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next version of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the drag-and-drop feature. If you're doing some integrations where you can write Scala or you have SPARK programming or SQL, or you're combining different programming, the process should be seamless, and you should be able to drag and drop in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. When doing reporting in the solution, you should also be able to drag and drop. There should be connectors available and a drag-and-drop feature available in the user interface of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, so you won't have to worry about how all processes would work together. You need to be able to drag and drop even from the backend, and having this feature will make the solution more user-friendly."
"The solution should offer a serverless model like Snowflake."
"The only concern for us is the cost part. When it comes to the implementation and the support and maintenance, we see high-cost implications."
"One area for improvement could be better integration with Power BI, as well as data integration with BW."
"The support and price could improve."
"I would like to see better integration with Active Directory, because we have had problems, and we still do."
"Unfortunately, we have had some issues with the dashboard reporting. Sometimes, the data for specific periods would just appear blank on the dashboard. To investigate this, we worked with a Microsoft incident agent and it turned out to be a result of bugs in the platform when dealing with specific types of queries in Azure Data Factory."
"Managing workloads and data transformation using Databricks should be a focus."
"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."
"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."
"It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price is dependent of the use case of the customer. Customers are not likely to only use this as an individual platform/database, they are likely to bundle it with the Azure stack."
"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The licensing fees for this solution are on a pay-per-use basis, and not very expensive."
"Price varies by use-case. You pay for the database itself in addition to any consumed data within Serverless plus other fees if you use the Data Factory that is inside."
"The price of the package not expensive and depends on how much it is used."
"You have to be very careful with one specific service inside Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics which is called the Sequel Data Warehouse Dedicated. It is very reliable and performs well, but it's expensive. You need to define the tier well because you can choose between several tiers and you have to define which suits your needs and not overperform the tier because it's quite expensive."
"I don't know about the price, but I'm trying to get a sense of the cost."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"The licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse depends on your revenue. Its licensing structure is a little bit complicated. The more your revenue is, the higher the price, but SAP does have different pricing structures for various companies. For small businesses, licensing isn't based on revenue, but for big companies, it's revenue-based. There's some agreement regarding pricing for huge companies, so it's different, and SAP Business Warehouse pricing isn't fixed. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse as five because it's very high. As your revenue grows, your licensing cost also increases, so you have to factor that in when calculating your cost."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
44%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The cost is reasonable for our company. There is no license cost; we pay only for Azure Compute's costs. It is important to manage the cost efficiently on a daily basis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The solution is quite expensive. We paid a yearly subscription fee.
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
Over a period, we realized that the license and maintenance costs were quite expensive. Every day, we had to run the background job ODS. Eventually, we moved away from SAP Business Warehouse and bo...
 

Also Known As

Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.