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Oracle Database Appliance 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

Oracle Database Appliance
Ranking in Data Warehouse
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
9th
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 February 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Database Appliance is 5.5%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Charu Mazumdar - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies database management tasks and provides high availability and disaster recovery
Oracle Database Appliance has simplified our database management tasks. Our clients are using the solution for high availability and disaster recovery. Our overall experience with the solution was good, especially the DR. Oracle Database Appliance's integrated storage solutions have enhanced our data management. Oracle Database Appliance's integration with other solutions was straightforward. We faced compatibility issues while moving from another device to this one, and the integration was not seamless. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.
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 product’s valuable feature is its capability to pre-configure and pre-install the settings."
"Oracle is a stable database."
"The solution is simple to use and easy to maintain."
"I give it a nine out of 10 because it gives the customer easy access to a complete database solution within 30 minutes."
"We value the appliance architecture with its “everything-in-a-box” highly standardized setup."
"The product is very light."
"The product is good value for money. It is a secure solution."
"The solution's function we use to benefit the customers is database verification."
"The solution is easier to maintain than traditional SAP products."
"Some of the main features of this solution are that it uses HANA and it has good performance."
"It is a stable solution."
"It is a very stable solution."
"I like that it's quite quick."
"The solution's performance is really good. Also, it's easy to operate, easy to administer, and relatively simple to install."
"It can calculate data in detail. Before we could not calculate financial documents and accountant documents in detail, we could not do it at a document level but now we can. This is the most important feature. It also has predictive analysis memory."
"The solution is based on SAP ERP, so there's some business content already included. For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation."
 

Cons

"The product is quite complex to set up, initially. It would be ideal if it was simpler."
"Oracle's product support is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would be happy to see the Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) pre-installed in it instead of installing it in a separate machine."
"Virtualization needs improvement. It's not easy to back up the virtual machines in the Oracle VM architecture. I would also like to see native support for Veeam Backup Software."
"Virtualization features could also be improved. A web-based GUI would be a good start."
"I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. It has some problems. Databases are huge. This leads to needing more and more RAM and capacity resources, making it hard to scale. Because of this, we use Exadata. That's definitely a point for improvement."
"I would like it if the scalability could be increased without having to change versions."
"The product's pricing is too high. We plan to migrate to another database in three to four years."
"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"From a technical perspective, it could be even more related to legacy systems. The connectivity requirement is quite high and requires systems that are up-to-date."
"The product's initial setup phase is a bit complex."
"The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning."
"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."
"The UI is not user-friendly."
"It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it. The interface could be improved. It's not intuitive to build a data model and use their ETL tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Get benefit from the capacity-on-demand features. License your cores according to your licenses."
"The solution may be expensive, but when we consider the problems it solves, the stability it provides, and the fact that we don't have to buy separate parts and assemble them into a system, it becomes more affordable."
"Compared to Oracle Exadata, Oracle Database Appliance is affordable."
"Leverage the Pay-As-You-Grow licensing, and consider using the ODA X6-2 S/M/L models also for SE2/SE."
"Oracle Database Appliance is a very expensive solution. If you have opted for the on-premises licenses from Oracle, then you have to pay yearly. If you have opted for the cloud subscriptions offered by Oracle, then you can pay either monthly or yearly."
"I would rate the pricing a four on a scale of one (high price) to ten (low cost)."
"In regards to licensing, it is cheaper to maintain for Oracle applications, and it's an all-in-one solution."
"The product is costly."
"The tool is affordable."
"We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"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 cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Oracle Database Appliance?
Oracle Database Appliance provides high stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Database Appliance?
I have heard from colleagues that Oracle is very costly compared to open databases like PostgreSQL. I cannot personally comment on it.
What needs improvement with Oracle Database Appliance?
The scalability part is missing. It isn't as popular as AWS, GCP, or Azure as it lacks scalability and cloud-native services like containerization. The Oracle cloud hasn't reached the level of offe...
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

X5-2
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LifeLock, Incarlopsa, Al Yusur Industrial Contracting
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Database Appliance vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.