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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 2.5%, 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 Warehouse2.5%
Snowflake15.2%
Databricks10.2%
Other72.1%
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."
"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."
"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is its ability to feed data into new, multiple systems in various formats."
"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."
"We switched to SAP because the solution is more comfortable to work with."
"The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."
"Getting high volume data is most valuable for us; it is really fast and it has great integration with SAP ERP or a non-SAP system."
"Fiori is the most valuable feature, as well as the the integration between S/4 and another solution as an extension."
"My company has not had any problems with the product's initial setup phase."
"If a customer is looking for the latest innovations or products from SAP this solution is perfect for them."
"We are very happy with this solution, and the processes and the way we take advantage and use assistance are good."
"This solution is as good as any other S/4HANA SAP solution. The continuous support we get is very valuable."
"The most valuable feature is virtual modeling, which is beneficial because you don't really save the data multiple times the way we did in the past."
"The solution is stable and we have never had a problem. We started with one terabyte of data when the solution was first implemented and today we have around almost 600 gigabytes of data, which means means the compression works properly. Before migrating from ECC, we had nine terabytes of data."
"What I like the most is that we can convert databases into a proper multi-dimensional model, and then we can project with the integration with Power BI."
 

Cons

"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"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. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy."
"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."
"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license, so you have to pay extra for extracting data."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"Enterprise Cloud's reporting could be more automated to improve content accountability, especially regarding BI reports."
"They should probably offer more cloud services. Most of the cloud infrastructure providers we have make everything pretty transparent, you know what you're getting, you have all these metrics and measurements and everything in the dashboard. Here you have to go through the contracting negotiations and all those things."
"One thing which we face, not as a problem, is the pricing. SAP pricing is a bit higher day by day."
"Our data centers are in Europe and come under GDPR regulations, and this doesn't apply to the Middle East yet. It causes a lot of confusion."
"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 main thing is that SAP needs to give better response times for support tickets."
"The product must provide more details of the errors."
"The solution needs to embed or integrate with IBP to fully activate the PPT module with efficiency."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"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 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."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution could be less expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I rate the product's price a five out of ten."
"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 price is on little bit higher. For SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, we see roughly five crores per annum."
"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 solution's cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 do you like most about SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud?
It has significantly streamlined our operations.
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...
 

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.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.