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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse 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

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.5%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…
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

"It's quite quick for querying, even with large datasets, and it's scalable. It's also flexible to use, so it's easy to update and get data quickly without wasting time."
"I like how Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates with other Microsoft solutions."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is its ability to integrate well with other services offered by Azure."
"The architecture, including compute and storage, is good."
"Synapse Analytics' best feature is its ability to process large files."
"Can capture all the transactional data throughout a company."
"Our primary use case is for gathering data and analytics. We provide insights into vehicle data. We gather millions of records per second and we have various millions of vehicles running across."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the pipeline that is the ETL tool. It's very well designed and is overall very good. We usually don't use the ETL tool in Databricks, but we use the ETL tool in this solution."
"The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."
"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."
"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is its hybrid functionality, allowing users to leverage both SQL-based data warehouse capabilities from HANA and feature-based data warehousing from BW."
"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."
"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."
"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."
 

Cons

"One potential area for improvement could be the availability of an on-premises data lake implementation, as the product is currently only implemented in a cloud environment."
"There may be some challenges in terms of connecting with Virtual Networks (VNETs) to Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics."
"It could be beneficial to focus on integration with various data sources and similar enhancements."
"If I'm looking for something good in the cloud, I would want it to have better standard connectors."
"Right now, we are really struggling with the performance. it's not as good as we had hoped."
"More integration is needed to improve the product for the future."
"I am pretty sure that there are areas that need improvement but I just can think of them off the top of my head."
"I would like to see version control implemented into the data warehouse."
"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."
"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."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid. It could be a bit more flexible, so you can design your data structure and improve performance when creating a solution. Currently, the way data is stored in SAP Business Warehouse is rigid."
"A few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution."
"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."
"One of our requirements is the ability to easily get answers regarding trends and exceptions. In BW, it is not that easy to get such information. I expect better trend and exception detection, better pattern detection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the package not expensive and depends on how much it is used."
"My company pays for the license and I am not sure about the price."
"It goes by the usage, and there are some limits. Synapse goes by particular pricing, and it is expensive. Both Azure Synapse Analytics and Snowflake are pretty expensive. They don't have standard pricing. They deal with each customer differently."
"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 cost of the solution depends on the type of license we choose, such as pay-as-you-go, one-year reserve, or three-year reserve."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an expensive solution and there is a license needed to use it. My company has an enterprise license."
"Pay for what you use"
"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."
"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."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
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?
We use an enterprise-level subscription for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. I would rate our satisfaction with the price around five, as I have not focused much on cost aspects presently.
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
 

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: April 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.