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SAP Business Warehouse vs SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud 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 HANA Enterprise Cloud
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SAP Business Warehouse is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 2.4%, up 1.1% compared to last year.
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS), holds 1.4% mindshare, down 1.7% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Business Warehouse2.4%
Snowflake15.2%
Databricks10.2%
Other72.2%
Cloud Data Warehouse
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud1.4%
Amazon AWS16.1%
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)9.2%
Other73.3%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

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.
Salman Mukhtar Baig - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Technical Manager at VS Furniture Middle East
Cloud access has improved reporting and sales operations across global locations
I cannot say anything about what areas of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud could be improved or enhanced because so far, we are happy with this implementation. We are not facing any problem, or I cannot say that this can be improved. Although SAP keeps improving themselves day by day, we cannot say that SAP needs to improve anything. One thing which we face, not as a problem, is the pricing. SAP pricing is a bit higher day by day. Before, it was not too much higher, but I don't know why they are increasing their price. They should see this thing, so other customers, such as SMBs customers or small and mid-sized customers, can also avail this thing. Otherwise, we don't have any problem. First, there is the limitation. If you are a SAP user, you don't feel any problem with the limitation because if you know how to use the product, you can easily implement this thing. Otherwise, if you don't know the business process or how to integrate and implement, it could be a problem. We have a limitation, but we developed some add-ons for this. So we fulfilled these requirements.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The customer support is wonderful. If your technical team is stuck somewhere, they are there to help."
"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"Technical support is very good, and we were very satisfied with their level of support when we needed it."
"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."
"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."
"The Real-time InfoCube is quite useful in terms of getting information fast when we need it."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"Now, with the cloud, we can move anywhere in the world and we can easily access it from SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, and even the client can also see the stock availability which they need to order."
"The solution's initial setup process is straightforward."
"It is a stable and scalable product."
"There's a minimum amount of downtime when using the solution. This platform is very effective."
"The BTP module is important for digital transformations."
"What I like the most is that we can convert databases into a proper multi-dimensional model, then we can project with the integration with Power BI."
"I am impressed with how the solution integrates with the ME system and ALE IDocs."
"While on-prem takes a long time, this solution is ten times faster."
 

Cons

"One of our requirements is the ability to easily get answers regarding trends and exceptions. In BW, it is not that easy to get such information. I expect better trend and exception detection, better pattern detection."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations."
"So far, the initial setup process in our company has not been easy enough for us to understand."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"It takes more work to get the data, including reporting on that data, because some coding is required, and a significant level of transformation is needed when using SAP Business Warehouse."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"The price of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is quite expensive compared to solutions such as Data Fabric in Azure and Redshift on Amazon, which are quite cheap in comparison."
"It’s a common challenge with applications like Microsoft and SAP that they tend to rely on engineers rather than human resources personnel for knowledge and implementation."
"There are a lot of dependencies on SAP. A customer doesn't have much flexibility to go and update the systems as they wish."
"The SAP products are complicated to deploy anywhere."
"The solution is scalable from an infrastructure point of view. However, it becomes more complex over time because technology is changing so fast."
"The customer has a lot of dependencies on SAP which means they don't have much flexibility to go and update the system when or if they need to. They will need to wait for the quarterly updates. It's possible to maybe raise a special request with SAP if it is absolutely necessary."
"The solution needs to embed or integrate with IBP to fully activate the PPT module with efficiency."
"The stability needs to be improved to be able to handle large amounts of data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"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."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable when compared to other vendors like Oracle who offer technology enterprise resource software."
"Our pricing is based on a yearly contract."
"If you choose the minimum, it will probably cost around $1,000 USD per month if you take a contract for a year or two."
"The licensing of the solution is on a yearly basis. The normal price of the solution is quite high, but I received a special discount by making a purchase near the end of the year."
"It's very, very expensive."
"The price is high compared to other databases, which is why HANA is still not widely used. Some enterprises prefer Sybase, Oracle, or other traditional databases because HANA is a little pricey. Cost is one factor SAP needs to work on to make it more competitive with other databases. Otherwise, they'll never be able to develop a mass customer base."
"The product itself is relatively expensive."
"SAP may not be the most cost-effective option, but it does offer a comprehensive set of tools and features. When you have the right information, structure, and dashboard in place, it can provide excellent value. Additionally, competition with Oracle might be a factor to consider."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
 

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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
SAP HANA Cloud can be quite costly compared to other solutions. The high licensing costs make it an expensive option, particularly for smaller customers. However, they offer solutions for mid-sized...
What needs improvement with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
I cannot say anything about what areas of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud could be improved or enhanced because so far, we are happy with this implementation. We are not facing any problem, or I cannot s...
What is your primary use case for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
The usual use cases for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud that I work with include many tools. At the time of the integration, SAP made it very easy for the integration. The key point is that now we have a...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
FC Bayern Munich, Reuters News Agency, MEMEBOX
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: March 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.