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SAP BW4HANA vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

SAP Business Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (15th)
SAP BW4HANA
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai
Have encountered complexity with programming language while working on large-scale data integration and have experienced improved governance and reporting
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehouse, I would to see added features that simplify the product very well now. They are coming up with a terminology called SAP BDC where they are consolidating their tools, SAP Data Sphere for integration and SAP BW for the ETL and warehousing parts, and SAP Analytics Cloud. They are packaging these three features and calling it Business Data Cloud; they are fully coming on the cloud. We have to wait and watch; they have been speaking about BW/4HANA for quite some time now, but the customers or clients I work with are not finding great interest and it was seen as a candidate for evaluation. I have seen people looking at the latest technologies who are already on cloud who started building from scratch on cloud, such as Snowflake or Databricks, which can process very huge amounts of data and also address unstructured data, where SAP lags behind in cases where there is a need to bring in unstructured data. I have worked with SAP Data Intelligence, which earlier used to be called SAP Data Hub. The unstructured data is not greatly handled in SAP at this point in time.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"We switched to SAP because the solution is more comfortable to work with."
"I think BW is one of the best products at the moment."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs."
"The fact that it can integrate with Microsoft Excel is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform."
"The Real-time InfoCube is quite useful in terms of getting information fast when we need it."
"Some of the main features of this solution are that it uses HANA and it has good performance."
"Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool."
"The solution seamlessly integrates with SAP products."
"We benefited from BW/4HANA's ability to utilize predefined content inside. We didn't need to start from scratch."
"It is a stable solution...The initial setup was easy."
"For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation."
"Its direct approach is the most valuable. You get more real time and capabilities than BW."
"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

"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid."
"It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore."
"I would for sure like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"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."
"When some things go wrong, it becomes extremely unreliable."
"The big minuses are its not being user friendly."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy."
"The integration with AI/ML in SAP BW4HANA is currently very limited, which is definitely an area that needs improvement."
"Other competitors provide better solutions that are more up to date with current technology."
"Support could be more reliable."
"I cannot integrate it with my other tools. It's not possible to do something in the predictive analysis. Mobile reporting is also not available."
"It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it."
"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."
"Other competitors provide better solutions that are more up to date with current technology. For example, machine learning and artificial intelligence."
"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and support is especially very expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"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."
"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 solution is quite expensive."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"The cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs."
"The tool is affordable."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"This is an expensive solution and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution."
"We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The pricing for SAP Business Warehouse is on the expensive side. I am not sure about the current costing model as such. In my experience on cloud, I did not use BW HANA Cloud. I used the cloud prod...
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehou...
What is your primary use case for SAP Business Warehouse?
I am using SAP Business Warehouse in my organization for data warehousing as well as an ETL tool. Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward. Integration with SAP ER...
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

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
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Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BW4HANA vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,664 professionals have used our research since 2012.