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Oracle Exadata 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.0
Oracle Exadata offers significant ROI in 12-18 months, with cost savings, performance gains, but challenges in ROI calculation.
Sentiment score
6.6
SAP BW4HANA enhances data management, offering in-memory analytics for better insights, decision-making, productivity, and potential ROI over time.
The investment is good, which is why people choose this hardware.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Oracle Exadata support is generally positive, but response consistency varies, with mixed reactions to Platinum services.
Sentiment score
5.7
SAP BW4HANA support is generally reliable with good resources, but response times vary based on service agreements.
If I were to rate their support from one to ten, I would say between nine to ten.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
This involved creating blueprints for integrating Oracle products into client systems, followed by technical presentations to Oracle teams and stakeholders.
CISO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Exadata comes with a platinum gateway and comprehensive support, which often gets immediate attention with severity one cases.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
In the meantime, I found solutions independently and provided two solutions to my client.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
I am satisfied with the response time and quality.
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle Exadata provides highly rated scalability, enabling easy expansion and efficient resource addition for varying organizational demands.
Sentiment score
6.9
SAP BW4HANA is scalable for enterprise needs and effective on the cloud, despite hardware costs and no auto-scaling.
Within a site, scalability is excellent.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Oracle Exadata is stable and reliable, with improved updates, despite occasional bugs and initial firmware issues.
Sentiment score
7.5
SAP BW4HANA is reliable and stable, though scalability issues exist; cloud enhancements improve performance and integration with SAP strategy.
Once installed, Exadata is very stable.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle Exadata users face high costs and complexity, seeking better performance, support, and integration with cloud technologies.
SAP BW4HANA is viewed as complex, costly, lacking modern features, difficult to integrate, and needing better scalability and support.
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
I cannot create an extended rack cluster with one node on one site and another node on a different site.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
There are minor areas where improvement is needed, such as making the user interface more user-friendly and enhancing configuration and customization options.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Integration needs improvement.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
The integration with AI/ML in SAP BW4HANA is currently very limited, which is definitely an area that needs improvement.
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Oracle Exadata offers high performance but is costly, suitable for large enterprises with potential cost-saving strategies available.
SAP BW4HANA is often considered costly due to extra fees, with varied pricing experiences among different enterprise clients.
I would rate the price an eight on a scale from one to ten, indicating it is fairly expensive.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
The certification cost for SAP BW4HANA in 2025 is expected to be one lakh forty thousand.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
 

Valuable Features

Oracle Exadata offers fast response, high performance, scalability, and efficient data warehousing through advanced features and seamless hardware-software integration.
SAP BW4HANA provides fast, flexible analytics, real-time reporting, scalability, and easy integration, enhancing decision-making with robust features.
It also offers high backend speed between self-storage units and servers, which is beneficial for processing.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
The most valuable features of Oracle Exadata are its high availability and cluster environment.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
The capability to handle a large amount of data and perform ETL operations is most valuable.
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The best features include the ability to create data sources directly on tables, and perform mapping without creating info objects.
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Exadata
Ranking in Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Exadata is 9.9%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.7%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Exadata9.9%
SAP BW4HANA3.7%
Other86.4%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Has consistently delivered high performance and aligned security while evolving with AI-driven improvements
When discussing Oracle Exadata, the main thing is the specialized database appliance, the flash cache, and the engineered machine on the database for the database itself. Overall, all the features are useful and meaningful for any database like Oracle to run the Oracle database. Regarding Smart Scan technology, it is for better performance. If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself. Oracle Exadata's advanced compression techniques have affected my customer's data storage efficiency positively, with the feature being great, but as of now, our customer is not using that. I find its security measures align with my customer's organization, as security is aligned as per the customer's requirement. It has helped optimize performance and cost.
HP
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
Support and pricing challenges overshadow user expertise
In SAP BW4HANA, I have worked in modeling, extraction, and reporting. I have experience with different tools including Power BI, BEx tools, Web Intelligence reports, and SSC. The best features include the ability to create data sources directly on tables, and perform mapping without creating info objects. It directly maps to target fields and source fields. There is no info cube concept, only ODS concept. We can create BEx queries in HANA itself, not as a separate tool. The modeling and reporting processes are easier to accomplish.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Oracle Exadata?
It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly. Even you can talk to the d...
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 needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
The integration with AI/ML in SAP BW4HANA is currently very limited, which is definitely an area that needs improvement. The second area for improvement is integration with third-party systems, whi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Exadata vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.