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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
91
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 8.7%, down from 13.1% 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

Matthew Spieth - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial real-time analytics, simple setup, and useful tutorials
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve its compatibility with Visual Studio. One of the challenges for people moving from an on-premise to a cloud solution, such as Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, is that you're constantly working in a browser. There are people that have been working for decades on desktop applications. For them to start working in a browser, it's quite a change. Allowing people to work and do their work inside Visual Studio than in the browser, would be a large advantage.
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 platform has multiple valuable use cases. They include performance, compatibility, flexibility, and cost."
"Azure elasticity allows us to scale as much as we want, and it is pay-as-you-go, so we can scale up as we need to."
"The initial setup was really easy and straightforward."
"The features most valuable are the simplicity, how easy it is to create a dashboard from different information systems."
"This is a stable solution with many functionalities."
"We have found that it is easy to develop and to do the analytics in the modules of data."
"The solution can scale."
"I love the way all the application resources from Microsoft can synchronize, help me with a lot of stuff, and reduce the time or hour of having maybe a resource for an hour a day while also being able to use artificial intelligence."
"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."
"I like that it integrates to open-source."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."
"Now, because of the HANA integration, the hard disk and RAM are together, and because of that, the output is very quick and very fast actually."
"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 real-time information is great."
"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"It would be of interest to improve things like the web service integration and availability in terms of being easy to create internal web services in the database."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve in usability. I have found the same issue with all Microsoft solutions."
"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."
"Non-structured data is unavailable with this product."
"It could be more stable."
"One area that could be improved is the schema management."
"Synapse Analytics is generally stable, but its performance can be slow when performing very large datasets."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve its compatibility with Visual Studio. One of the challenges for people moving from an on-premise to a cloud solution, such as Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, is that you're constantly working in a browser. There are people that have been working for decades on desktop applications. For them to start working in a browser, it's quite a change. Allowing people to work and do their work inside Visual Studio than in the browser, would be a large advantage."
"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data."
"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."
"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."
"So far, the initial setup process in our company has not been easy enough for us to understand."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."
"I'm not sure if our issue is related to BW or the Analysis Office. However, we're having performance issues in terms of time. It takes a long time to generate the report."
"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It just depends on how big your instance is. It could be anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 per year depending on how big your instance is. You pay based on how big you make your database. Essentially, they charge you per hour of usage."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an expensive solution and there is a license needed to use it. My company has an enterprise license."
"The solution is subscription-based. You can also pay to use the product as you go."
"It requires a less expensive version because currently, not every customer is able to buy it. If it could have a smaller setup that doesn't require so many resources, it would be helpful, and we would be able to use it in more cases. We are a small country, and most of our customers are quite small businesses."
"I'm not sure of the exact cost, however, it is around $100,000 a year."
"We have a licensing cost to pay."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can be costly, however, a cost-effective approach would be to purchase it in advance through reservation for either one or three years. This will significantly reduce the overall expenses incurred."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"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."
"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."
"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
48%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

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 financial aspect, including pricing and cost reduction, is not something I focus on.
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: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.