Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs SAP Cloud Platform comparison

VMware and SAP are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. VMware is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while SAP is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.1. VMware holds a 10.3% mindshare in PSP, compared to SAP’s 8.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of VMware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

7,551 Views
6,345 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

SAP Cloud Platform

Read 45 SAP Cloud Platform reviews

6,958 Views
5,498 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

SAP Cloud Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

SAP Cloud Platform and Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) compete in the cloud services market catering to enterprise solutions. SAP Cloud Platform seems to have the upper hand in scalability and ERP capabilities, while PCF is noted for its ease of use and support for Java.

Features: SAP Cloud Platform offers extensive integration capabilities, scalability, and cloud-based flexibility, especially excelling in ERP and analytics for large enterprises. Pivotal Cloud Foundry stands out for ease of use, auto-healing, and robust deployment capabilities, allowing developers to focus on business services without technical challenges.

Room for Improvement: SAP Cloud Platform could enhance flexibility in its licensing model, improve integration support, and simplify connectivity with on-premise systems. Pivotal Cloud Foundry needs to enhance its support for more configurations and make migration processes easier while addressing complexity and adding advanced features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP Cloud Platform is primarily deployed in public cloud environments with strong customer support, though response times could be faster. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is available on private and public clouds, offering user-friendly deployment but requires improved customer service and faster support.

Pricing and ROI: SAP Cloud Platform is considered expensive for small enterprises with a difficult pricing model, yet offers significant ROI for large businesses by improving processes and reducing maintenance costs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry’s pricing is high but competitive, providing good ROI potential similar to other solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. SAP Cloud Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. SAP Cloud Platform

April 2025

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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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

8th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP Cloud Platform

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.3%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Cloud Platform is 8.2%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Vasundhara Joshi

Senior Software Engineer at Wells Fargo

Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users

Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

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PinakiGhosh

COO at Data Core Systems

The implementation cycle has been reduced significantly but has room for integration enhancements

Our existing customers who are on ECC are on-premises. They are migrating to SAP Cloud Platform, specifically on S4HANA. One of our clients was on SAP ECC on-premises, and they are moving to the cloud on S4HANA on the public cloud system. We are supporting about 15 customers, mostly small to…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."

"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."

"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."

"We find its stability and scalability valuable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

"To be able to define multiple sub accounts in order to accommodate and separate development, test, and productive environments."

"The ability to build custom applications on the BTP platform, reducing customization on the SAP HANA system and improving performance and management."

"The product is very stable."

"SAP Cloud Platform's performance is much faster than the on-premises solution because of continuous fine-tuning by their team."

"The product's initial setup phase is pretty straightforward."

"The most valuable features of the SAP Cloud Platform are the extensions and integrations. Additionally, there are a lot of AI-based microservices."

"Great Integration Suite, with CPI being its stable component."

"The pre-delivered content from the SAP cloud platform is definitely a strength."

More SAP Cloud Platform pros

Cons

"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."

"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"It should offer more security features."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

"Shows errors without providing any analysis."

"Regarding improvements, I think the user experience, specifically the developer experience during design time, could be better. Platforms like MuleSoft and Flowgear have much better design times."

"SAP Cloud Platform's installation is not straightforward. You need a person with knowledge to handle it."

"The product needs improvement for serverless native integrations. They should opt for serverless features as all the customers worldwide choose cloud-based products."

"Allowing more third-party applications to be integrated into the cloud platform would make it easier for customers to adopt SAP Cloud Platform."

"There is a lot of room for improvement in customer service and support. The availability of knowledgeable support to the implementation partners and the customers could be better."

"From what I understand, the SAP Cloud Platform is for implementation on AWS or Azure, and it's not meant to be a full-fledged cloud solution, so while using the platform, an area for improvement is that it has fewer offerings and is less flexible when compared to AWS. AWS has a lot more flexibility than the SAP Cloud Platform. I've also used Azure in college and AWS in between, and I prefer AWS over the SAP Cloud Platform. The only reason I would ever stick with the SAP Cloud Platform is to create applications integrated with SAP or with other companies within SAP, such as SuccessFactors. When you go into the SAP Cloud Platform web page, it's a bit bland and has relatively limited offerings. For example, there doesn't seem to be in-house MongoDB support, but I realize there's in-house support for the PostgreSQL database, so there are fewer offerings in the SAP Cloud Platform. Yes, you can always go for a database on the actual MongoDB server rather than depending on the offerings of the SAP Cloud Platform. However, it's still better to support MongoDB from the platform, so payment is consolidated, rather than going to a different location to make a payment. Another room for improvement in the SAP Cloud Platform is the need to create an SAP subaccount if you need to use the platform unless you have an SSO login by Google or if you're using a different identity provider such as Microsoft or Google. Instead of requiring dependency on SAP, it would be good if users could use the SAP Cloud Platform even without a subaccount on SAP. For example, when hosting an application on AWS or Azure, you don't have to create an account in Amazon or Microsoft. You can still do it using Google. You can use almost anything, so I'd like SAP to improve by removing the dependency, particularly the requirement to create an SAP account to use the SAP Cloud Platform."

"We need to connect our ERP solution via the VPN. We need to make sure our ERP solutions aren't exposed to the outside world. Our teams really struggle with this."

More SAP Cloud Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."

"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"SAP Cloud Platform is generally more expensive than the other options."

"SAP Cloud Platform is expensive. It can be quite costly."

"The price of the solution depends on the package that is purchased. There are many packages to choose from. The packages are not overly expensive."

"The cost when it comes to monitoring can be difficult."

"The product's pricing varies and depends on the customers' needs."

"SAP provides good discounts."

"SAP Cloud Platform costs $2 to $5 per hour, while I found other platforms way more affordable. You have to pay per use, though that's fine because that means the cost is flexible."

"SAP Cloud Platform is an expensive solution."

More SAP Cloud Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

39%

Manufacturing Company

19%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...

See all answers

What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?

I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?

I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.

See all answers

Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?

One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...

See all answers

How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?

How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP Cloud Platform?

The product improved our company's business operations since we got value out of it.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 32% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 31% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 1% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Amazon AWS vs SAP Cloud Platform

Compared 28% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs SAP Cloud Platform

Compared 28% of the time

Google Cloud vs SAP Cloud Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs SAP Cloud Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Integration Cloud Service vs SAP Cloud Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More SAP Cloud Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

March 2025

Download Pivotal Cloud Foundry product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Cloud Platform

March 2025

Download SAP Cloud Platform product report

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)

SAP HANA Cloud Platform

Overview

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading enterprise PaaS, powered by Cloud Foundry. PCF provides a cloud-native application platform that allows you to continuously deliver any app to every major private and public cloud with a single platform. PCF is proven to accelerate feature delivery with higher developer productivity and a 200:1 developer to operator ratio. PCF's built-in security and self-healing capabilities reduce risk in your app portfolio while maintaining high-availability at scale to keep customer facing systems online even in the most challenging circumstances. pivotal.io

VMware

SAP Cloud Platform is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and PaaS cloud tool. It powers applications that deliver real-time insights to contribute to more effective and timely decision-making. Customers all over the world from different-sized companies use SAP Cloud Platform to build application extensions, integrate landscapes, or extend existing enterprise applications in the cloud.

The platform incorporates innovative technologies, including big data, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). SAP Cloud Platform supports native services and products by SAP, as well as partners with popular platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon AWS, and Alibaba Cloud.

Users of the product can extend, integrate, and develop applications on premises and in the cloud. The product offers flexibility, agility, and scalability, as it enables easy integration and connection of different applications within the platform. The solution is based on open standards and provides a wide range of development tools.

SAP has announced that they are removing SAP Cloud Platform as a brand name and moving its capabilities within SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). The features of SAP Cloud Platform will be integrated into SAP BTP to assist with data management and analytics, alongside other components of the platform. Existing customers of SAP Cloud Platform will continue to benefit from its products under SAP Integration Suite and SAP Extension Suite.

SAP Cloud Platform Capabilities

The solution offers a wide variety of tools, application capabilities, services, and application programming interface (API). These can be categorized in the following ways:

Enterprise extensions: The features of SAP Cloud Platform in this category include SAP Localization Hub, Tax Service, Data Enrichment for SAP S/4HANA, SAP Data Quality Management, SAP Business Application Studio, ABAP environment, and SAP Web IDE.
Intelligent BPM: This set of features includes SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Process Visibility, Business Rules, and Workflow.
Integration Suite: The features of SAP Cloud Platform in this category include Open Connectors, OData Provisioning, API Management, Cloud Integration, and Smart Data Integration.
Digital experience: Features in this category include SAP Conversational AI, Mobile Services, Document Service, Portal, SAP Build, SAPUI5, and SAP Fiori Cloud.
Data-driven insights: This category of capabilities includes SAP Leonardo Internet of Things, SAP Data Intelligence, SAP Edge Services, IoT, SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Web Analytics, SAP Streaming Analytics, SAP ASE Service, and SAP Analytics Cloud.
Platform foundation: Alert Notification, Application Logging, Data Retention Manager, Job Scheduler, Java Server, and Transport Management are included in this group of capabilities.

SAP Cloud Platform Benefits

The platform has many benefits which improve their client’s workflows. They include the following:

SAP Cloud Platform facilitates the seamless integration of existing solutions and hybrid system landscapes.
The solution assists companies to deliver tailored end-to-end interfaces for improved user experience through software development kits (SDKs).
It simplifies application interface management through the option of building apps in the Kubernetes environment.
SAP Cloud Platform simplifies the development of native business applications through the various development tools and capabilities it offers.
It provides companies with a wide range of pre-configured business services.
Companies are offered the possibility to streamline the integration of new apps with a lowered overall cost of ownership.
The product can reduce costs for organizations, as it does not require an up-front investment in software or hardware.
The solution can increase productivity for developers through its supported open programming standards.

Reviews from Real Users

Shylaraj AK, a senior architect at a construction company, describes SAP Cloud Platform as easy to maintain, great features, and helpful support, which attributes to his high rating for the product.

Ehab-El H., chief executive officer at Asis, likes SAP Cloud Platform because it is easy to use with a fast deployment and straightforward setup.

SAP

Sample Customers

Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank

Siemens, Shell & Volkswagen, Still, EarlySense, Roche, National Football League, Heidelberg University Hospital, In Mind Computing, The Timken Company, OPAL, EnterpriseJungle, Groupe Danone, Accenture, T-Systems, Sailing Team Germany, Sloan Valve

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. SAP Cloud Platform

April 2025

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